Stella Pandora

"Stella Pandora", the impassioned and anthemic 8th album from Arkona, finds the formidable Polish Black Metal pioneers supremely focused, superbly intense and aflame with melodic vigour. - Since their 1993 formation Arkona have progressively fine-tuned and elevated their sound, and this follow-up to 2019's acclaimed "Age of Capricorn" advances the band further still, as they imbue each phrase with a sense of existential yearning - a wistful awareness of the past dying inside the present. - Powered by a watertight rhythm-section, the band create sweeping and elegiac arrangements of neo-classical, folk-infused vehemence. Windswept and elemental leads, textural orchestrations and pitch-perfect storytelling from cruel, anguished vocals propel emotive Black Metal of the highest quality. - Conceptually, "Stella Pandora" examines the inevitability of death and the pointlessness of fighting against human destiny: when faith is but a shell aimed at manipulation, myth becomes the only truth in the senselessness of existence.