Arcane Grail – Arya Marga (2010)

Boasting a majestic combination of Black, Death, and Gothic Metal with Symphonic Metal elements today we have Arcane Grail, a very bombastic band from Russia. “Arya Marga” was originally released back in March of 2009, but luckily for us the folks at Hunter’s Moon records from the UK re-released it on a digital-only format.

Immediately the first thing that stands out is the beautiful classically-trained voice of Natalie, the band’s female vocalist for those that need clarification. The band’s music is very dynamic and it’s very well varied through the 40 minutes that “Arya Marga” lasts. There is never a dull moment and there is something for everybody ranging from full-on Black Metal aggression, Death growls and overall solid riffing.

As we mentioned before the guitar work is mostly like on any well crafted Symphonic Black Metal release. The BM shrieks are powerful enough and when interwoven between growls and female sections, they create a very diverse vocal sound for this release. There are plenty of choir sections that complement the underlying Gothic Metal elements on this release in magical way.

During some sections the sound gets to be a bit too hectic since there are tons of things going on, but the band does a great job in changing into more straight-forward sections that ease the listener. The keyboards are majestic and sound like any top notch Gothic/ Symphonic Black Metal band would sound. There are also some sections where the band uses Cellos, Violins and a Viola.

In general, “Arya Marga” is one of the best Gothic Metal/Symphonic Black Metal albums we have received in quite a while. We love that everything is very well combined and with some Gothic Doom Metal undertones, the band’s sound is as massive as one could expect. The band has recently drop a ton of their members, currently they only have the two vocalists remaining, so we hope they can continue releasing majestic albums such as this one.

Release: April 14th, 2010

Country: Russia