FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ARCKANUM – FRAN MARDER, KOSTOGHER, AND KAMPEN
They’re out again, they’re out again! Oh man, this is a great moment in history indeed! See, long ago, before the landslide of mediocre black metal that never quite stopped rolling downhill took charge, there was a one-man project called Arckanum shrouded in mystery and full of references to things we couldn’t quite make out. Who was he? What was he? Are those illegible song titles on the back of the CDs pagan or Tolkien-ish or what? At that time you couldn’t put a disc into a computer and be almost guaranteed the song titles would appear on whatever media player you were using, so you just listened and like what you heard and were clueless, but it was fine. It was fun. It was so long ago, I’d love to go back to the era and just stay there! The labels were much fewer and the music was so difficult to come by that you had to order almost everything from a specialty mail order distro, very few of which had even the crudest of websites! I’ve always wondered if these three albums were supposed to be a trilogy and I still can’t get a straight answer anywhere, but to tell you the truth, that’s perfectly fine. Even more mystique added to these groundbreaking releases, why complain? The many guest appearances on the first album, the intentional low-fi recording of the second, and the long insanity of the third make this “trilogy” etched into memory forever! Turns out Shamaatae is a believer is Chaos-Gnosticism, a very fascinating field to study, indeed. It’s too damn bad original label Necropolis Records bit off more than they could chew and went under so ungracefully while leaving a bad reputation behind (their website is now completely toast and no longer says “WE SHALL RETURN!” or whatever the hell it said for years). Here’s hoping that many more of their catalog releases find good homes on Full Moon or any other caring, responsible labels for the world to enjoy. Some of them are such gems that words alone cannot describe their worth. And the Arckanum CDs are at the top of that list. Watch for their new album on Debemur Morti (website info in Animus Mortis review below) previewed by a 7” EP featuring one new track and one Holy Moses cover. Seriously, a Holy Moses cover? Too cool! (FA)
FULL MOON PRODUCTIONS
www.fmp666.com, general@fmp666.com, www.arckanum.se, info@arckanum.se, www.mypsace.com/officalarckanummyspace