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ARCANA COELESTIA  Ubi Secreta Colunt  CD   (ATMF)   12.98
Ubi Secreta Colunt IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Stunning psychedelic blackness from this Italian band that sprang as a side project from the sides of Italo avant-black metallers Urna and Locus Mortis.

It's actually another one-man BM outfit, but you'd be hard pressed to guess that from the expansive, doomy atmospheres and symphonic heaviness crafted on

this album, and synth music freaks will particularly dig the amazing space music textures that cover Ubi Secreta Colunt. The guy behind Arcana

Coelestia is MZ, who is responsible for most of the instrumentation for the aforementioned bands, and here he weaves a pitch-black tapestry of cosmic funeral

doom and sleek analogue ambience with blasts of black metal tremelo picking, blastbeats and doomy arpeggios savagely bursting out of these four creeping

symphonies. Each of these lengthy tracks spin melodic, swirling synthesizers around dark doom metal marches, double-bass drumming blasting out every once in

a while to bring the music to a boil, gutteral death growls alternating with spacey clean chanting, groans, and hushed whispers, and those sweet keyboards

taking center stage with an old-school analogue sound that turns this into a blend of powerful melodic doom metal, atmospheric dirge, and heavenly, swirling

kosmiche electronics in the mode of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Vangelis. As if the music wasn't heady enough, this is a concept album based on the

work of Swedish author and alchemist August Strindberg, who is quoted in the booklet, and the whole package is filled with images of eerie religious

iconography and church statues. Man, this album is amazing, and it's become yet another new favorite over here. Imagine Skepticism, Shape Of

Despair, Esoteric or Panthiest combined with Virgin-era Tangering Dream, black metal, and lush shoegazey metal like Cult Of Luna, with songs like "Arcane

Knowledge Revealed (Part I)" reaching suffocating levels of celestial beauty. Seriously recommended!