Never stocked this cd before, but I've been on a bit of an Arcturus kick lately and decided to pick it up at long last since I'm constantly getting orders for all of the other back catalog titles from this Norwegian avant-black metal super group. Featuring members of Ulver, Mayhem, Covenant, Borknagar, and Ved Buens Ende, Arcturus were a band unto themselves, starting off as a slightly proggy, symphonic black metal outfit but over the course of several albums evolved into something like a blackened version of Faith No More, with their majestic metal augmented by strange genre-hopping that might include bits of drum n' bass and electronica, theatrical arrangements, bizarre left-field forays into hardcore rap, trip-hop, and industrial music.
2005's Sideshow Symphonies would actually be the band's last studio album, and found the band shifting their bombastic and theatrical sound into a more focused (but no less dramatic) direction. One of the changes that stands out on this album is the arrival of new singer Simen "ICS Vortex" Hestnaes (ex-Borknagar, Dimmu Borgir) who replaces former front man Garm (Ulver); Hestnaes's soaring, phantasmal voice was an interesting addition to Arcturus's sound, definitely way more over the top and melodramatic compared to Garm's singing, but it fit perfectly with their majestic futuristic prog-metal. Musically, you can barely hear any of their black metal origins, the nine tracks instead sounding like a spacey, symphonic, strangely New Wave-tinged power metal, sorta, and there are parts of the album that sound to my ears almost like Kansas, fer petes's sake. Not that they went soft for Sideshow; the lush analogue synths, symphonic strings, and operatic singing are still backed by chugging heavy guitars, blazing double-bass drumming and triumphant metallic crunch. The music isn't as schizo as their past releases, where Arcturus would veer from drum n' bass to black metal to orchestral pomp and Portishead-style trip-hop, but there is still some of that Mr. Bungle weirdness going on, albeit very subtly, with some touches of dark jazzy ambience (like on "Nocturnal Vision Revisited"), electronica, and classical elements appearing on various tracks. Definitely a high point in the field of progressive post-black metal heaviness.