��The sort of classic, epic heavy metal that Atlantean Kodex deliver on their latest album The White Goddess isn't something that I typically expect from a label like 20 Buck Spin, whose tastes have in the past tended to extend into more extreme territory with releases from such C-Blast favorites as Coffins, Whitehorse, Black Boned Angel, Wolvserpent and Vargr. This is great stuff though, the follow up to their debut album on Cruz Del Sur hat came out in 2010, a nearly hour-long listening experience filled with some high-quality, vaguely progressive heavy metal and a lush production job that services their sweeping , majestic metal well. Atlantean Kodex's music comes from a decidedly old-school place, their ornate, sprawling epics (a couple of these songs breach the ten minute mark) laced with elements of traditional doom metal, huge slow moving riffs that carry echoes of the late 80s output of Swiss doom gods Candlemass (like on the song "Heresiarch"). The album opens with one of Christopher Lee's lines from Robin Hardy's 1973 pagan horror classic The Wicker Man, setting up the album's poetic feel and occult references as Atlantean Kodex begins their seven song saga; the music moves from folk-flecked instrumental passages to complex, slow-moving metallic crush, shifting with ease between crushing doomed riffage and faster, galloping power anthems, all the while creating an expansive sound that incorporates backing vocal choirs, acoustic guitars, Hammond organ and piano into their songs. There's a couple of points on the album that started to remind me of both Virginia prog-doom legends While Heaven Wept and Open The Gates-era Manilla Road, which should give you a fairly decent idea as to the sort of stuff Kodex is dealing in. Songs like "Trumpets Of Doggerland (There Were Giants In The Earth In Those Days)" and "Twelve Stars And An Azure Gown (An Anthem For Europa)" are full of dramatic power, that traditional heavy metal backbone underpinning the whole record even as the band scatters some atmospheric soundscapery throughout the album via a couple of short ambient interludes of acoustic folky strum and the crackle of bonfires, distant war-drums and cold arctic winds. Very cool use of piano, too; the piano solo that closes "White Goddess Unveiled (Crown Of The Sephiroth)" is wonderfully haunting. Kodex front man Markus Becker gives an impressive performance, his clear, impassioned vocals rising high above the band's dark and grandiose heaviness. Songs open with bombastic trumpet blasts that give off a strong whiff of Hammerheart-era Bathory, and samples of solemn Winston Churchill appear throughout the album alongside female voices reading spoken word passages, all adding to White Goddess's mythic imagery, which the band goes into further detail with in the lyrics and artwork, drawing from both occult and literary symbols and references, the central theme of the album dealing with the decline of Europe told in apocalyptic metaphor. Quality stuff that fans of prog-tinged 80's era heavy metal, bands like Hammers Of Misfortune, Twisted Tower Dire and Slough Feg, and classic European-style doom metal should look into...

�� The CD version from 20 Buck Spin comes in jewel case packaging, and includes a thick twenty four page booklet filled with evocative artwork and the lyrics printed in old English script.