Back in stock, available on both digipak CD and gatefold LP. A freaky funhouse avant space-metal opera that often feels more like the kind of contempo prog you'd hear on Web Of Mimicry than anything connected to the Norwegian black metal underground, but that's where this quasi-supergroup has ended up with their fifth full-length, the first new Arcturus studio album in a decade. Made up of members from Borknagar, Ulver, Mayhem, Dimmu Borgir and Ved Buens Ende, these space-faring steampunk weirdos broke up for awhile following their previous album Sideshow Symphonies, but the time away has seemingly recharged their blackened batteries, as much of Arcturian features an undercurrent of black metal that we haven't heard out of these guys in years.

Despite the newfound sense of heightened aggression present in these new songs, though, this is still extremely proggy stuff. The album opens with skittering, sinister electronica, a pounding breakbeat beneath eerie synthdrift and spacey glitchery, but the band quickly digs into their blackened prog-metal on "The Arcturian Sign" as the song winds through a multi-faceted attack of symphonic blackened metal bombast, Vortex's rock-style singing delivering some petulant vocal hooks before shifting into a guttural death-roar as the music erupts into blasting, celestial violence. The sound is lushly layered with choral backing vocals, tuba, and a wall of analogue synth, but those symphonic elements and the soulful rock flourishes don't diminish the darkness and dread that ends up spilling out across the second half.

As the rest of this unfolds, Arcturus fill out their songs even further with sweeping synth strings and huge, bombastic hooks, the crushing guitars fused to Hellhammer's furious, intricately arranged drumming, which maintains a constant (and virtually exhausting) feeling of nuclear propulsion, his complex blasting adding to the fearsome aura that surrounds Arcturian. All of the songs are elaborately designed epics, filled with bizarre sci-fi tinged lyrics and dramatic hooks that can swerve into shockingly catchy melodic riffs, the berserk symphonic delirium threaded with the sounds of Eastern European folk violin, gongs, luminous Moog-like keys and horns; and there's lots of the weird sonic detours they're known for, the over-the-top operatic bombast, the excursions into spacey drum n' bass that are woven in directly with the band's heavier material. "Game Over" is one of Arcturus's finest odes to 70's era progressive rock, and features some really terrific guitar and synth work as the band balances dreamy, dark prog with pummeling metallic heaviness; songs like that and "Archer" have a distinctly Floydian feel to them that's much more integrated than similar psych-rock influenced material on their previous albums. But again, this is also the heaviest that Arcturus have sounded in ages, songs like "Angst" rivaling the most fearsome stuff in the early catalog. Wild stuff!