Arcturus: La Masquerade Infernale
I've listened to Arcturus' first album and loved it. Probably the only symphonic black metal album I do anything more than tolerate. This, their second album is a different kettle of fish. It completely dropped the black metal and went "avant garde". Which usually means a bunch of weirdos who don't really know what avant garde is making something goofy. Just look at that album cover. It says it all. Well, I've never given it more than five or ten minutes of my time, so I'm giving it another chance...
Alright, those vocals are just as ludicrous as I remember. That dude needs to realize that this is the real world, and real people are going to laugh at you if you sing that way. It's clean singing, but with this self consciously "gothy" thing to it that sounds like he's doing the world's worst impression of opera, but without actually singing opera. He doesn't always sound
that goofy, but sometimes it's just laughable.
The music is symphonic progressive metal apparently, and doesn't really seem that avant garde to me. It just sounds like the metal version of ludicrously over-the-top, hey nonny nonny 70's prog rock, and I don't know that anyone who wasn't a fan of that kind of music could take this seriously. It's not so much terrible as I'm just not a prog fan and couldn't give less of a s
hit about this. There are parts that I like, even a song or two, but in general it's just overblown weirdness that flies by while I just tune out until something that I like actually comes on. Maybe Trollheart or Unknown Soldier would get more out of this, but not me.