THE SHAM MIRRORS

The Sham Mirrors is Arcturus' easiest album to get into, but it's still a totally outstanding album, for its musicality and originality. All the tracks are amazing, starting from the opener Kinetic, whose technological sounds and visionaire feeling set the mood for the entire album. In Nightmare Heaven the band continued with that feeling, but after a few minutes the song fades into a metaphysic industrial sound which occupies a big part of the song (maybe too much :P), and then returns with a splendid outro. Ad Absurdum with its original passages is probably the strangest song of the album, while Collapse Generation is the easiest song with his hypnotic rhytm, interrupted only in the beatiful central part. Then it comes the softest song, Star Crossed, which has an excelent piano intro that then returns to the visionaire sound of the rest of the album. In Radical Cut is featured Ihsahn (ex-Emperor) as a black metal style singer, and the result is awesome, one of the best extreme metal tracks i know, and still very prog/avantgarde! The last song is For To End Yet Again, the longest track and also the most epic one.

Globally The Sham Mirrors succeeds in being a great follower to La Masquerade Infernale, while having a totally different style and being much more accessible. As always the performance of the musicians is excelent, and Garm's voice totally fits the mood of the album. Recommended to anyone who still hasn't heard anything by them!