Arcturus - Sideshow Symphonies
- Released: 2005
- Label: Season Of Mist
- Rating:
Arcturus is an extremely experimental black metal outfit that has been around for many years. Their most famous album that has been released would have to be The Sham Mirrors, which people seemed to either love or hate. It has been awhile since Arcturus made some noise and now, 3 years after their previous release, Arcturus is back and their having another dance with the devil with Sideshow Symphonies. I just have one word to describe this entire disc: stupid.
Sideshow Symphonies finds the boys experimenting with some space-themed metal. It’s all been done before (and better by other bands): background synths, paired up with driving guitar riffs and keyboards. Here it’s bland and unoriginal. Arcturus have always prided themselves on being original, but I guess they ran out of ideas.
Now I’m not trying to slam them for this, but Arcturus doesn’t sound as unique as they did before. Don’t get me wrong, what they’re doing on this is album is definitly adventurous, but it just sounds so familiar because they follow the space formula to a ‘T.’ As a result it just doesn’t excite as much as Sham Mirrors did.
However, the sounds that are used work, and work to their advantage. The music does generate a spacey atmosphere and at times I could picture a spaceship in my head flying in space with hot, sexy alien women on board. The heavy use of synths gets annoying at times. They aren’t used constantly throughout, but when they are used the focus tends to drift on them in the nix. The end result is barely memorable melodies. Most of the riffs are driving on this album. I must admit that I loved some of the riffing on here. They all have a certain crunch to them and help generate the appropriate atmosphere.
The worst part of this album has to be the vocals. Simen “Vortex” Hestnæs sounds like a deaf, slow, psychotic person. The clean vocals actually sound decent, but it’s whenever he tries to add variety and change his sound that’s everything goes wrong. Vortex’s black metal shrieks are used sparcely, but whenever they are used the song becomes laughable. The accent also damages the songs as it is very strong. It’s quite distracting from the overall listening experience. But the main issue I have is whenever ‘The Laugh’ is used. I don’t know what they were thinking when they threw these sounds into the mix. Every once in awhile, about once every other track, Vortex will hoot and laugh inexplicably in a very high-pitch fashion. It’s not just that, but they repeat it over and over again as though they were testing your patience. I find his laughing and hooting pointless and very annoying.
The lyrics are also a total dud. If you want to write and make an intelligent album then you must also have intelligent lyrics to go along with them. The lyrics mainly deal with space and aliens, but I have never heard worse space-related lyrics in my life. It completely ruins the feel and mood of the album. Wait, I get why Vortex laughs now…he’s lauging at his incredibly fucking lame lyrics.
The one good thing I can say about Sideshow Symphonies is that the production is crystal clear. However, despite the good production, on some tracks it’s clear that mistakes were made in the mastering. The second track is much lower in the mix than the rest of the album. There’s also a loud click at the end of the song. How the hell did they miss this? Come on, guys, treat your fans with dignity. I don’t want a “good enough” album.
All in all this album could have been good if it were not for the crappy vocals/lyrics and over-use of synths and formulas. As it stands, however, it passes as nothing more than a somewhat interesting dirversion that’s worth one spin…and one spin alone. If you seek a somewhat interesting diversion that you’ll never want to hear again, then by all means buy this album.
Brent C. | 06/18/2006