ARKTIS

— First review of this album —

The excellent Garden Of Delights can't stop re-publish some of our favourite krautrock albums. This Arktis is an old obscurity that intensely makes an original mix of heavy garage bluesy-rockin' songs with emphasis on psychedelica sonorities. Tapes figure among the lost jam sessions of the band. This gloriously spaced out musical collective celebrates acid fuzz rock with heavy guitars, infectious grooves, really cool rhythmical sections and an hyper active sense of free instrumentation. Newrock opens the album with a surprising heavy-rockin' song with mind blowing guitar solos and with an evident influence from late 60's psych rock legends. The vocals are in the hippie-stoned like vein. High Fly figures among the strongest pieces, strictly instrumental with wha wha bluesy guitars and a massive psych-doom like heavy ambience. The GOD edition contains two interesting bonus tracks. Creative old school heavy rock with psych/prog accents. A particular contribution to the genre with omnipresent vintage, kick-ass bluesy guitars. A dynamic musical journey that also reminds some classic stuffs released by John Mayall, Peter Green, and Fleetwood Mac but with more aggressive, hell-ish guitar riffs. Recommended for those who like the heavy kraut epics of Blackwater Park and a few others.

— First review of this album —

Those who love lush, majestic sympho-prog will find little, if anything, to enjoy here. But those with a passion for stripped-down, gutsy basement rock will consider the first Arktis album to be a lost masterpiece. An aggressive, rough-edged power trio fronted by an assertive female vocalist, Arktis showed both sides of their nature on their privately pressed debut. On the first side, they offered three punchy, stripped down hard rock songs, and on the second cut loose with the astounding "Rare Girl" - twenty minutes of high octane rock jamming, mainly instrumental and principally the vehicle for guitarist Klaus Blachut, who cut loose with endless soloing and improvisation, providing a tour de force of progressive, psychedelic and heavy rock guitar styles, running the gamut from Ash Ra Tempel to Hawkwind, Black Sabbath and even Status Quo. The effect is simply breathtaking. For the CD reissue, Penner added three slightly later bonus tracks with more of an early new wave feel - once again, nothing for prog purists, but again great rock, especially on the very catchy "Is It Real?".

Enchanting 70s' heavy metal from Germany. On the Rocks was recorded in 1976. Although featuring simple melodies and not straight progressive metal with complex arrangements, such as, say, Rush, Arktis' sound is interesting for two reasons.

The first reason is that their powerful guitar playing sounds Iron Maiden-esque for a mid 70s band and catches the attention at once. The second reason is that the voice of Karin is both very powerful and enchanting ans sounds andrgynous, which give the tracks a feel of fairy-tales. The highlight here is Loneliness, a beautiful powerful epic lasting 20 minutes. The tune is both heavy blues and melancholic passages in the vein of Pink Floyd. The doomy bonus track Y.T.T is reminiscent of Black Sabbath and really rocks !

Arktis's On the Rocks is an album which with you can easily imagine knights fighting on the landscape drawn on the cover while listening to the music. It's a pity they only made a few albums. Very enjoyable and accessible album. To all heavy and progressive metal lovers !