ARKTIKA

.....Although they are not breaking any new ground. Ice is per definition frozen water. Not ground. I guess you have just teached you all something new here and you can wander into the sunset, happily enhanced with some new wisdom.

Arktika's music is somewhere near classic post rock and sludge core. More like post rock in my view. Cascades of sludge hits the post rock buffers and we get some pretty pastoral melody lines. The band got this mix just about right on their album. This EP though is more balanced towards sludge and the music is not that good though. But this is still a weak three stars EP. The vocals is not to everyone's taste too, but they fixed that on the album. The ability to learn from mistakes is there and that is good.

Both their releases are free downloads though and are highly recommended to all post rock fans.

3 stars

The band is listed in the post metal category. As this album proves, that category has a wide variety of expressions. From black and death metal to pretty melodic post rock. Melodic post rock as in this album.

The growling, screamo vocals drags the music towards sludge core. But the music itself is fully blooded post rock. A bit more noisy than the regular fare of post rock, but post rock nevertheless. The music flows and ebbs like an ocean on a beach. The main instruments are guitars, bass and drums. There are no real great songs on this album which sounds a bit too safe post rock at times. But the music here is really good and I find myself really enjoying this.

At Zero is not breaking any new ground or smashing down any barn doors. But it is a solid post rock album with a lot of really good guitar harmonies which will warm the hearts of any penguins and prog rocker stucked in minus seventy on an ice shelf down in the antarctic ocean.

3 stars