Black metal lore and hushed tones are never at a premium whenever Norway's Arcturus is discussed and, on paper, it's easy to understand why. Featuring Hellhammer (Mayhem, ex-Dimmu Borgir, ex-The Kovenant), ICS Vortex (Borknagar, ex-Dimmu Borgir), Sverd (ex-Ulver, ex-The Kovenant), Skoll (ex-Ulver) and Knut Magne Valle (ex-Ulver), Arcturus is a coming-together of several prominent Norwegian extreme metal figures, all of whom bring vast and varied experiences to studio spaces. The issue, to these ears, is that the least desirable and listenable elements of each of the bands listed above is usually channeled through the Arcturus process, and the end result is a collection of symphonic black and prog-metal's worst tendencies, ending up somewhere in the vicinity of a Dimmu Borgir and Dream Theater YouTube mashup. 2002's The Sham Mirrors suffered the same fate (even if YouTube didn't exist yet), but was sometimes saved by its lust for life and its experimentation into the realms of hazy electronic blurs, as the near-perfect-except-for-the-piano-solo "Nightmare Heaven" attested so well more than a decade ago.

Which is where Arcturus, a collective viewed by so many as a genuinely avant-garde force, could head regularly, instead of the "Gateways"-mates-with-"Pull Me Under" moments of much of its work (Dimmu and Dream Theater if you're wondering, and there's those names again). That said, Arcturian's highlight, "Angst", is impressive in its display of the ultra-aggressive, which goes to show that Arcturus can rule the pack of wolves when it wants to. There's a lot of promise in Arcturus' vision generally, it's just that the execution relies, in far too many ways, on moments that have been done just as badly on other records.