Band:	Arkona
Album:	От Сердца К Небу
Style:	Pagan folk metal
Release date:	October 31, 2007
Guest review by:	MétalNoir

01. Epilogue [2008 digipak bonus]
02. Покровы Небесного Старца
03. Гой, Купала!!!
04. От Сердца К Небу
05. Ой, Печаль-тоска
06. Гутсулка
07. Стрела
08. Над Пропастью Лет
09. Славься, Русь!
10. Купала И Кострома [2007 digipak bonus]
11. Цигулар
12. Сва
13. Катится Коло
14. Epilogue [2007 digipak bonus]

Masha Scream's Russian wolf pack Arkona always bemuse me with its crushingly powerful and original sound, a mix of black metally brutality, folkloric bounciness and mystical research of ancestral roots. Ot Serdca K Nebu is the epitome of what that incredible band has been developing in the past years.

The musicality of Ot Serdca K Nebu is not quite as fast and heavy as Arkona's previous release Vo Slavu Velikim: only 5 tracks out of 12 (or 14 depending on the version) can be considered Extreme metal, while other ones are either folk music or a softer kind of Folk metal, which makes this album one of the most various I ever heard. For example, Strela, a traditional chant, is followed by Nad Propatsiu Let, a brutal and passionate track, and then by Slavsia Rus'!, a clean and catchy song. If you're an extreme metal fan, it might be tedious to go through this album and you might just skip to the growled vocals.

The use of folkloric instrumentation is wonderful. The sound is perfect and the wide variety of instrument is exceptional. The metal instruments are very well played, too. The drums are awesome on extreme tracks, and the bass is outstanding. Masha is as versatile as usual, her talent going from clean chants to grunts. The album's atmosphere is rather dark and nostalgic. It really has the pagan spirit, longing for ancient rites and cursing our modern society that has forgotten the wisdom of nature.

On the whole, a mature, intelligent and genuine album, perfect for folk fans, but a long and intensity-lacking one for adepts of blast beats and shrieks.