Band:	Arkheth
Album:	12 Winter Moons Comes The Witches Brew
Style:	Experimental black metal
Release date:	February 20, 2018
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Trismegistus
02. Dark Energy Equilibrium
03. Where Nameless Ghouls Weep
04. The Fool Who Persists In His Folly
05. A Place Under The Sun

As a guy who enjoys both peyote-soaked hippie music as well as the sonorous howls of the Blashyrkh kingdom, I've been absolutely delighted by the slow but steady rise of psychedelic black metal this current decade. The label sounds almost fundamentally silly and nonsensical, but as multiple bands have been showing us lately, the shared tendency black metal and psychedelic jamz have for minimalism and ritualistic auras makes them quite an ideal fit for each other. For 2018, color Arkheth as one more band ready to demonstrate how well this fusion can actually work.

For the Australian one manner that is Arkheth, 12 Winter Moons Comes The Witches Brew is a bit of a stylistic curveball, diverging considerably from the more orthodox-sounding symphonic black metal employed earlier into far more unconventional territory. Arkheth mastermind Tyraenos seems to have brought the Cheshire Cat and Mock Turtle along for the journey, as this new approach sees the project going in a much more dreamlike, all around trippier direction than before. The black metal at work here now sits in more of a midtempo range, focusing especially on groove and bounce as a means of imparting memorability. The psilocybin vibe is further enhanced by cleaner, more melodic guitar interludes, bizarre background effects, and the occasional use of chant-like clean vocals on the part of Tyraenos.

The major selling point of 12 Winters, however, has to be its sheer level of sonic diversity, as there is quite a lot going on songwriting wise both within and between the five tracks that compose the album. While mostly sitting in a moderate area for tempo, the music occasionally does pick up pace into more aggressive bursts of energy, as on "Trismegistus" or "Dark Energy Equilibrium," helping to keep the black metal/psychedelia fusion tight and the mood variating. This contrasts with a track like "Where Nameless Ghouls Weep," probably the most catchy and rock-oriented track on the album. And, of course, there's also the addition of saxophone here and there, a risky gamble that's almost always a hit or miss technique for black metal. Thankfully for Arkheth it's a definite hit, as the sax seems to only creep up exactly when it needs to, playing smooth, extended notes that help to accent the rhythms of the rest of the music without all out overpowering them.

With 12 Winters, some similarities can most definitely be drawn to other bands that have flirted with fusing black metal with psychedelia, particularly Oranssi Pazuzu, Transcending Bizarre?, and Virus. But the beauty of Arkheth's music here is that it clearly alludes to some such bands without outright copying them. Effectively hypnotizing, pleasantly diverse in its technique, and just all around fun, 12 Winters demonstrates a take on psychedelic black metal that is entirely its own, and raises hopes high for great things to come from Arkheth in the future.

I think the witches are brewing ayahuasca in that cauldron. Will ye join?.