Band:	The Arcane Order
Album:	Distortions From Cosmogony
Style:	Melodic death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	June 2023

01. Distortions From Cosmogony
02. Cry Of Olympus
03. A Blinding Trust In Chosen Kings
04. Starvations For Elysium
05. Favors For Significance
06. The First Deceiver
07. Empedocles’ Dream
08. Ideals Of Wretched Kingdoms
09. Children Of Erebos
10. Wings Of Duality

Some people like their death metal to be blackened, or technical, or melodic, or symphonic, or progressive, or atmospheric, or brutal. A rare group of people want their death metal to have a little bit of all the above options, and those ambitious few are likely to be thrilled by the new release from The Arcane Order.

Considering the calibre of some of the names involved in this group and how long they’ve been around, I’m surprised I’ve only just heard of the Danish quintet with the release of Distortions From Cosmogony. They’ve had a decent amount of turnover in personnel, however, with only guitarist Flemming Clausen Lund (ex-Autumn Leaves) remaining from their formation. Making their first appearance on a The Arcane Order release are Soilwork’s Bastian Thusgaard on drums, Anders Stegmann (Wrath Of Belial) on bass, and, perhaps surprisingly, Kim Song Sternkopf of Møl on vocals. Those familiar with Møl will know of Sternkopf’s George Clarke-style high-pitched screams; on Distortions From Cosmogony, he demonstrates a remarkable versatility on the extreme vocal front, from growls to barks to rasps.

At just shy of an hour, Distortions From Cosmogony is on the long side, perhaps as a result of some of its proggier inclinations. It’s an imposing length for a record firmly rooted in extreme metal, but I’ve been surprised by how effectively The Arcane Order keep me engaged while listening to the album. Quite a lot of that comes from the diversity of the record alluded to in the introduction; the group prevent the onset of fatigue by keeping repetition between songs as low as possible for a genre effort such as this. The overall enjoyability of the listening experience is also helped by how adept The Arcane Order are with each sound they dabble with.

If you want something that offers relatively straightforward aggression (albeit with a melodic solo), “Children Of Erebos” should keep you pleased; less full-on, but with an ominous aura resembling 2000s Behemoth, are the likes of “Cry For Olympus” and “A Blinding Trust In Chosen Kings”. The latter also plays into the group’s more technical inclinations, with some elaborate lead guitar riffs early on, while a sustained stretch of jackhammer brutality is punctuated with a sharp left turn into clean melodic instrumentation laden with celestial ambience from keyboards; a peculiar move, but not one that’s necessarily off-putting. Some similarly striking keyboards make occasional appearances in the more melodic and triumphant-sounding chorus of “Starvations For Elysium”, a track that ventures off towards something resembling mid-era Gojira in its second half.

The unpredictability of the album is sustained throughout; “Ideals Of Wretched Kingdoms” is arguably the most overtly prog track here, particularly with its extended instrumental-only section in the second half, but it also has keyboards that bring 90s Dimmu Borgir to mind, and it’s one of several songs here that dabbles with symphonics in its closing stages. Perhaps the other most memorable song is “The First Deceiver”, principally for a striking tremolo riff in its chorus that’s from the kind of sphere of tech-death that bands such as The Faceless occupy (I know there’s a more obvious band to compare this riff with, but their name’s eluding me right now). The last song to point out is “Favors For Significance”, which, while in general not being the strongest here, is the one that goes furthest with the group’s symphonic endeavours during its dramatic mid-section.

In spite of all these little intricacies that differentiate each track, there is a blistering, infernal core to the music of The Arcane Order that makes listening to the record a sonically consistent experience overall. As a result, an album made up of well-written and interesting songs translates into a rounded and satisfying overall listening experience. I don’t know their previous material to know how this new releases stacks up to what they’ve done before, but this latest incarnation of The Arcane Order have come together very nicely on their first outing together.