ARCKANUM · Fran Marder | BLACK TAPE

Black music cassette with 4-panel j-card. Limited to 250 copies.

Background information about 'Fran Marder'

Thirty years on, "Fran Marder" still sounds like a door creaking open onto something that was never meant to be found. Arckanum — the singular vision of Shamaatae, a man who had already done time behind the kit in other bands before deciding in 1992 that metal and dark magic belonged in the same room — arrived here at the first full-length, and you can hear the moment a project stops being a demo and becomes a world.

The nine tracks lean on the second demo "Trulen" for five of their number, but the four fresh cuts are where the record truly opens up. What changed everything was the studio: Peter Tägtgren's Abyss gave these songs a weight and a bite the cassette-era versions could only hint at, and suddenly the tremolo spirals, the ritualistic drum patterns and the ancient Swedish invocations had room to breathe and to menace. Shamaatae handled the artwork, the calligraphy, the lyrics — the whole antikosmos — himself, and that totality is exactly why this thing has aged like carved stone instead of rotting like so much mid-nineties tape fodder.

Remastered for vinyl from the original recordings by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, this is the first era of Arckanum presented the way it deserves. Thirty years later, devotees still name it their favourite of the entire catalogue, and honestly, it's hard to argue.

For fans of: Dissection, Gehenna, Immortal, Bal-Sagoth, early Satyricon

Other Versions

PICTURE DISC LP · Sold out RE-RELEASE DIGIBOOK DIGI · Sold out CD · 14,99 € BLACK LP · 46,99 € BLACK LP · 26,99 € GREY BLACK MARBLED LP · 28,99 € RED/BLACK LP · Sold out

Track listing

A1. Hvila pa tronan min
A2. Þee alder hærskande væsende natur
A3. Svinna
A4. Kununger af þæn diupeste natur
A5. Gava fran trulen
B1. Fran marder
B2. Bærghet
B3. Trulmælder
B4. Kolin væruld

Manufacturer: Darkness Shall Rise Productions, Lengenfelder Straße 58, 08107 Kirchberg, Germany, Contact: darknessshallrise.de