Arkona - An Eternal Curse of the Pagan Godz (1994)

   While Northern black metal still had it's golden age, it's earliest followers slowly started to spread in Eastern Europe too. One of them was Arkona from Poland. They debuted with an album length demo, that due to its intensity and quite aggressive approach, counts as a cultic record, therefore it was re-released plenty of times since then. 

   Interestingly they were one of the earliest black metal bands who embedded symphonic elements (by keyboards) into their music to assist to their atmospheric sound. But unlike late bands with similar tendencies, they didn't become a symphonic black metal band, instead they kept their roots and essential blackened darkness at its most extent. Since early black metal didn't have much demands about sound, the demo quality didn't bother the fans, cause even most Northern classics didn't sound better. But compared to them, Arkona definitely had a remarkable level of intensity and aggression in their music, that created great contrast with the atmospheric approach. The rawness of the demo didn't let the music to slip too far into the lullaby direction, and even though the technical circumstances couldn't have been too supportive to recognize these main 2 features of the record, things still turned out pretty advantageous. The demo became quite unified, and the atmospheric melancholy worked out well alongside the raw brutality. The two completing each other so well, that it's rare to hear even decades of black metal history later. "An Eternal Corse of the Pagan Godz" is still kind of an underrated classic and it's definitely worthy for more attention.