When the band first announced they were working on a new album, I was immensely curious as to whether they could top their previous release, Goi, Rode, Goi, which I consider one of the best folk metal albums out there. A little overly-excited when I finally got it in the mail, I popped the disk in right away, sat down with the album booklet, and prepared for the journey that was to come. From the first notes of the intro, "Az’," and into the song "Arkaim," I found myself in the Russian steppes, sometime in the long, long ago. For this album, the band worked with a full orchestra and choir, which adds a new layer to Arkona’s sound and gives the soundscapes a far more grandiose feeling. So drawn in I was that I barely noticed the transition between the epic "Arkaim" and the emotional "Bol’no Mne" ("It’s Painful for Me"). Masha, the band’s frontwoman, gives it her all, and the sense of pain and suffering that the song describes makes it through the speakers and straight into the heart to the listener.

The album takes a turn with "Leshiy," a much happier song with an upbeat, jumpy riff that describes an encounter with an ancient Slavic forest spirit, and follows with the slightly creepy "Zakliatie" ("Incantation"). Here Masha tries out some new types of vocals, from a creepy whisper to a sort of half-scream, along with the usual chanting that she does so well.

There’s a good amount of diversity on this album. Arkona goes from the nearly black metal passages on "Nikogda" ("Never"), one of the heaviest songs in the band’s repertoire, and "Slovo" ("The Word"), to the folky yet sorrowful acoustic "Tam za Tumanami" ("There Behind the Fog") and "Vo Moiom Sadochke" ("In My Garden"), as well as a few spoken word passages like "Predok" ("Ancestor") and "Potomok," and the jolly party song "Stenka na Stenku" ("Wall on Wall"). Unfortunately, sometimes the stark contrast between some of the songs makes the transitions a bit awkward and sometimes makes Slovo seem more like a disjointed collection of songs than a cohesive album.

Overall, Slovo is a very enjoyable album, but is it better than its predecessor, Goi, Rode, Goi? The songwriting on Slovo is more mature, more layered and interesting, and overall goes down easier than the slightly over-ambitious Goi, Rode, Goi, but it lacks the same cohesiveness and threads that tie the songs together into a full album, at least in a musical sense. Thus, I wouldn’t call it "better," but it’s certainly no worse, and most definitely an album worth having.

Standout tracks include… well, all of them!

9 / 10

Arkona will be on Tour in the USA later this year with Korpiklaani