A cute cd-single, this new one from Arcana. It comes in the small 8 cm format, which I don’t see that often anymore. As always with Arcana the artwork is stylish. This single contains two short tracks. To to give the buyer more listening minutes for his money they are both included twice! This single is also released as a 7″ picture disc, which I haven’t seen yet.
It has been a while since the latest Arcana album, “The last embrace” (2000). That was a solid album, but it brought nothing new. After that Peter Pettersson has mainly been busy with his other project Sophia, which has a more powerful, martial style. He also made a single together with Thomas Ordo Equilibrio under the name of Victoria. Now Arcana has returned to the stage with these two new songs.
The first one, ‘We rise above’, was already available for download for some time, so I already knew this one well. It is a very strong track, with a slow tempo and a heavenly atmosphere. Apart from Peter’s low voice we also hear beautiful female vocals, which is a trademark of Arcana. The female singer is Ann-Mari Thim, which is a different vocalist than on previous releases. In comparison with older Arcana material the drums seems to be more powerful, which is perhaps the Sophia influence. ‘Body of sin’ is rather different, it contains acoustic guitar and spoken vocals by Peter, it show some neo-folk influences. Again the drumsound is impressive.
All in all a good single, which gives me confidence for the next Arcana album. By the way, there are also two new Sophia releases coming up this month…
