A new day arose, and the first thing on the menu for us was a dose of Russian pagan metal in the guise of Arkona, probably the biggest thing to ride out of the icy country since the days of Genghis Khan.

I was actually surprised to how large a crowd the Russian band had managed to pull out of the woodwork, this was after all still pretty early by festival standards (they started a little before 3 p.m.) and it was the last day of a festival where the boozing was as heavy as the music.
Not only was the amount of people impressive, so was their interest in praising the band by clapping singing along, a good thing since vocalist Masha 'Scream' Arhipova’s microphone was almost inaudible in the beginning of the set (a problem promptly fixed thankfully). Now, I don’t know how it is in Germany, but in Denmark where I live, not a whole lot of people know the Russian language, but on the other hand, I’ve sung along to quite a few anthems in my day which I didn’t understand a word of anyway, and I’ve been pretty damn good at it too if I may say so myself!
Anyway, how it all sounded for the band I guess we’ll never know, but they seemed to have a pretty good time up there…

Especially Arhipova made for a great front-woman, dancing and jumping around the place whilst not singing (and also sometimes when she did). This was my first time seeing Arkona, and my previous knowledge of the band was sadly lacking, but I must say that I was quite taken aback by the powerful vocals shooting out of this tiny woman like a locomotive on steroids! There were some clean vocal parts as well, which also hung together nicely with the music, but it was her harsh vocals which really blew us away this fine day.
Also Vladimir 'Volk', who played a multitude of wind instruments, had a good grip on the audience and provided some entertainment as he led us into several sing-along’s along the way, with easy enough things such as “Oi, oi, oi” or “Lai, lai, lai”.
One of the latter ones showed up in a new track the band wanted to play for us; the song Stenka Na Stenku (which since has been released on an eponymous EP), which was a fast little thing with some nice breaks, a harmonica one for one thing.
This, along with their big hit Goi, Rode, Goi and several others which I will refrain from trying to name, got the crowd in a good old dancing mood, and Arkona saw a very active morning audience at their show.

This was a very pleasant gig to be sure, but I must confess that I’m not entirely won over by the band just yet. Maybe, with time and a deeper knowledge of their back-catalogue, things will change, but for now it’ll amount to interesting and enjoyable, but nothing special. This of course is good as well when you think about it…