Ahrcana formed in September of ’98 and this is their third release, however in some strange way it is their first actual album. It is an improved version of their 2001 release ‘Promo 2001’ (how’s that for a name!). The band has five members, among them are two guitarists, because, well, two bass players wouldn’t really add anything. They are from Milan, Italy and have undergone two lineup changes so far. That does not really set high expectations, and besides, they’re from Italy. I was however pleasantly surprised when I put ‘Into the Prophecy’ on; they are really quite good. The CD begins with some kind of babbling about five warriors, blablabla. Luckily it doesn’t take too long before we get to the music itself. The music sounds like early 80’s Metallica, but with different, odd singing and bad spelling. Take ‘We’ll reborn’ as a song title, that’s all very nice if you’re trying to come of dyslectic. The lyrics are also full of English spelling mistakes. For instance: “For the freedom of this world, the travel must to carry on”. Ryte on, ferry nise. These lyrics are sung with a high-pitched voice.

At first you’re unpleasantly surprised by the vocals, but after a while you’re no longer bothered by this and you begin to like the music more, even the reoccurring community singing. Be that as it may, instrumentally they are pretty much brilliant; they are good at fast songs with fantastic speedy solo’s, and they’re also very good at slower songs with more feeling and slower guitarplay. All and all this album is really good. The songs are very well structured, the right parts start at the right time. The production is very good, it sounds as though they are a band putting out their seventh album and have been playing for decades. Add to that the magnificent guitarplay, and great drums, with lots of double-bass-stuff, and you have yourself a great album. Only problem is the spelling, at certain points it’s outrageous. Now, I can understand that in Italy, English is not really a natural language to learn to speak. But after at least five years of practice they should be better at it, hence the grade.