Well, shit. I can’t understand a word these guys are singing, but I fucking buy into every word of it. ARKON is Doom Metal band out of Oristano, Italy and they are raw, nasty, and raw right over again. Maybe it’s the week I’m having, but this is the band I needed to hear right now. They formed in 2016 and then, I don’t know, spent four years getting high visiting graveyards and writing songs or something but four years after they formed, they dropped their debut EP, “Hypericum.” And then four years after that they released their first full-length album, the self-titled “Arkon,” which is essentially their EP revisited plus five new tracks. Verdict: I love this album and so should everyone else because everyone needs to trip like I do. 

Almost every word on this 46 minute and 47 second, ten track album is in Sardanian, which is Italian but specific to one particular region. As an American, I speak one language. To my ear, Italian—Sardanian or any other variation—sounds like a Cthulhu cultist intoning the famous lines: “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.” Okay, maybe it’s just famous to me. But anyway, here’s the conundrum: Do I go to a translation app and find out what these guys are actually singing or do I just let my imagination fill it in? Again, as an American, I think I’d rather live in ignorant bliss than suffer any more disillusionment.

Okay, hold on.

‘Arkon’ is a Greek word that means ‘ruler.’ It’s not even Italian. Fuck it, I’m sticking with my imagination. My imagination, augmented by the blurb on Bandcamp, tells me this album is influenced by “myths and folk tales of archaic and rural Sardinia.” I’m down with that. Best tracks? I don’t know. I love every song on this album, and I can’t stop listening to it. How about “Sacrifitziu” because it’s all about the riff; “Intregadu” because of the lungs on that dude; and “Oclubaria” because it just f’ing rocks. And then all the rest of them.

It’s at this point that someone’s going to say ARKON is a rip off of BLACK SABBATH or TROUBLE or fill-in-the blank Doom Metal band. All I can say is just relax and enjoy life like Ozzy told you to. This band is awesome, and I am praying to the Sardanian gods of lore that they stay on course but speed things up a bit—in the studio, I mean—because I can’t wait another four years to hear another album from these bad asses.