Anyone who thinks heavy music lacks intellectual rigor or substance clearly hasn't encountered folk-metal/pagan-metal pioneers Arkona. The Moscow-based group's lyrics are steeped in Russian folklore and Slavic mythology, but they also reflect the soul-baring emotional bloodletting of founding member Maria Arkhipova. (Quite literally: She even painstakingly wrote out the lyrics to 2018's Khram using her own blood for ink.) The range-defying vocalist, colloquially known as "Masha Scream," speaks her truth by unleashing both a dominating, guttural growl and clean, velvet-lined vocals. The sharp contrast between these singing styles amplifies the urgency of her message and the power of Arkona's riff-heavy music, which favors grinding electric guitars and punishing drums.

Such determination and ambition has always been baked into the band's mythology. Arkhipova originally formed the Arkona precursor group Hyperborea in 2002 with a handful of like-minded local musicians. Although that group recorded a demo and started playing live, they fell apart the following year. Undeterred, Arkhipova relaunched the project, now dubbed Arkona, in 2004 with an entirely new lineup behind her, and has powered forward ever since. The band are global road warriors who have been booked on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise and at the world's biggest heavy music festivals, including Wacken Open Air and Bloodstock, and have also toured North America with fellow folk-metal group Korpiklaani.

In a nod to their folk-metal grounding, Arkona ensure that even their heaviest albums incorporate accordion, bagpipes, and flutes. However, the band's 2018 full-length 'Khram' - a ferocious, sprawling album heavily indebted to blackened death metal's churning, primal sounds - de-emphasizes the presence of such instruments in favor of cello, keyboards, and the occasional eerie vocal sample. The resulting minor-key atmospherics rank among Arkona's best work, as they come complete with nuanced arrangements that pair full-force aggression with tranquil introspection.