Traveling through Forlorn Steppes - A review of Darkestrah's Chong Aryk

Darkestrah is a pagan metal band inspired by Central Asian shamanism that originally hailed from Kyrgyzstan. Today, the band is based in Germany, its label is Canadian and the musicians performing on this output hail from Iceland, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The band has been going through quite some line-up changes in recent years but now seems to be set and ready to strike.

This wonderful extended play entitled Chong Aryk is published digitally and physically and will also see a vinyl release later on. It features three tracks with a generous total running time of twenty-one minutes.

''Gift of Mud and Venom'' has been released as a single last year but has been reworked a little bit for this output. It's by far the best song on this extended play. It opens with mysterious folk sounds performed by instruments such as long-necked lute azeri tar, string instrument cuatro, long-necked lute divan, long-necked lute tanbur, jaw's harp temir komuz as well as the shamanic drum and some atmospheric keyboard layers. This folkloristic overture suddenly evolves into a thunderous epic black metal song with cold guitar riffs and speedy rhythm section. Çaruk Revan's vocals are quite outstanding as her unchained growls are as intense as her bleak howling while her clean vocals are also surprisingly hypnotizing and deserve to be used even more in the future. Despite a challenging running time of ten and a half minutes, this song never gets boring and deserves to be explored over and over again due to its intriguing details.

Up next comes ''The Warrior Poet'' which is a pagan black metal song without too many experiments. The guitar riffs are even more brutal and the rhythm section quite pitiless while the vocals focus on desperate howling reminding of cold wind racing through forlorn steppes. The song might lack some variety throughout its seven minutes but will be hailed by genre purists for its bleak energy.

Closing song ''Broken Wheel'' is more melodic and playful and shows the band's versatility best. However, the song rather feels like a teaser for greater things to come since it already ends after three minutes and a half. Perhaps the band could develop this promising tune into a conceptual epic on a future release.

At the end of the day, Darkestrah's new line-up seems creative, energetic and versatile and this extended play should please any fan of pagan black metal. Especially the epic opener is an instant masterpiece while the other two tunes are good but could have been fleshed out a little bit further. I'm curious to see what will come from this line-up on a possible full length effort in the future as the group seems to be on track to release some stunning material in this formation.

Final Rating: 75%