Arcana – ‘Magna Silentia’ Review

What does Arcana sound like?

Medieval arcane darkness, with a glint of light in the distance.

The review of ‘Magna Silentia’ by Arcana

The last studio album release from Arcana came in 2012, before Peter Bjärgö focused on releasing music under his own name, but Arcana has never truly been over. The band perform at special events and, in the case of ‘Magna Silentia’, they reform when a band member needs them most. When Peter’s daughter Vendela died in 2024, he was naturally devastated. While working on a choral requiem, all the emotions bubbled up into catharsis and a complete song cycle was born. ‘Magna Silentia’ is that song cycle.

This album is choral-forward but also maintains the industrial, darkwave ambience and thick magick drones that previous Arcana and, in particular, Bjärgö music has leaned into over the decades. After a rousing choral arrangement titled ‘Det Stora Tysta’ opens the album with a neoclassical, gothic tone, a throbbing, undebelly 9-minute tonal piece follows. ‘The Adversity Bell’ mixes Arcana’s vocal hums with deep synth drones, European fiddles, and industrial percussive smashes. The bell sounds like a steelwork smash. It’s comfortably numb whilst never feeling comfortable at all. It’s haunted traces of shock and disruption, like trauma bombs are exploding around you, but your inner mind sounds concussed.

With two extremely different tracks, an achingly beautiful string and choral piece provides a third strand of sound. ‘Natura Est Templum’ has a rising note motif that evokes an overwhelming sense of outstretched yearning. The notes rarely feel straightforward, and instead swell and ooze into a place of eerie beauty. It is such a simple track on the surface, yet there are a lot of complex vocal layers that bloom in a way to evoke the overwhelming panoramic emotion of it all. ‘Natura Est Templum’ is one of my favourite neoclassical pieces I’ve heard in years. ‘The Obsidian Mirror’ flips back to ambient noise, but far more atonal and guttural than anything that’s come before it. Detuned, bassy metallic pipe noises saw, moan, and creak around our ears. The atmospherics refract and reverb into each other like ocean waves of knives, cutting deep into your soul with each lapping, painful caress. It’s one for the dark ambient crowd and Akira Yamaoka fans.

Whilst short, ‘You Are Still With Me’ is a gorgeous choral piece. After multiple tracks of eerie uncomfortableness, this piece is a balm of loving sunshine. The long-tail reverb, washed arrangement, and undercurrent of guitar hues are cathartic and like a shot of love in the arm for those who need to pick themselves up to carry on. Grief is never a straight line, as ‘Viola Eterna’ elegantly showcases. This instrumental uses viola and what sounds like a nyckelharpa to create a swirling, intense passage of time that has become stuck. Whilst the main melodic motif swings back and forth like a Renaissance dream, the viola stabs in fits and starts over the top like a horror movie. The track perfectly articulates the sense of wallowing. The song is followed by a true Arcana classic in the making with ‘The Collapsing of All Light’. Almost a sister track to ‘Natura Est Templum’, this piece has a downward chord structure and some stunning guest vocalists to add a Balkan flair to the choral arrangement. It doesn’t quite embrace the guttural singing of the region fully, but there’s a strong nod towards it, and it makes the track sound cataclysmic. With most of the album swinging between sparsely decorated choral pieces and dense atmospherics, this track dresses the choir up in all kinds of neoclassical arcane instrumentation. It’s a true throwback to Arcana’s early albums and a real gem.

‘Somna Intus’ follows like a windy, stormy night. It’s a mixture of industrial atmospheric effects like dusty wind and ambient machine noises, and bustling strings. It’s cinematic and dense. Claustrophobically dense, in fact. With headphones on, you could almost choke on it, but that’s what makes dark ambient music so fun. It sets up the more percussive, Norse-funeral requiem of ‘An Innermost Sanctum’ to lead us into a dream world. Pounding drums, macabre synths and strings, Peter Bjärgö’s deep vocals chanting in slow motion… It’s an arcane meditation. Arcana often make the darkness beautiful, and this track makes the darkness not only beautiful, but calming. The journey ends with the title track. Unrushed, with pauses between each choral refrain, we’re back in the realm of balancing a trench of emptiness and the love for a lost one. Translated as ‘Great Silence’, its use of reverb resembles the hole in your heart from the death of a loved one. Interestingly, the song never reached complete silence. Another wave of choir and strings hit before the memory fades or the grief sets in.

I’ve listened to ‘Magna Silentia’ multiple times and depending on my mood, I have very different takes on the sonic journey it takes the listener on. Arcana leaves you somewhat ambiguously because each track veers you between two opposite emotions. Remembrance and emptiness. Grief of the loss and love of the knowing. It depends on which side your own emotions are when you listen to the album as to which side you connect with, or need more. Sometimes it pulls you back from emptiness to remembrance. Other times, the emptiness or remembrance is so strong that the music can swaddle you for comfort. Whatever you feel, Arcana has created a deeply personal album where each listen may well give you a different experience. I do hope it isn’t 14 years for the next album, and that the next album is born from happier times and memories.

Recommended track: Natura Est Templum

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