If Suidakra has a thousand fans, I am one of them.  If Suidakra has ten fans, I am one of them.  If Suidakra has one fan, I am that fan.  If Suidakra has no fans, then I am dead.  The last time I had the pleasure of reviewing an album from the mighty German legends, I said I don’t know how they are not household names despite their lengthy tenure and near absence of whiffs in their discography.  This new album leaves me wondering the exact same question nearly three-and-a-half years later.  It is called…sigh…DarkanakraD.  Why, fellas?

The month of November in the year 2024 marks thirty entire years that Suidakra have been a band, and DarkanakraD is also their fifteenth studio album.  While a stable lineup has never really been a feature of Suidakra, musical mastermind Arkadius Antonik is back in the driver’s seat, and the rest of the lineup from 2021’s Wolfbite joins him, with only bassist Hauke Oje debuting.  That, of course, includes all of the expected guest performers who have collaborated with Arkadius over the years (decades, for some): Tina Stabel on guest vocals, Axel Römer on bagpipes, Sascha Aßbach providing the spoken word narration and Kris Verwimp as the creative director/lyricist/artwork-maker-guy.  DarkanakraD also marks the first time Arkadius handled production himself, in his own home studio.  Musically, the album sees the band return to the pure melodeath roots of their early to middle releases, although I would argue they haven’t strayed too terribly far away from that in their three decades on this earth.  However, the sound of DarkanakraD is incredibly tight and clear, and that’s thanks to not just Antonik’s production, but the mastering talents of a certain Mr. Dan Swanö, a man who certainly knows his way around the classic melodeath sound.  Lyrically, DarkanakraD is the last part of the “Realms of Odoric” trilogy that began with the 2016 album of the same name and continued on Wolfbite.  The last few albums have seen the band break away from the Celtic mythology that defined their early releases and explore worlds and tales of Verwimp’s making, and with the closing of this chapter it’ll be interesting to see if they go back to retelling mythology or create a new IP, for lack of a better way of putting it.

Well, if Suidakra wanted to capture the essence of their early releases, I would say they’ve done it in spades.  If you are familiar with the band, this album hits with shades of Command to Charge and Signs for the Fallen.  The folk elements that Arkadius and co. brought in after those releases have been toned down, with a larger focus on crushingly heavy riffing, blistering melodies and acoustic passages, in keeping with the best era of melodeath.  Age and tenure hasn’t slowed Suidakra down one bit; on the contrary, DarkanakraD is maybe their heaviest and most ferocious album in a long time.  Tracks like “As Heroes Abide,” “Cruinnath’s Breath” and “A Tainted Dominion” explode out of the gate with powerful riffs that knock you on your ass and captivating melodic ideas that hook in your brain like a parasite.  Sure, there are ballads like “Seven Sentinels” and “Ashes of Truth,” but even those have their heavy moments mixed in, especially the former.  It’s a really immersive, interesting choice to have so many vocals mixed in, between Antonik, Stabel, Aßbach and longtime guitarist Sebastian Jensen.  You really do get the sense that each person is contributing to a single character in something larger than a mere concept album.  But even if the story and the thematic elements go over your head, one thing is for certain: DarkanakraD is an album that kicks ass and highlights the best of what this group of musicians can, and have been doing, for so long now.  And hey, there’s even a cheeky At the Gates medley thrown in at the end, as a tribute to one of the bands that inspired this whole production decades ago.

Suidakra have been making their brand of Celtic Wartunes for three decades at this point, but it seems like they have no intention of stopping, and I would gladly say they have been making some of the best music of their career in the last third of that time.  More people need to take notice of what they do out there.  It might not be what you would call “original” or “groundbreaking” but it is fantastically solid and righteously entertaining, and there aren’t a lot of bands who do what they do better.

— Ian

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DarkanakraD will be available November 8 on MDD Records.  For more information on Suidakra, visit their official website.