For those of you who don’t yet own our debut album, Pagan Evolution, we have great news for you. We’ve just lowered the price of the album from $12.00 to $7.99! “Why?” you ask, because we want you to have the music. We’d only like to recuperate the cost to manufacture the CDs. I know what you’re thinking, and no, the CDs didn’t cost $7.99 to produce. They cost roughly $4 and our online retailer, CDBaby, takes $4 for each CD we sell. Just go to CDBaby to purchase your CD.

If $7.99 plus the cost of shipping is too much, we have a couple of options for you. We’ve also dropped the price of our digital download as well from $8.99 for the entire album to $3.99! No shipping involved. Go to CDBaby to purchase and download the high quality MP3’s.

We know the economy isn’t in the greatest state right now and we understand that many people are going through difficult times. So if you just don’t have the money to purchase our album, send us an email and we’ll send you a link where you can download the music for FREE. No gimmicks whatsoever. We’d like to do anything we can to help those in need during these times.

For those of you who are excited to hear our new vocalist, but have not yet, we have posted four demos with the lovely Lorelei on the microphone. Check her out; let us know what you think. And the best part is that you can download the demos for FREE! Just download them from our profile page or go here for the higher quality MP3s. No obligations at all, we just want you to have the music.

The show had it's ups and downs.  This was our second year performing at this event, and we wouldn't have come back if we didn't enjoy it last year.  There were supposed to be 6 other bands playing with us.  We were informed the last band that was scheduled to play backed out at the last minute.  Then later into the afternoon, the band Octolux was on their way from Kentucky, I believe, and their transmission went out in their van at some point on way to Lansing, MI.  So we were cut down to 5 bands total, instead of 7.

Unfortunately, their were a lot of sound issues throughout the day, but every band performed their best and we had a lot of fun.  Right before we started setting up, we realized we had forgotten our drummer's hardware, so his drums were pretty much useless.  We were fortunate enough to have the drummer from Animal Mother let us use his set.  Lorelei was able to use her new wireless mic for the first time.  She now has the freedom to move around and we think her theatrics have definitely come up a notch.  This definitely wasn't our best gig, but we learned a lot from it and look forward to doing this event next year.  And as always, thanks to all our fans who made it out.

Some of you may already know, but we’re sure most of you don’t. Just before the end of the year, we decided to ask Stefanie, our vocalist, to step away from Archaic Revival. Unfortunately, we are moving forward in a direction that we don’t think Stefanie will be able to lead us in. We wish the best to her and hope she succeeds in whatever path she heads down.

Hey guys, we've got two new reviews for our debut album, Pagan Evolution. So we're putting them up late.


From Steve Green at Live 4 Metal

For a self release, this is a mightily ambitious project. The idea behind Archaic Revival is for the worlds of Classical and Metal to meet head on and for the results to be a Metal soundtrack to The Lord Of The Rings. So after that heady introduction, does it work. Sometimes yes and sometimes no, is the answer to that.

Addressing the Lord Of Rings Metal soundtrack situation first, I don't think this album conjures up such images at all, at least they don't in my twisted mind. For me, Summoning do a much better job and unfortunately, I don't think Archaic Revival are even singing from the same hymn sheet. That's not to say I don't like what they've produced here, but if you are going to sell this on the tales of LOTR, then it becomes an important factor, in my opinion. Yes, I think this album has a medieval feel to it and yes the vocals of Alexandria Clark do hark back to days gone by, but this isn't music that recreates images of sword and sorcery.

Before I move on to the main bulk of the positives about this album, I need to touch upon one other flaw. The vocals on here are too one dimensional. Alexandria tends to follow the melody lines of the music with very little variation. While she does have an ok voice, her style gets pretty stale after a short while. But, since the recording of Pagan Evolution, she has left the band, so I think that problem has been addressed already.

Ok, by now you may be thinking that this won't be a very positive review, well you couldn't be more wrong. When you take this album as a whole and the work that song writer Derek Cvengros has put into it, and on the budget I'm sure he never had, then you have to treat this album as a major success. Sure, it's not going to give Therion mainman Christofer Johnsson sleepless nights about someone stealing his crown, but it might do to in a year or so. The biggest strength on this album is the song writing and the whole structure of how the music is put together. As with Therion, Archaic Revival have a choir and an orchestra, albeit ones that have been created with the use of synthesisers, but they sound so realistic, that you cannot tell the difference. And this also applies to the drum sound as until I read about it, I hadn't even guessed that the drums weren't real. The quality of the musicianship throughout is exemplary and it's all been created by one person.

While I'm not 100% positive with my comments, I believe Archaic Revival are a band to keep an eye on. They now have a full band in place and if they can build upon what they, or should I say, what Derek has created here, then there's a good chance that major success will be achieved sooner, rather than later. To achieve that, I think that they need a label like Napalm Records or Nuclear Blast to give them the higher profile they need.


From the Crimson King at Metal Rules

When it comes to certain types of metal, such as power or symphonic, those of here in the states have a hard time finding a large quantity of home grown potential. Similar to buying electronics, we must look overseas to find quality product. That being the case, I was highly interested to hear of a new symphonic/ operatic metal act that popped up out of Michigan named Archaic Revival. The band, masterminded by guitarist/songwriter/composer Derek Cvengros, follows closely in the footsteps of acts such as Therion and Nightwish, and it is upon these influences that their debut album PAGAN EVOLUTION is built.

While, since the release of the album in Nov of 2007, Cvengros has managed to pull together an entire band, the studio personnel present on the release consists of just Cvengros, (who is credited with all of the music on the release) and vocalist Alexandria Clark. The album kicks off with a minute long intro entitled "Rise of the Gods" which transitions directly into the song "Son to the Fallen". The track starts with an atmospheric keyboard and drum section that cuts out almost immediately allowing for a scorching metal riff to take its place. The song builds upon this riff as the pounding drum track enters, and layers upon layers of music begin to be placed atop. While the track is extremely diverse and multi-faceted, it never manages to lose the foundation of head banging tempo upon which it began, and proves to be one of the highlights of the album. Additional stand out tracks are the melodic ballad "Unsung Hero", "Vendetta" which begins with a dark, pounding riff that is eerily reminiscent of "God of Thunder" by Kiss, and "Black Magick" which may be the closest thing to a straight forward metal track on the album (and includes eerie spoken word sections by Cvengros, which immediately brought to mind "Double Agent" by Rush).

Musically the album is highly impressive. Cvengros shows a true vision and craft in his songwriting, incorporating not only the expected trappings of the aforementioned Therion and Nightwish, but also influences of folk (Blackmore's Night), metal (Metallica), and classical scoring a la Howard Shore. That being said, at times the album does fall somewhat flat melodically. Clark, who clearly has some sort of professional opera training, at times does not provide enough variance in tone and pitch within the songs, making some sections drone on a bit. Clark also falls into the pit trap of too often having the melody follow the music to a tee, which can also add a level of monotony to what are musically highly diverse and challenging tracks. It should be mentioned here that since the recording of this album Clark has been replaced with a new vocalist, Stefanie Stauffer, and this may rectify the minor quips that I have with, what is otherwise, a quality album within this genre of metal.

For a self-made, self-produced, debut, PAGAN EVOLUTION is quite lavish in its scope. Cvengros shows himself to be a songwriter of great potential, and given the proper supporting cast, has the ability to really make his mark within the metal community. For fans of this type of music, PAGAN EVOUTION is an album worth checking out. By doing so you may just be getting in on the proverbial 'ground floor" of an artist and act that has the potential to really take off.