The album "Dark Ages" was actually released in a rather enlightened and comfortable period- in 1997. The union of the Aria vocalist and its former guitarist (Valerii Kipelov and Sergei Mavrin) ended up with pretty good results both in the musical and in the production sense. The album sounds very effective, the musical material is more varied than what was formerly expected from Aria, the vocal sometimes recalls "old Soviet tendencies ("I'm Free"), the melody content is full of "Russian intonations" ("We'll live, Mother Russia"), while there are also many oriental motifs and musical "gothics." All in all, it is an eclectic collection of all the various trends of Russian hard-rock. For old and new fans of Aria, the resulting mix might seem a little too saturated, but for the musicians it's just right.