Arcadia - Roy Philip Nohl

Artist: Arcadia
Title: Roy Philip Nohl
Genre: Hardcore
Release Date: April 2010
Label: Studio A



Album Review

ARCADIA is a three piece hardcore band from Italy that performs very technical, interesting music. Whether or not they are associated with the castle-turned-college in Pennsylvania, USA, it is certain they associated with the metal side of things. While there’s plenty of crunching breakdowns and screaming going on, the group makes plenty of use of wacky samples, electronics, and clean vocals to make their experience a unique one. ‘Roy Philip Nohl’ reflects the intensity of the band and their eclectic style. It is pretty impressive what four guys can do in making this much noise as compared to other four piece monotonous bands.

‘Roy Philip Nohl’ begins with the title track which features a full length spoken word sample before going into track two which actually features the music. ‘I Sold Drugs…’ is a pretty wild track featuring plenty of screaming, chugging riffs and thick tempo drumming. At first it seems like mediocre Hardcore/ Metalcore but then the clean vocals come in and actually add some dynamics to the music rather than just the usual junk that tons of other bands are putting out. The music throughout the track is actually more done in the melodic death metal style rather than hardcore, but the rough vocals tend to keep things in the hardcore vein. There’s also some spoken word samples again that discuss Little Red Riding Hood that are eventually looped into a really wacky segment that comes off more as annoying, but the clean vocals make up for it.

‘Slaughterhouse…’ is more of a rock track than hardcore because it features more singing, even some rapping, and layered vocals to create a vocoder effect. There is also some cheerleader sections worked into the bridge and right then fans know that ARCADIA are a different kind of band. “New Skin” enforces this idea with the progressive rock string pickings in the beginning and mixes the Metalcore chunks with clean vocals harmonized by the vocoder. It’s not flowery in any way and doesn’t take away from the ‘metal’ side of the music. Other notable tracks are ‘Because Of You’ for the sheer melodic nature of the track which is anything but hardcore with the clean vocals dominating and even some piano to really mellow out the track.

‘Red Roses and Vermin’ is a psychedelically influenced track because the electronic features really throw the vocals all over the place and create a dreamscape that is both intense but also easy to flow through once you listen to the entire thing. ‘Ten Milligrams…’ has an industrial feel to it with its thick sound and again makes use of the spacey, clean vocals that just really make fans’ heads spin. Of course, there are plenty of hardcore features to bring everyone back to reality as well. Finally, ‘Morning After’ is similar to the opening track, except it features more music than just talking and apparently hashes up the spoken word passages so it creates a distorted, but ambient effect on the music. It is a very slow instrumental but works well considering ARCADIA’S ability to really make the music a bit weird and looped out.

This group has been around for some time, so fans should expect that by their fourth album they’ve really got some solid ground with their music. Compared to the debut, Synth, this has been a huge progression. Roy Philip Noir is a huge crossover from the strange metal music they already perform. This is a mix up of hardcore, melodic death metal and progressive rock that is really well constructed. ARCADIA certainly has outdone themselves and has evolved to a whole new level, so fans should be wary with what they’ll develop into next. It’s pretty interesting to see them co-touring with SIX FEET UNDER, whose musical style is completely different, but maybe ARCADIA is the perfect addition to round out the variation of the line-up altogether.


Tracklist

01. Roy Philip Noir (intro) (1:39)
02. I Sold Drugs to Little Red Riding Hood (4:56)
03. Slaughterhouse, Obituary, and a Love Story (3:12)
04. New Skin (5:11)
05. Dead by Six O’ Clock (4:34)
06. Because of You (5:53)
07. Red Roses and Vermin (4:01)
08. Vampire (5:28)
09. Nice Pix of the End of the World (5:26)
10. Ten Milligrams (3:37)
11. The Morning After (3:52)


Line-Up

Demetrio- guitars
Edoardo- drums
Marco- bass player
Michele- vocals


Website

http://www.myspace.com/arcadiabastardcore


Cover Picture




Rating

Sound: 8
Music: 8
Total: 8 / 10


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