Review Summary: Arcade Messiah are at their best when given the room to breathe, allowing themselves to make tonal shifts feel elegant and fluid.
Metal was always a genre about excess: it was about being harder, faster, stronger, and louder, so when things started to cool off, the genre began to become aware of a slower, less abrasive, but more refined view of metal. Pen it to Isis’
Oceanic or Neurosis’
Through Silver and Blood or whichever “post-metal” act you like, but whichever it was, it was the beginning of a different breed of metal. Hastings’ Arcade Messiah have delivered their second LP, continuing many of these same post and stoner metal ideologies that have solidified their creative processes. And while the field of heavier progressive metal is starting to dissipate from their compositions, this LP is a surprisingly robust example of post-metal aesthetics. Don’t expect a mind-bender with
Arcade Messiah II: just a simmering, majestic, at-times jarring example of a band that’s starting to get ahold of its own ideas, and honing in on making a beautiful aesthetic realized.
Arcade Messiah dance between various metal subgenres repeatedly on their second LP, leaving many of their best statements in the longer and more tumultuous tracks. “Black Dice Maze” is a real impresser, sticking to experimental, almost post-rock style guitar melodies before crescendoing into sludgier riffs and more traditional metal aesthetics. It’s a wild ride whose twists and turns feel rewarding in all the right ways. The closer “The Four Horsemen” is an 18-minute trip around the sun and back, blasting with crunching riffs, swirling dreamy vocals, and choral guitar tones. It’s here where you see Arcade Messiah at their best: lengthy passages with proper buildup. The twists feel organic and the shifts in mood feel natural. This is where Arcade Messiah are in pitch form.
About halfway through
II, Arcade Messiah’s tracks start to tread the waters of unabashed post-metal above any other genre. Most of these tracks refrain from displaying any insane examples of virtuosity. There are no mach speed guitar solos or suffocatingly dense drum fills; it sticks to a more fundamentalist mindset. Echoing the moods and vibes of post-metal band Isis (specifically the
Panopticon era), Arcade Messiah deliver serene, textured guitar tones. The trifecta of “Gallows Way”, “Fourth Quarter”, and “Via Occulta” are absolutely spectacular examples of the trademark restraint that straddles the line of post-rock and post-metal. The follower “Read the Sky” shifts into the heavier territory again, but doesn’t emit the same levels of intensity in earlier ones like “Black Dice Maze.” It’s not in marathon form, but it all feels in place and astonishingly fluid.
The LP’s weaker moments are where Arcade Messiah begin to settle down, or more accurately, settle into the more traditional metal styles. The initial two tracks, “Moon Signal” and “Red Widow” rarely deviate into the atmospheres constructed in the more post-metal tracks on the album. They have a few left turns, but these are short-lived and jarring, doing a mediocre job of making cohesive and natural shifts into softer musical moods. The same problems appear to a lesser extent in “Start Missing Everybody”, as the slamming, nimbly rhythmed heavy segment appears about two-thirds in. It feels awkward, ignoring many of the organic tonal shifts displayed in tracks like “Black Dice Maze.” Arcade Messiah are at their best when expanding their sounds’ layers across the lengthy tracks instead of trying to insert them awkwardly into shorter ones. When they have the room to breathe, you hear a ton of natural experimentalism at work. When they don’t, you hear a spiraling maelstrom that rarely moves under a comfortable flow.
Arcade Messiah’s second LP has a lot of post-metal goodness beating in its heart, and even when the majestic waves and shifts miss a step, the ambient proficiency manages to shine through. There are some lovely examples of restraint and natural flow on
II, giving the best moments like “Black Dice Maze” an oddly epic feel. With endless white space on blank pages, Arcade Messiah fill every nook and cranny without suffocating their own ambitions. Sadly, those moments where the tonal shifts are awkwardly inserted instead of cohesively mixed stick out like sore thumbs, as tracks like “Moon Signal” and “Red Widow” don’t make the same moves as the longer tracks like “The Four Horsemen” or the tonally consistent bunches like the post-metal trifecta in the album’s middle. If you’re looking for an instrumental album with ambition and craftsmanship, Arcade Messiah’s second LP might not be a glowing example, but the fact that it keeps its inconsistencies contained and sparse allows its best moments to shine brightly. And these moments really can be beautiful.
