Review Summary: Maybe this is what schizophrenia sounds like?
I was about to begin rolling my cigarettes for the week when Apple Music decided to feature
Future Lovers, the debut album by a band I’d never heard of called Banks Arcade. It was marketed to me as metalcore in the vein of Northlane with electronic/ambient segments. I thought to myself, “Hey! This could be good! Something like… Silent Planet or Invent Animate or Underoath.”
Nope. I was wrong.
Don’t get too far ahead of me. I’ll start by saying this album isn’t bad. It’s just having a severe identity crisis, which is potentially a totally understandable situation to be in for a debut album but like… I’m talking a schizophrenic level of identity crisis.
The album begins with an ambient intro leading into about five tracks of what I think is supposed to be shoegaze or industrial heavy rock with segments of what could be described as nearly hip-hop or R&B or…I don’t know. All of it is juxtaposed by lead vocalist, Joshua O’Donnell, screaming at various points that could only be described as random.
Hitting about midway through the album, the music starts to become a little bit more interesting. With lead single, “Be Someone” featuring some drum work that isn’t totally boring and a melody that has some more life in it. After this, the band are more oriented towards metal or “metalcore” with a breakdown actually featured by the eighth track, “Used.” And here’s the funny thing: when the band leans more towards metal, it starts to sound like they’re actually trying to make good music. That’s not to say that the effects and synths are always bad, but they are very inconsistent.
The problem is that there are very few segments in which it appears that the band is actually trying. After “Used,” the music rapidly goes back to heavily effect laden synths and samplings which are apparently being used to cover up the fact that they have no idea which direction they’re really going. To make matters worse, when the band does change their stylistic approach mid song, it is not really sequitur. Coupled with O’Donnell’s tendency to switch between fairly decent post-hardcore vocal styles, screaming, rapping, and R&B styled droning at a moment’s notice, it all creates a much more jarring contrast than what I believe is intended.
Fortunately, the closer, “Wine,” is a perfectly serviceable rock tune with probably the best hook on the album.
So again, this isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just not that good either, mostly as a result of the unnervingly jittery nature of the songwriting. That being said, Banks Arcade at least shows some promise, and I guess we’ll see if they work it out better next time.
