Artist: Arcana Kings
Album: Lions as Ravens
Genre: Folk-Rock-Punk-Pop
Country: Canada
Release date: 15th October 2019
Released via Bad Reputation Records
Cover artwork Bad Reputation Records, 2019
Arcana Kings are a band from Canada, which is formally known as The John McCuiag Band. The rebrand goes hand in hand with the debut album Lions as Kings. The band itself describes its music as a fantastic blend of Rock, Pop and Punk. In my opinion they are quite right, and then there is this special instrument in their setup you can love or hate, but there is nothing in between: The bagpipes.
So first let’s have an overall look at the music. After the first few listenings I had a really mixed feeling about the album. Nothing against variety in a bands music, but I can’t feel the band in the music here. “Fight” sounds like the Foo Fighters, “Mother” makes me think of My Chemical Romance, “Headful of Devil” is a Modern Rock song flavoured with bagpipes and some sand from the Death Valley, if you know what I mean. On their website, the band’s song “Here We Go” stands out, because it is used by a Canadian Football Team as their entrance anthem on home games. And yeah, that’s quite a nice party song. I’m missing some kind of a band identity in the songs. Nearly every song sounds like other bands, from other genres, but it does not feel as if I was listening to the band Arcana Kings.
The production on the release is fine. It’s a modern production, each instrument has it’s space in the overall sound. No need to talk about that. The lack of identity is definitely my biggest problem of the album. All the songs are fine, roundabout upper middle-class in my opinion, but I can’t find and feel into the music that way, when each and every song sound different.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
6 / 10
As usual, we added the favorite track(s) to our Transcended Review Playlist.
Leave a Reply