Arcaeon: Embracing The Unconventional

Over the last decade the field of progressive metal has flourished with the introduction of what has been defined as ‘tech metal’ providing some of the most exciting and innovative material available to our ears as well as pushing the boundaries of technicality and musicianship to places never explored before. One of the UK’s hottest prospects is up and comers ARCAEON who came bursting onto the scene with their debut EP entitled Balance back in 2017. Since this time the band have went through a change in personnel, announcing the arrival of frontman Stuart Sarre (previously of SENTIENCE) in what proved to be a crazy but cherished time for him.

“I remember when Balance was released shortly before my introduction and I had to learn it within a couple of weeks! It was totally worth it and was good fun. I wouldn’t have had it any other way and it’s quite a fond memory of mine now.”

After a string of touring the band sat down to focus on what would become their debut full-length effort Cascadence. “We worked together as much as we could before COVID. We had loads of sessions writing and discovering what kind of sound we wanted. We all have different influences but we all like that progressive metal style with a lot of melody. It’s been a long time but it’s definitely worth the wait,” explains Stuart. “We had a few instances where things didn’t go quite to plan. We went back and forth a lot to get the artwork sorted and the artist who designed the final piece did a great job. It’s kind of a relief to soon have something out with me on it but it’s been a good ride performing the older songs. It was 2019 when I finished recording my vocals!”

The various stages of lockdown has hit the music industry hard and the standard routine of song writing and recording has become a distant memory, leaving some musicians with no option but to work remotely and devise new ways of working through the process. This can in many ways be considered a blessing and a curse. “There were some painstaking, hair pulling moments in some parts of the creation process where some things became a bit long winded and it took longer than we had hoped to resolve but at the same time nothing that is good is ever rushed out of the door so we’re glad in some senses that we took our time to make sure it was exactly how we wanted,” states guitarist Sam.

“We threw everything we had at it and that’s what I enjoyed the most I think. Me and our other guitarist Rhys were doing it all between two different computers and we’d find some things were missing from one and there were some moments where it was frustrating as we couldn’t sit down together and work through it and had to sort it over the internet. In the initial stages we did do some writing sessions over Skype when we were unable to visit each others houses. It dawns on you how incredible the internet is but at the same time it’s also very easy for things to get misplaced and it takes a bit of adjusting. We got there!”

As well as taking a different approach to the writing process ARCAEON also took the opportunity to take their love of video games to the next level and incorporate this into their musical output in the form of a playable rom. “It all sort of happened by accident,” says Eifion. “We’ve always been interested in intertwining our music with our love of video games and we always wanted to do this style of video but the original plan was to do it in more of a Megadrive style. I’d spoken to a few people who had connections in that field and got some quotes for how much it would cost and it was way out of our budget. Sam pointed out he knew of a program where you can make your own Gameboy games. Stuart drafted up a storyline on pen and paper which doesn’t look anything like the final product but it’s definitely influenced by his work, my artistic skills aren’t as good as Stuart‘s! So when we got round to discussing doing a screen recording of it to make the video we thought we might as well make an actual playable game. So by pulling all of our resources and connections together we managed to make it happen. If you get a chance to play the game there is a lot more included in the game than there is featured within the video.”

Cascadence has been a long time in the making and ARCAEON are poised to unleash a bold body of work which encompasses a variety of moods, emotions and styles as the album progresses. “The singles we’ve released thus far are quite on the melodic side but the album features songs which are considerably heavier,” discusses Stuart. “The album is considered as a transitional piece so it kind of goes from heavier to more melodic as it progresses and this is reflected in the artwork going from red to blue. Hopefully there is a bit of something for everyone in there. We tend to be classed as a technical band so people can certainly expect some more technical performances on Cascadence.”

Cascadence is out now via self-release. 

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