Unadulterated (Roman Candle)
The first true album by the American band Roman Candle, Unadulterated, doesn't beat around the bush: rooted in modern emo, where the band blends metalcore and screamo, Roman Candle's music feels like an emotional tidal wave that is nearly impossible to contain.
Following the example of the poignant lyrics in most of the tracks (“The lump in my throat hasn’t gone away since I was five. (...) If I didn’t do anything, why do I feel so guilty? Mom, I don’t want to die.” as heard in “Can We Watch Something Happy?”), the band decided to adopt a raw, unsettling, no-frills aesthetic, driven by a thunderous Piper Ferrari, who told New Noise Magazine that she had “sought to capture that same psychological tension found in horror movies (...) like The Blair Witch Project.” It’s a successful gamble, judging by the unsettling energy that radiates from the album as a whole, a blend of personal trauma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, all carried by the alternation between screamo and clean vocals (“Bite harder than you bleed”), and at times spoken word (“For once my hands are still”).
The album, produced entirely by Jonas Vece, the guitarist of the Las Vegas band, in his studio in Boulder City, is a powerful rebuke directed both at the modern music scene, deemed too polished, and at the music industry, which the band views with a sharp eye following a period of burnout, as Roman Candle was very quickly catapulted from the anonymity of the Vegas underground to worldwide tours, particularly following viral videos. The provocatively titled track, “This Band Has Led Me To Places I Wouldn’t Go With A Gun,” takes a cynical and weary look at the music industry’s exploitation, the pretense of success, and the bitter pills the band has had to swallow.
Following their highly acclaimed debut EP, Discount Fireworks (2022), it goes without saying that this debut LP marks a triumphant return for the band, which has created a cathartic work brimming with incredible energy, a true outlet that will undoubtedly restore the prestige of a genre that is itself sometimes on the verge of exhaustion and stands to benefit from rediscovering its original rage, as heard on this surprising album, Unadulterated.”
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