BANKS ARCADE // Diving Behind The Scenes Of Banks Arcade’s New EP ‘DEATH 2’ With Joshua O’Donnell

Melbourne heavy metal boy band Banks Arcade embrace the dark side on their brand new EP DEATH 2, embracing innovation and eclectic experimentation across six new tracks.

MORE: COAL CHAMBER: No More Dark Days // NECK DEEP: Rating: 8 Middle Fingers REVIEWS: GREEN DAY: Saviors // CASEY: How To Disappear // NECK DEEP: Neck Deep // BLOOM: Maybe In Another Life // BANKS ARCADE: DEATH 2

Undeniably unique and yet not without some well-timed tried and true metalcore-meets-electronic nods, DEATH 2 rattles at the confines of what it means to be an emerging band in the modern metalcore realms. And with the impending release of the new EP, Banks Arcade vocalist Joshua O’Donnell joins HysteriaMag.com today to take us behind the scenes of this electrifying new release.

MAKING CHANGES:

Probably the coolest thing about the EP musically is Change, which was the newest written song out of all of them. When we recorded this, we recorded it in Byron Bay with Eaven [Dall] from In Hearts Wake. And we, myself and James [Feekes], recorded the track without a metronome, him playing drums and me doing vocals and no other instruments. And then I recorded the bass and the guitar on top of a drum track without a click, which obviously for anyone who’s making this kind of music now will know – it’s pretty much unheard of in our genre now. And we really wanted to do that, we wanted it to have more of a rock feel. When you listen to the song, you can actually hear that the tempo fluctuates throughout it, which was something that we definitely wanted, it felt super authentic. All the parts had to be played right because you can’t edit to a grid. And it was a risk that we took in the studio because, as time passed, we kind of didn’t know like: fuck are we going to spend two days on this and then it just be shit and us have to just go back and do it the normal way?! It was a risk that I’m glad we took and it’s probably my favorite song that we have.

We had a fully completed version that got scrapped and we went back into the studio again to start recording. I think most of the guys would agree that the process on this EP was not necessarily fun and light and enjoyable, which I guess lines up thematically with the EP because it’s none of those things.
[ Joshua O’Donnell, Banks Arcade ]

BEHIND THE CAMERA:

The music videos for DEATH 2 were very thought out and it was a big project. We worked with one of our friends, Jackson [Bentley], and he is pretty much a part of our crew really. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without him in the way that he worked with us on this project because it was a lot of long hours. And Harlan [Allen-Jones], our bass player, actually built the sets and we worked on getting props. We did it all ourselves, between myself and the band and Harlan and Jackson. We recorded More Want, Worship The Internet and Roulette all in one week. In fact, all of the music videos were done in a week, so it was a really hectic process doing that. But I think that we had so much control of all of the little elements of design, especially with Harlan building the sets. He actually builds sets when we’re not on tour, and he really just took the reins on it and was able to bring my ideas to life in such a cool way. I’m really stoked with how that happened. With the music video for Change, for example, we actually had a week’s notice because we changed our release rollout to line up with the tour that we did. And so we actually shot the video for Change in my house and set a bunch of shit on fire in my backyard. A lot of hectic stuff happened when we were shooting the music videos! 

THE LONG ROAD TO DEATH 2:

More Want was the only song on DEATH 2 that was actually written before Future Lovers even came out, so it’s been sitting around for a long time. And Killing Games and Sentimental have also gone through many iterations, we spent so much time making sure that we were happy with the songs on the EP. We had a fully completed version that got scrapped and we went back into the studio again to start recording. I think most of the guys would agree that the process on this EP was not necessarily fun and light and enjoyable, which I guess lines up thematically with the EP because it’s none of those things. It was very frustrating at times and there were moments where I literally just hated it and wanted nothing to do with it, and we had to really, really dig deep to get it to land. I think we’re all happy with where it’s landed, but it was a very, very difficult process. All of the songs went through three, four or five different iterations before they landed where they are now. And a big shout out to Eaven because it was one of those decisions that we were on the fence about: oh, should we just put out these versions of the songs? But we knew we weren’t happy. And so going in with him and just kind of revamping everything really saved the project for us.

DEATH 2 is out Friday 2 February via UNFD.