Brann Dailor’s trio side project, Arcadea, released an album quite a while ago, today we’re giving a look into the self-titled work, their first release.

For the less informed, Brann Dailor is the drummer for Mastodon, the much-acclaimed sludge and progressive metal band from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Renowned for his drumming skills, Brann drew in a lot of attention when announcing his collaboration with colleagues Core Atoms (guitarist and keyboardist) and Raheem Amlani (also guitar and keyboards), both from Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, for his new side project.

In order to give some thought about the record, we must clarify what Arcadea is. According to their Bandcamp page, they define themselves as a Synth-laden progressive heavy psych electric band, and what a big and confusing description that is. For simplification, I will refer to them as simply progressive electric psychedelic band. The reason why I lean heavily on these 3 is because their record strongly resembles these 3 styles.

The album, recorded at Orange Peel Studio and mastered by Colin Leonard, renowned by having worked with some pretty big music artists, and also Brann’s own Mastodon, is a very unique record. It’s a little bit hard to digest and not everyone will like it. The fusion between progressive rock, electronic music and psychedelic rock feel, all blend really well together, but that doesn’t change the fact that the album is complex and hard to listen to. People who really enjoy to grasp new music by spending countless hours getting the tune in their heads and enjoy this complexity, should have a good time with this track list, but other than that, you might find the album is out of your league.

After having been a Mastodon follower for quite a while, I’m satisfied for Brann and his side project. Shortly after the Youtube video teaser upload I got really excited for having new Brann Dailor material. Reason being because I’m a drummer and Brann can be an excellent teacher, more specifically in the way that one can listen to some of his drumming and play along. His drumming is technically developed and that really makes him outstand when drumming for Mastodon. His beats are great to learn, especially when you’re trying to solo learn new beats. The biggest reason for my content on this project is because I knew I was going to get new material to listen to, but most of all, I was going to have new drumming to learn.

The drumming in this record is very similar to that of Mastodon’s The Hunter or Once More Round The Sun.

In regards to the actual album, after having already clarified it’s complex and not for everyone, I can get into a more critique side of things. Brann’s drumming is on point, and most of the other instrumentals sound good, however, the chords seem a bit too repetitive between the different tracks and that means the band didn’t properly invest time into recording more diverse songs, which is a negative. The project sounds really out of the box and it’s good at that, but it’s tackling a “genre” if we can call it that, which is pretty hard to digest. That’s not to discredit the uniqueness of the record, which at that, is very strong.

It’s very rewarding to listen to Brann’s vocals. Brann started singing in earlier Mastodon’s albums, however for the longest time, his voice was untrained and not too strong. As time went by, Brann poured hard work and more practice into this, which allowed him to reach a level where he can sing more freely, as well as being able to sing a bit more easily while he plays the drums. This effort allowed him to not only get a progressively bigger singing role in Mastodon, taking a big percentage of the vocals in their latest album, but, now, also for Arcadea. Brann’s voice has come a long way and I’m really excited to hear which ever record he sings on next.

While Brann seems like the head of the band, or at least, the way into publicity and attention, I do not discredit the other musicians, whose work and sound are both very appreciated. I’m not sure whether A new album or EP has been announced to be in the works, but if we do get new material, I think I will be really excited to see how the project evolves and if their new sound continues as unique and out of the box as their first album was!

Despite the complex, odd, but cool sounding new style fusion tracks, Arcadea is a good album that is creating something new and a new base line for this sort of sounding tunes.

It’s pretty hard to evaluate an album or song within a 0-10 model, but if I had to do a rough evaluation, I’d give Arcadea’s self-titled album a 7.5/10.