The new EP by Volcandra has me excited because I get to talk about one of my favorite things: videogames. When I first listened to Border World, I thought it was alright. I was unfamiliar with the name but I learned they are a melodic black metal band from Louisville Kentucky and had a fairly well received debut album and a couple of singles. As I listened to the EP more, I found that it got better after each listen.
While I was reading the lyrics, I slowly started realizing that some of the events being described were sounding familiar and then I realized they were describing the game Half-Life, with blatant references to characters and scenes in the game. Even the track’s title “Resonance Cascade” is the official name of the explosion that causes the game’s events. After realizing this I went back to the previous track “Talon IV” and found that the title of that song was a reference to a planet of the same name in the 2002 GameCube game Metroid Prime. It wasn’t hard to figure out the rest of the tracks’ game influences. Track 3 “Colossi” is about the 2005 Team Ico game Shadow of the Colossus and track 4 “Guardian” is about another Team Ico game called The Last Guardian.
Detouring slightly to the instrumentation of the songs, it’s very good. It’s pretty basic melodic black metal, but it’s really fun and easy to headbang to. The band feel like they’re veterans of the genre when they’ve only been around for a few years. They’ve got good melodies and the talent to play them well. I think where the band shines however are the lyrics. As mentioned previously each track represents a video game, and the lyrics follows certain events in said games. The band have been able to take these events from the games and create an atmospheric song around it. The lyrics create an incredible visual of the games without even playing them. They even made the xen levels from Half-Life sound like fun (which are notoriously bad). The lyrics contain very blatant references to characters and events in each game, for example the second track “Resonance Cascade” talks about Black Mesa and the Lambda Lab from Half-Life. There are also more subtle references like in the first track “Talon IV” which is about Metroid Prime. The lyrics at the end of the track reference the character Dark Samus by saying “Emerging from the wreckage of defeat Crawls forth a wretched doppelgänger”
I do feel that there are a couple of minor flaws though. The first track “Talon IV” ends so abruptly that it is almost mid-word, and it’s kind of disorienting. Also, I think the mixing is a little bit weird. I don’t think the audio levels are balanced quite right. It ends up making the instruments blend together a little bit.
Volcandra are the next big thing, or at least they’re going to be big in the little niche they’ve populated. There are a lot of artists and bands out there making metal revolving around video games, but Volcandra are the first to actually make good music with that theme. Border World is an EP I would recommend to anyone who likes melodic black metal and video games. The lyrics they write create such an incredible visual with great easter eggs and references, and it just so happens to be incredible music as well. I will definitely be revisiting this one in the future, and looking out for any future releases from Volcandra.
(7.5/10 Dexter Grahame)
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