Night Negatives, the new single from Queensland’s Arcade Stories, flits between melody and cacophony with unmatched finesse.
Arcade Stories have delivered their heaviest effort yet in the form of Night Negatives, a supernatural single that marks the Queensland band’s first release of 2024.
The track opens with a spacey and atmospheric feel, with whirring synths setting the stage for a masterclass in blistering nu-metal.
From there, Arcade Stories deliver the bread and butter of quintessential metal, from the catharsis of screeching vocals to the thunderous percussion, purpose built for a noisy commute with the windows up.
Hardcore metal fans will understand the exaltation that the genre can bring, and Arcade Stories deliver this in spades, with clashing instrumentation and blissfully distorted guitars.
While this frenetic grange energy — the kind you might hear blasting from the speakers of a nearby garage — remains a throughline across Night Negatives, Arcade Stories also possess an ear for more melodic moments.
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Later, the vocals flit towards a pop-punkish sneer, as the production dials down and forefronts the song’s knack for harmony. Here, the band sings atop a trap-like beat, adopting a cadence reminiscent of a hip-hop verse.
Vocoder vocals and bouncy rhythms bring Night Negatives to a new arena, but it isn’t long before they return to alt-rock revelry.
For a lesser band, drawing upon such an eclectic palette of sounds might’ve proved dizzying, but Arcade Stories deploy these sounds sporadically and with finesse.
At any given moment, the single possesses a restless urge to defy categorisation, though it’s clear Arcade Stories are at home in blistering rock.
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Through it all, it’s the commanding vocals that pull focus, gloriously shouty and accompanied by a cacophony of instrumentation that proves altogether enrapturing.
Lyrically, the song muses on the idea of being enthralled by someone who “elevate[s] me,” possessing a quality so intoxicating they’re able to “lead the way and I will follow.”
Speaking of his shift towards heavier sounds in a 2022 interview with Happy Mag, Arcade Stories frontman Adam Djense said he “thought it was time to push forward with heavier guitars and vocals because I’ve always really enjoyed that style of music.”
Night Negatives is the first taste of music from the band since their 2023 debut EP, High Score Diploma. The new single is the first of many new releases set to arrive throughout 2024.
In the meantime, listen to Arcade Stories’ latest track Night Negatives below.
