Arrival Of Autumn
Kingdom Undone
280 miles north of Edmonton on the highway to Alaska, you’ll find Grande Prairie, Alberta. Snow covers the ground of this small town for nearly seven months out of the year, and bear attacks aren’t uncommon. Arrival of Autumn came to life in this place. The quintet—Jamison Friesen [vocals], Ryan Sorensen [guitar], Brendan Anderson [guitar], Ty Fox [drums], and Liam Frith [bass]—absorb the icy emotion of their surroundings in a hard-hitting hybrid of heavy metal proficiency, metalcore intensity, and skyscraping melodic sensibility. After posting up millions of streams and building a devout fan base, the group channel this energy on their second full-length offering, Kingdom Undone [Nuclear Blast].
“The cold gets people fired up, irritable, and angry, so that’s where a lot of what we do comes from lyrically,” Ty observes. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, and it’s probably a big reason why we make music.”
Maintaining lifelong bonds, Jamison and Brendan grew up together, while Ty entered the fold in high school. They listened to everyone from Metallica and Dream Theater to Between The Buried And Me, Bullet For My Valentine, and Opeth whose lyrics even inspired the name “Arrival of Autumn.” The guys impacted heavy music with Harbinger in 2019, touring with the likes of In Flames and stirring up buzz in the process. During 2022, they linked up with producer Mark Lewis [Whitechapel, Black Dahlia Murder] to record what would become Kingdom Undone.
“We’ve grown both sides of our sound,” notes Ty. “The slower songs are heavier, and the faster songs are more elaborate. We’ve fleshed everything out. The melodies are bigger. There’s more intent. We ultimately trimmed a lot of the fat, and we reached the next level.”
The band bulldoze the way for Kingdom Undone with the single “Ghosts.” On the track, a pummeling riff twists and turns around a thick beat as guttural verses give way to a haunting and hypnotic refrain confronting “genocidal hate.”
“Canada has a very big indigenous population,” he goes on. “Recently, they’ve found the unmarked graves of native children all around the country. When the Catholics came over, they tried to assimilate the natives and make them Catholic. They didn’t show much regard for human life, so they put them in the ground when they died and didn’t mark the graves. They were abused and beaten. The song straight up addresses the church’s hand in it.”
Incendiary fretwork blazes throughout “Scars.” Maintaining this momentum, the trudging rhythm collides with a hammering hook, “Why don’t you show your scars?”
Ty adds, “It’s about showing yourself, exposing yourselves, and being yourself.”
“One More Day” gallops towards a cathartic chorus with a reminder to keep fighting in the face of adversity. “It’s heavy,” he says. “You’re at the end of the rope, and you’re working a shitty job with people you hate. Things aren’t getting better, but the message is to hang on for one more day.”
Then, there’s “Bury Me.” On the latter, a searing solo ruptures the guillotine-sharp groove in the space between another chantable crescendo and searing scream. Meanwhile, Kingdom Undone culminates on a final blast of uncontainable emotion.
In the end, Arrival of Autumn arrive with an undeniable vision of their own.
“When you listen to this, I hope you feel refreshed,” Ty leaves off. “There are a lot of layers to it. We elaborated on what we love about the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal and built our own sound.”
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Tracklist |
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1 - Scars 2 - Your Fiction 3 - Trust 4 - Ghosts 5 - Hell Comes Home 6 - One More Day 7 - Liminal 8 - Burn 9 - Who The Masters Serve 10 - Bury Me 11 - Hallowed |