Album Review: Banks Arcade – Second Place Superstar
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
New Zealand metalcore outfit, Banks Arcade, are all set to issue their second full length album, Second Place Superstar, before the end of the month, four years after the Future Lovers debut and two following the EP, Death 2, which found the four-piece as tour support to King 810 exactly a year ago. Those shows were the Kiwi’s first forays onto British soil, with the summer of 2026 seeing them back in Blighty for a run of shows that cumulated at the 2000 Trees Festival where they shared billing with, among others, Cancer Bats, The Wildhearts and Funeral for a Friend.
Opening with Move, which was played back on last year’s King 810 tour, it introduces the record with an electronic eighties sci-fi vibe, built on a pulsing bass line, courtesy of Harlan Allen-Jones and a huge beatdown, it’s a precursor to what Second Hand Superstar is all about.
Banks Arcade is an example of modern metal searching further afield for inspiration; gone are the days when bands of the Seventies and Eighties would feed into the creative process, now it’s about crossing genres and styles: that’s why, here you’ll be greeted by the alternate/ electronics of Don’t Miss, the pop sensibilities of Severance, and the hip-hop rhythms of Know Me.
Yet those tunes are not without their biting guitars and gut-punch low-end. Yuck uses hip-hop beats and overlays a hefty stomp and crunching guitars, Last Time opens with fragile Oriental pipes, adding layer upon layer of heaviness as drummer, James Feekes, navigates his way around the maze of rhythms needed for this track.
Vocalist Joshua O’Donnell’s range is certainly put through the paces as he moves from sorrowful laments to full-on screams, often multiple times within the same song. His musical combination with guitar partner, Benny Canham, yields heavy riffs and uncompromising brutality on the connected Sweat and 000, while Joshua bleeds emotionally wrought vocals.
That juxtaposition is repeated on Wait, where the opening calm electronics build to a maelstrom of rage and ire. Rockstar – thankfully not a Nic****ack cover – features the lyric from which the album takes its name and feels like a deconstruction of modern metal in which the creative force takes those influential elements that has shaped their craft and fuse them into a new musical creation.
Mirror was aired at Trees in the summer, unveiling a hard-hitting low end and an ethereal, emotionally tortured vocal, and album closer, Have Faith, resists the urge to have one final blast and, instead, maintains the ambience to the end.
Second Hand Superstar is a confident blend of electronics, harsh urban beats, abrasive, discordant guitars and emotional introspection; throw into some grinding and emo-pop and you’ll get something of an idea of what Banks Arcade is about.
They follow in the footsteps of the likes of Architects, Bring Me the Horizon and Northlane, who see hard rock/ heavy metal as merely another arrow in their musical quiver, refusing to be wholly defined by the genre boundaries.
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