Banks Arcade Unleash New Album ‘SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR’

New Zealand heavy hitters Banks Arcade unleash their new album SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR, a bold and emotionally charged statement from a band that has never been interested in fitting neatly into one genre. Blurring the boundaries between modern metal, alternative electronic music and hip hop, the record captures Banks Arcade at their most ambitious, unpredictable and personal yet. Built on contrast, SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR moves effortlessly between crushing heaviness, infectious melodies, electronic experimentation and moments of striking vulnerability. Rather than settling into a single sound, Banks Arcade use the album to push their identity further, bringing together the raw physicality of metal with the maximalist energy of contemporary alternative music. It is an approach deeply rooted in the band’s history, drawing inspiration from underground electronic artists, modern hip hop and classic metalcore while constantly searching for something unmistakably their own.

That sense of reinvention has defined Banks Arcade from the beginning. Forged through the partnership of two best friends whose backgrounds stretch from jazz degrees to professional MMA fighting, the band emerged from New Zealand through constant relocation, struggle and an uncompromising drive to create something different. Those experiences became the foundation for a musical identity built around evolution rather than convention. With SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR, Banks Arcade continue exactly what has driven them from the start: dismantling expectations of what a modern heavy band should sound like. Heavy without being confined by heaviness, melodic without sacrificing intensity and experimental without losing its emotional core, the album brings together the many sides of Banks Arcade into their most expansive statement yet. Joshua O’Donnell talks to Rob Lyon about the album.

Congratulation on your second album, fantastic job, the band has come back in a big way.
Oh, thank you so much, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

I remember when you were supporting The Plot In You and you said, “Forget everything you know, forget everything you heard.” I guess that feels like the case for this new album?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it’s a new version of the band, and it’s very different to what we’ve done in the past, but I think that it’s the best… it’s the best version so far.

What was the catalyst for change, to totally change and do something even bolder and different?
I think in some regards, we still kept a lot of the same creative inspiration and the same energy that we’ve always had, but we just refined it more. I think the music itself still very much has our identity. I don’t read in too much to why we do one thing or the other. Creatively, it just occurs to you, and it comes to you in a way that you can’t control. This just happened to be a moment where things aligned more, we were a bit more mature, we had more experience writing, and we were able to make a product that we like more than the stuff before it.

Does a lot of that also comes with experience and just getting even better at what you do as songwriters and musicians?
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Is it true what they say, that the second album is generally the hardest?
Hmm, well, I guess for us… even though this is our second album, we kind of did the two EP’s. That was basically an album, and that’s what we released after our first album and so, I guess that was a very hard period. I think that this is the most seamless and easy process for writing anything that we’ve ever done, in terms of the music. We’ve faced a lot of adversity in other areas, as a band and as individuals, but the actual music itself… that was magic, pretty much. It just came out, and it wasn’t hard at all.

Is that because there were no expectations or pressure at all?
Yeah, maybe. I think we were just in a very inspired place, and there was a lot going on that was making me feel different about writing. We wrote a lot of it while we were on tour. We weren’t really necessarily trying to be like, “We’re writing an album right now.” We had these different blocks of writing stuff that ended up coming together on the album, and some of it was very intentional, and some of it, like the best parts, just came when we went back to writing music for fun. We were getting hyped on the actual songs, and then we’re like, oh, we might actually have an album coming together here. I think that’s always the best way.

Was this approach any different to what you did with the EPs or in the earlier days when you were starting out?
It was different in some regards, because we were on the road for a lot of it, but I think it was still the same core of how we’ve always written music.

Is it harder writing on the road, not having that space or headspace to sit down and work out what you’re going to write about, or being in the right frame of mind?
I think when you think about “hard” for creative things… what’s hard is when you don’t have ideas, when you don’t have something to say, when you can’t express it. There have been plenty of times where you can go into the fanciest studio with all the gear and everything you need to express yourself, and if you don’t have any ideas, then you can sit there and bang your head against a wall for hours, and that’s hard. So yes, there’s limitations, but if you’re inspired and you’re creative, you can write an album now, all you need is a laptop. You can program all the guitars and drums to get your ideas in there. You can record voice notes on your phone. We had voice notes that ended up being used as production elements on the final products. So I think there is now an access to, if you have a laptop and a pair of headphones, you really can write. The thing that makes something hard or easy is just how inspired you are. So although there were limitations, it actually made it easier in this case, because we were very inspired, and we were very excited about what was happening, and that flowed into the music.

Did it surprise you just how easy it was, and how quickly things came together?
Yeah, I think so. I guess there were only a few songs that really came out of that specific phase when we were on tour, but because we did write the album across all of these different blocks it really felt different. I’ve typically written from a place of adversity, and almost held, potentially, a limiting belief that I needed to be struggling, and that that meant I was doing good work if I was struggling. In this project, a lot of it, I actually just felt like I was making art that meant something to me, and having a good time doing it, and doing it with people that I really care about and that felt different. It felt good.

Is that the sort of thing you want to replicate next time around, when you start thinking about what might be next? Bottle it up and unleash it again?
Without getting too airy‑fairy, I think my intention is to be able to take each individual session as it comes, both in music and in life, because I think that you never really have the same thing happen twice. You’re never going to have a moment where I’m in my state of life, and James is in his state of life, and Benny’s in his state of life, and then we make something, and we’re able to perceive it in that way. So I think, the next time we do it, it could feel absolutely horrible, but we could still make something amazing, and it could be like we’re pulling teeth to get it out, and it’s horrible, but then we could go through that process and say, well, maybe that’s the record that blows us up. What I’ve learned is that doesn’t necessarily mean we should take that and run with it, and be like, well, we’ve got to have a horrible time because that’s what made us successful. I think each individual project you embark on creatively will be different, and it’s more about not getting in the way of yourself. So what I hope I can do next time is just remain present, and allow whatever comes out to come out.

Was it really satisfying this time, seeing the songs come together from those original ideas, especially given how excited you were?
Sometimes you get to the end of the process, and then you hear the final masters, and you’re almost like, that was a bit anticlimactic, because you’ve heard the songs thousands of times at this point. But I was fizzing on the day that I got the first masters, which was about a year and a couple of months ago, and I still feel that same way today. Like, I’m still… I love the album as just a listener, and I love listening to it. So I think that’s a special thing that I… I don’t really know… I never really knew if I was going to achieve that.

What was your reaction when you played the album start to end, with headphones on or in the car, for the very first time?
The first time that we actually got it, I was in the shower and I remember I just got my laptop, I just set it up, and I just played the whole thing. I just stood in the shower and listened to it off my laptop speakers. I mean, at this point, like I said, I’d heard it so many times, but hearing the final mix and master, I mean, I think in the past we hadn’t really landed on a combination of our production, our styles and someone’s mixing and mastering. We worked with Sammy from Ocean Grove, and I think it was almost like our music just plugged into his system and just worked. There wasn’t much to do. His sound gelled with ours, and it’s the first time that I felt that excitement of hearing an elevation from what we had done, and then hearing it be represented in the way that I imagined it in my head.

The song Rockstar almost feels like the anthem for Banks Arcade now. Is that how you see it?
I don’t really know, to be honest. I’m kind of interested to see how… once we go out and we start playing these songs. We played some of the songs in Europe when we were over there, and we’ve obviously played a lot of it when it was unreleased. So it’s going to be interesting to see what people really gravitate towards, but yeah, I mean, that one was kind of fun to play live before it even came out, so I’m interested to see how it translates to people who have already heard it.

Going on tour with From Ashes to New, that must be exciting, road‑testing these songs and seeing which ones hit the mark with fans?
Yeah, that’ll be brilliant. So yeah, we’ll be up in Adelaide in October, and in Brisbane as well, so we won’t be overlooking them.

Beyond that tour run, what’s next for you guys? A long stint touring overseas?
So we’ve typically done that, we’ve pushed really hard to just go straight into touring. I think this time we’ve realised that a big gap for us has just been the way that we connect with our existing community, the way that we create content. We’re booking up a lot of stuff from mid into late next year for overseas touring. Our headline runs and stuff are getting organised for the album. We’ve got a few spots around Australia and New Zealand right after the album drops, but we’re really going to put a focus on pushing the content and building more community around the album, and then hitting the road hard next year. At the moment, what we’ve found is you can go and tour really hard, but it’s not necessarily like it used to be. You’re not just going to go out there… you need to be in people’s faces all the time.

There is a very real thing of being able to sustain touring as a small band financially, and then still be able to create enough content and have the money to do that. For us, we’re realising the importance of having that presence more on social media, and then letting that flow into the touring. Because we know that when we play these shows, we connect with people. Then I kind of got this feeling that we had these walls up, where it’s almost like you see all these people at the show, they lose their minds, it’s crazy, and then we’re not creating this community and this ecosphere around it. We’ve put one hundred percent focus on the music and on the live show, but to elevate that, we really need to focus more on connecting with these people that connect with the music, and building that community, which is our intention.

Interview By Rob Lyon

SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR is out now, STEAM/ PURCAHSE HERE…

TOURING

DESTROY ALL LINES PRESENTS

FROM ASHES TO NEW
with special guests
BANKS ARCADE.

Friday 9 October – Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW

Sunday 11 October – 170 Russell, Melbourne, VIC

Tuesday 13 October – Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide, SA

Thursday 15 October – The Triffid, Brisbane, QLD

TICKETS ON SALE NOW FROM DESTROY ALL LINES