.Band : In Arkadia
Album title : Wasteland Chronicles
Label : Twilight Vertrieb
Distributor : Bertus
Release date : 01/10/2010
Release : CD

France isn’t really the top notch country when it comes to metal. However, there are some excellent metal bands who have found their origin in this fine country, quality is hard to be found most of the time. Fortunately, this is very likely to change. In Arkadia might just do the trick and lead their country to that higher level they’ve always wanted to achieve since they’ve begun creating their thrashed death metal riffs in 2005. Now, the band is back with their brand new album Wasteland Chronicles, which is already their third wonder of a child. And because it’s their good right, In Arkadia decided to have some special guests featured on the album: Kai Hansen and Dirk Schlächter from Gamma Ray, and Julien Truchan from Benighted.

Songs like "Rising Agression", "Shock Doctrine" and "Doomed To Murder" are all wonderfully heavy. These songs contain all that is required to become a successful metal band: cutting-edge guitar riffs, impressively aggressive and convincing vocals and killer melodies. Despite all these positive qualities, I have to admit that this album shares the same pitfall which most French bands seem to have: there’s no variation and no extra creativity. The material In Arkadia delivers is of course some excellent work, but I don’t recognize a very own sound. Everything has already been done before and this makes it not catchy at all. This band has done a great job with Wasteland Chronicles, but I truly hope that next time, they’ll add some more experimental creativity to their work.

66/100

Tim Tronckoe.