Arcadea – “The Exodus of Gravity”
Released: August 22, 2025 | Relapse Records
Arcadea Returns from the Cosmic Void with “The Exodus of Gravity”
Eight years is an eternity in music. When Arcadea released their self-titled debut in 2017, the synth-forward prog experiment featuring Mastodon’s Brann Dailor felt like a curious detour—interesting, labyrinthine, but perhaps too experimental for its own good. The project seemingly vanished into the cosmos it was exploring. Now, in 2025, Arcadea returns with “The Exodus of Gravity,” and the wait proves worthwhile. This is synth-prog that finally knows what it wants to be: danceable, focused, and emotionally resonant while maintaining the ambitious scope that defined the debut.
The revamped trio—Dailor on drums and now full lead vocals, founding member Core Atoms on synths and everything else, plus new addition João Nogueira (Mastodon’s touring keyboardist) on additional synths—has stripped away the maze-like complexity in favor of something more immediate. Where the debut meandered through prog corridors, “The Exodus of Gravity” barrels forward with infectious grooves and actual hooks. This isn’t dumbing down; it’s honing the blade.
Conceptually, the album picks up five billion years in the future on New Arcadea, a planet where Andromeda has merged with the Milky Way and gravity itself is failing. In this post-human landscape, only machines remain—until mysterious spores ignite a new form of consciousness, bringing empathy and love back into existence through artificial life. It’s ambitious sci-fi storytelling that could easily collapse under its own weight, but Atoms’ narrative provides genuine emotional stakes rather than mere window dressing.
Musically, “The Exodus of Gravity” succeeds by embracing contradiction. Opening track “Dark Star” establishes the album’s heavier foundation before the title track sharpens the collision between jagged synth sequences and Dailor’s aggressive drumming. But it’s “Fuzzy Planet”—the effervescent lead single—where everything clicks. Here, Arcadea sounds less like Mastodon with keyboards and more like a cosmic funk band that happens to have one of metal’s greatest drummers. The track pulses with Gary Numan-style new wave energy while maintaining enough prog complexity to satisfy genre purists.
“Lake of Rust” provides the album’s volcanic fury, with Dailor’s vocals growing operatic and metallic over stabbing synth patterns. The track chronicles the hero’s journey across lava lakes toward a mysterious galactic lighthouse, and the music matches that apocalyptic scale. Meanwhile, “Gilded Eye” demonstrates the trio’s ability to shift moods, offering stuttering space prog that builds gradually rather than exploding immediately.
Dailor’s full embrace of lead vocal duties proves both the album’s greatest strength and occasional weakness. His voice, which shone on Mastodon’s “Oblivion,” carries emotional weight throughout but sometimes lacks the dynamic range needed for softer passages. He compensates with layered harmonies and vocoders, creating a distinctly robotic quality that fits the concept perfectly. When he leans into the aggression, as on the closing “Planet Pounder,” his performance feels utterly natural.
The production, handled by the band and engineered by Tom Tapley at Mastodon’s Ember City practice facility, gives each element breathing room despite the dense layering. Atoms deploys his arsenal of vintage gear—mellotrons, Hammond organs, theremins, vocoders, Taurus pedals—with surgical precision rather than throwing everything at the wall. The result feels simultaneously retro-futuristic and thoroughly modern.
Perhaps the album’s smartest move is its commitment to groove. Tracks like “2 Shells” and “The Hand That Holds the Milky Way” prioritize movement over technical showboating. This is prog rock you can actually dance to, where the complexity serves the song rather than the other way around. That funk foundation—rooted in Dailor and Atoms’ thirty-year friendship dating back to their band Gaylord—gives “The Exodus of Gravity” an accessibility that never feels like compromise.
The album does stumble occasionally. Some tracks feel like sketches that could benefit from another iteration or two of their core ideas. “Starry Messenger” drifts into ambient territory before crashing back into heavier sections in ways that feel slightly disjointed. And at fifty minutes across twelve tracks, a bit of fat could be trimmed without losing the conceptual narrative.
Yet these are minor quibbles in an album that successfully balances multiple identities. “The Exodus of Gravity” works as a straight-ahead synth-rock record, as a prog concept album, and as a dancefloor experience—sometimes all at once. It’s weird without being alienating, complex without being exhausting, emotional without being maudlin.
Most impressively, Arcadea has created something that stands apart from Dailor’s main gig. This isn’t Mastodon with keyboards; it’s a distinct entity with its own personality and purpose. The album ends on a note of optimism—life returning, consciousness emerging, hope flickering in the darkness—that feels earned rather than tacked on.
In a musical landscape often dominated by cynicism and nostalgia, “The Exodus of Gravity” offers something rarer: futuristic optimism wrapped in cosmic funk and progressive ambition. It’s proof that eight years away can sharpen rather than dull creative vision. Welcome back, Arcadea. The future sounds pretty good from here.
Rating: 8.5/10
Essential listening for fans of: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Primus, The Mars Volta, The Orphaned Bee
Available now via Relapse Records.
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