Roman Candle - Unadulterated
- Samuel Stevens
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
There’s a certain risk in naming your debut Unadulterated. It implies total honesty, no filter, no polish—and more importantly, no safety net. On their first full-length, Roman Candle don’t just accept that challenge—they lean into it until it becomes the album’s defining tension.
Set for release on April 24, 2026, via Sumerian Records, Unadulterated is less a collection of songs and more a psychological autopsy. Self-produced by guitarist Jonas Vece in Boulder City, the record carries a rawness that feels intentional rather than undercooked. You can hear the seams—but that’s the whole point.
From the opening moments of “Blasphemous Act,” the band establishes a sonic identity rooted in discomfort. There’s a push-and-pull between restraint and chaos, as if the track is constantly threatening to collapse under the weight of its own themes—religious guilt, intrusive thoughts, and moral panic. That unease becomes a recurring language across the album as a whole.
Then comes the provocatively titled “This Band Has Led Me To Places I Wouldn't Go With A Gun,” which reads like a bitter thesis on industry exploitation. It’s jagged, self-aware, and cutting in a way that feels earned rather than performative. Roman Candle aren’t just venting—they’re dissecting the machine they’re now a part of.
What makes Unadulterated compelling is its refusal to sit still. Tracks like “Can We Watch Something Happy?” (a title that feels intentionally off-kilter) and “Nothing Is Original” flirt with a kind of nihilistic humour, while “Lady Lazarus” and “Bite Harder Than You Bleed” dig into survival and resilience with teeth fully bared. There’s a literary weight to these songs—references that feel less like decoration and more like coping mechanisms.
Midway through the record, the track “I Can’t Stop Winning” stands out as one of the album’s most biting moments. It’s not a victory lap—it’s a critique of the hollow metrics we use to define success. The instrumentation mirrors that contradiction: triumphant on the surface, fraying underneath.
The back half of the record leans further inward. The pair of tracks, “My Silence Costs More Than You Can Afford” and “On Second Thought, Maybe Gaslighting Is Real,” explores internal conflict with an almost claustrophobic intensity to them. These aren’t songs that are meant to resolve—they linger, looping thoughts in a way that feels true to the experiences that they’re capturing.
By the time “For Once My Hands Are Still” arrives, there’s a rare moment of stillness—though even that feels fragile, like it could shatter at literally any second. However, the closing track, “How To Be Considered When You're Not In The Room,” is perhaps the album’s most devastating statement. It’s about absence, erasure, and the quiet desperation of wanting to matter in spaces that have already decided you don’t.
Sonically, Unadulterated lives in the tension between control and collapse. The production—handled entirely by Vece—avoids over-polishing, allowing imperfections to become part of the emotional texture. Guitars scrape and swell unpredictably, vocals often sound like they’re being dragged out rather than performed, and the overall mix prioritizes feeling over clarity.
That approach won’t work for everyone. At times, the album can feel overwhelming, even exhausting. But that’s also in its strength. Roman Candle aren’t interested in accessibility—they’re interested in pure, total honesty, even when it’s messy, uncomfortable, or difficult to sit with.
For a debut, Unadulterated is remarkably self-assured in its vision. It doesn’t try to be everything—it just tries to be real. And in doing so, it carves out a space that feels distinctly its own: unfiltered, unresolved, and impossible to ignore.
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