Roman Candle “Unadulterated” Review: Hardcore That Won’t Let You Breathe

Roman Candle’s debut album “Unadulterated” delivers an intense hardcore/screamo experience, blending visceral vocals, grinding riffs, and haunting religious imagery into an unrelenting and emotionally raw journey.

A record that grabs first, explains later

Some albums politely introduce themselves. Roman Candle don’t. Unadulterated starts like it’s already halfway through a crisis, and you just opened the wrong door.

I’m not even saying that as a compliment in the usual “so intense!” way. I mean it literally feels like the band’s goal is to deny you comfort—and then act confused when you ask for it.

“Blasphemous Act” opens with a cello… and a threat

The first real move is “Blasphemous Act”, and it’s not riffs—it’s this ominous cello that sits in your ears like cold metal. It sets up the album’s whole scam immediately: religious imagery, satanic tilt, purgatory vibes. Not as decoration. More like an atmosphere trap.

The way it’s framed, it doesn’t feel like “spooky aesthetic.” It feels like being pushed into a suffocating holding cell where the only instruction is: follow the band deeper.

And yeah, I bought it instantly.

When the riffs arrive, Piper Ferrari goes for blood

Once the guitars finally come cascading in, the song flips from dread to impact. Piper Ferrari’s vocals don’t just “enter”—they attack. The delivery is visceral in that particular way where you can tell the intention isn’t to sound pretty or even controlled. It’s closer to: leave a mark.

It’s chaotic, but it’s the kind of chaos with aim. The whole thing hits like a beautifully ugly sensory overload—grinding sound, pressure, no space to recover.

By the time the track closes, Piper bellows:

“run for your life!” — Piper Ferrari

It lands less like a lyric and more like a command. And honestly, you should probably listen to her. Unadulterated is enjoyable, but it also clearly wants to unsettle you. It wants you slightly cornered. It doesn’t mind if you feel uncomfortable as long as you keep listening.

Half an hour where “peace” is not on the menu

After that opener, the album gives you about half an hour of hardcore/screamo that keeps swerving—sometimes mid-swing. The band around Piper is doing a lot of heavy lifting here:

• Jonas Vece on guitar
• Alex Dupis on bass
• Sergio Lopez on drums

And it matters, because the record isn’t “vocal-forward” in the lazy way. The instrumentation is constantly tightening the room around you. Grinding riffs, thunderous drums, and these jarring guitar licks that pop up just to keep you uneasy—like the album doesn’t trust you not to relax for five seconds.

A reasonable listener could argue the relentlessness is the point. I’d go further: I think Roman Candle are suspicious of calm, like calm would dilute the message. There’s basically no moment of peace in their world, and they make that feel intentional instead of accidental.

This isn’t horror-movie religion—this is personal damage wearing church clothes

The album plays with religious overtones—purgatory, blasphemy, all that—yet the core doesn’t feel mythic. It feels human in the worst way: violence, abuse, memories that don’t behave. Piper’s writing and performance come across as drawn from lived experience, not genre lore.

And that’s where Unadulterated gets tricky: it uses religious language like stage lighting, but it never lets that become a fantasy. The realism keeps bleeding through. The effect is that the “satanic/religious tones” don’t feel like a costume; they feel like a way of making trauma sound larger than life without making it less real.

I’m not 100% sure I’m interpreting every symbol “correctly,” and honestly I don’t think the album cares if I do. The feelings arrive whether the metaphors land or not.

Specific songs act like coping mechanisms… with teeth

The record keeps returning to this idea: pain as material, not as a lesson. There are moments where it sounds like Piper is staring directly at the chaos that comes with turning personal wreckage into art—like she’s daring herself not to blink.

Then you get titles like “Can We Watch Something Happy?” and it hits differently than the usual “sad person asks for joy” trope. Here it sounds like a request made through clenched teeth. Not cute. Not ironic. More like: please give me one neutral minute before my brain does the thing again.

I can see how that track—just based on the emotional function it’s aiming for—could be used as a pressure valve for:

• anger
• anxiety
• depression
• grief

Not because it soothes you. Because it matches you. It says, “Yeah, this is what it feels like,” and sometimes that’s the closest thing to relief you’re getting.

“My Silence Costs More Than You Can Afford” doesn’t stop hitting

As the album pushes toward tracks like “My Silence Costs More Than You Can Afford,” the band’s approach gets brutally simple: keep going until the listener feels bludgeoned and disoriented.

That might sound like a critique, but it’s also the appeal. The song has that hardcore logic where restraint would feel dishonest. It’s built to overwhelm. And it does.

Still—here’s where I’ll admit the part that briefly lost me: there are moments where the record leans so hard into intensity that it flattens the dynamics. Not for long, but enough that I caught myself waiting for a slightly sharper left turn—a break, a fake-out, anything. Instead it sometimes chooses the straight-line sprint. Effective, yes. But it isn’t always as surprising as it thinks it is.

The album is “therapeutic” in the weirdest possible way

Calling something like Unadulterated “therapeutic” sounds ridiculous on paper, because it’s so aggressive and unnerving. But that’s the contradiction the album thrives on: the same force that rattles your skull also organizes your feelings.

It’s blunt. It’s direct. It’s unapologetically in your face. It rattles your body the way a storm does—loud, dumb, uncontrollable—and then afterward you realize your nervous system finally picked one clear emotion and rode it out.

If the band’s whole thesis is contained in the title Unadulterated, I buy it. This music doesn’t feel diluted for accessibility. It feels like they chose clarity by choosing extremity.

A DIY heart with a sharper melodic focus

This album comes after the band’s earlier EP “Discount Fireworks,” and the important thing is: they haven’t ditched the DIY screamo ethos. That spirit is still in the bones—rawness, immediacy, the sense that the band would rather be honest than impressive.

But they’ve clearly found more focus on melodies, and they’ve doubled down on intensity without letting it turn into mush. The songs feel more deliberate in how they escalate, and the melodic choices show up like bruises under the noise—proof there’s craft under the damage.

I’ll be honest: my first impression was that the melodies were going to soften the impact. On second listen, I realized they do the opposite. They make the heavy parts feel heavier because the contrast is more human. Pure brutality is one-note. A jagged melody in the middle of it feels like a nerve being touched.

And that’s what this album keeps doing: touching the nerve, then pressing harder.

Debut energy, fully-formed confidence

Debut albums often sound like a band introducing themselves—like they’re still explaining what they want to be. Unadulterated doesn’t have that “figuring it out” vibe. It plays like Roman Candle already know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re more interested in dragging you into it than convincing you.

That confidence can come off as confrontational, but I think it’s something more specific: a refusal to tidy up the story. They’re not aiming for a neat arc. They’re aiming for honesty at maximum volume.

Release note and where it sits for me

Unadulterated is out now via Sumerian Records.

And if I’m forced to reduce my reaction into a number—which always feels like trying to measure weather—I land around an 8/10. Not because it’s “almost perfect,” but because it achieves what it’s trying to do more often than it misses. The few moments where I wanted more dynamic mischief don’t change the fact that the album’s core impulse is startlingly effective.

Conclusion

Unadulterated isn’t trying to be your favorite record. It’s trying to be the record that won’t let you look away—from anger, from fear, from memory, from whatever you thought you’d already processed. Roman Candle make hardcore that treats discomfort like a tool, not a side effect, and they swing it with purpose.

Our verdict: People who like their hardcore emotionally specific—and aren’t allergic to religious dread and real-life ugliness—will latch onto this fast. If you need “a vibe,” if you want music that politely stays in the background, this album will ruin your afternoon and then ask why you expected manners.

FAQ

• What is the core sound of Roman Candle on Unadulterated?
  Hardcore/screamo built around grinding riffs, thunderous drums, and Piper Ferrari’s visceral vocals, with unsettling atmospheric touches like cello.
• Is Unadulterated actually scary, or just heavy?
  It’s heavy, but it also deliberately aims for unease—like it wants to make you uncomfortable, not just impressed.
• Which track sets the tone immediately?
  “Blasphemous Act.” The cello intro and the closing scream (“run for your life!”) basically lay out the album’s entire mission statement.
• Does the album have any emotional range, or is it nonstop aggression?
  It’s relentless, but the melodic focus and the thematic specificity create emotional shifts—just not the “relaxing” kind.
• Who is likely to connect most with Unadulterated?
  Listeners who use intense music as a pressure valve—anger, grief, anxiety—because the record doesn’t flinch from those feelings.

If you end up fixating on the imagery and want it on your wall, you can casually shop a favorite album cover poster at our store: https://www.architeg-prints.com/ — no hard sell, just a nice way to live with the obsession.