Image is hard. You are essentially trying to manipulate someone else's perceptions of you and that's like using a remote controlled robot to defuse a bomb that's on a different planet and bomb is actually a banana you're trying to peel. Which is to say it's tough in the way that it's unclear what the correlation between your actions and its result really is. You can release a dour and somber album only for that to come across as trite and contrived. You could experiment and push your sound forwards, only for listeners to compare you to some other act that sounds sort of similar and declare you unoriginal. In short, you could try really hard and have it all blow back in your face. This is where the age old cliche to just let it go and not worry about how you will be perceived comes from but, to be honest, that's really hard advice to follow. We are wired, as humans, to care about what other people think.
This is why it is so impressive to follow Astronoid's career and essentially get the feeling that they truly do not care about any of that. Put otherwise, it is very clear from listening to the music that Astronoid makes, and have made this past decade since they released Air (that's right), that they're making the music they want to hear. It makes all of the difference. What otherwise would sound phony and dishonest shines through with the band's unstoppable energy. This is even more important for Stargod, as it leans more heavily into the brighter, poppier sound of the Astronoid palette. The "dream-thrash" sound is definitely still there but, more than ever, it is garlanded by heaps of 80's power rock and pop. Another way of putting it is that Stargod has riffs aplenty but it shines when those riffs are playing underneath an incredibly flashy solo while cheesy synths sing in the spaces between the notes. Stargod shines when it feels like a glam rock's tour bus crashed into a Metallica rehearsal.
I'm describing "Love Weapon", the second track on the album, that is only as awesome as its title is silly. Seriously, I have been quite unable to tear myself away from this track ever since I first received the album; it captures everything I love about Stargod, from the aforementioned, extraordinarily glorious solo, to the rich, Duran Duran-like synths that make up the major through-line of the track. Everything shines with this new, neon-pink light while still radiating the metallic edge of Astronoid's base sound. The dreamy Astronoid sound, achieved by playing fast riffs with a treble-rich sound and spacey production, works incredibly well with these "rockier", red-leather-jacket-clad sound, creating something entirely enticing and fun to listen to.
The self-titled track that follows it, however, goes even deeper into these poppy vibes, earning it a comparison to Voyager and their electro-rock antics. However, this comparison actually exposes the album's primary weakness, which lies in the moments when it chooses to do just this style of 80's power rock. The primary example is this eponymous track; it leaves a lot to be desired, lacking that electric contrast between Astronoid's faster, shreddy riffs, and the more saccharine, poppy side. It's essentially an anthemic, power rock, nostalgia tinged song and I'm left wondering what sets it apart from the many, many, many iterations of this sort of homage that we've heard over the past twenty years or so.
Unfortunately, a lot of the album falls into the same trap, going a bit too far into the 80's indulgence. The high of "Love Weapon", where the two sides of this newly minted Astronoid coin flip blazingly fast between each mode, never quite returns elsewhere on the album. Still, this contrast, fortunately, does return on the album in plenty of other places. I wanted more of it but at least I got some of it and the parts that I did are absolutely brilliant (like the excellently heavy riff on "Depressed Mode" or the catchy main lines and excellent final outro on "Arrival"). Lastly, the parts that don't have this arresting blend, the "purely" anthemic parts, still come through as being sincere.
This means that even the less engaging moments of Stargod sound like a band that are making the music they want to make and that, for me, is very important. Perhaps this is a beginning of a new exploration for Astronoid and the next release will better balance between these two approaches. Or, perhaps, Stargod just is what it is - a fun album from a band having fun, with plenty of moments of something more emerging from the dynamo that is Astronoid's core sound being blended with something else, something brighter, even sweeter, and more redolent.
Stargod releases this Friday, November 7th, on 3DOT Recordings. You can pre-order it right here.