Astro Reality.
From their very inception, most bands walk that most treacherous tightrope: balancing, on the one hand, their ideas and preconceptions of what they want to sound like, and on the other, the vocabulary of how to define that sound. So it is, once again, with a heavy heart that I have to whine about the misuse of the label ’screamo’ amongst the populace at large. Astro Reality are to screamo what Hawthorne Heights are(/were, ha) to emo: a travesty of mislabelling and essentially a bastardisation of a genre most radically different to its diluted ‘followers’.
However, a history lesson isn’t what this article is about: even if their sins of woefully inadequate genre nomenclature are to be forgotten, the music itself exposes doubt as to the validity of their self-professed status as a band. They state that they ‘want to be known across the land for being unique and keeping it Astro’, but any prior illusions you may still have about their uniqueness in the sea of their ’screamo’ (inverted commas are important) peers are dispelled as soon as you hear the first chord in any of their songs. As for ‘keeping it Astro’, I’m not nearly well informed enough to know what that means: the cool kids are probably laughing at me right now for that.
Warranty, their most recent musical foray, shows the instantly recognisable chug-chug of a distorted electric guitar and the most dire screaming I have ever heard, even in a band of this perversion. The screams are not the light accentuated growl of the likes of Tim Kasher or Geoff Rickly, nor are they the visceral-yet-high-pitched wail of Billy Werner: they’re something all together more weak, a cross of the two styles as unwelcome as a 20 year old at a Conservative Club, and just about as out of place amidst the pop-punk riffs and hackneyed lead parts.
Listening through the rest of the tracks on their MySpace, one cannot help but get the feeling of deja entendu (and no, not the Brand New album. That work is holy and should not even be sullied with a mention here), and that is because, in all sincerity, the songs do sound the same. Guitars? Distorted, with crispy overtones. Bass? There. Drumming? Keeping time in the most dull ways imaginable. Think ditchwater, mixed with Jimmy Carr’s humour: shit, plain shit. Vocals: dual and completely out of harmony. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.
There’s a limited school of thought (only on certain sites on the Internet, granted) that Casey Calvert’s opiate, citalopram and clonazepam fuelled death was due to the realisation that he had, almost single-handedly, destroyed a once great genre and ruined its name for the good many years of copycat bands to come. I sincerely hope that this band follow his lead, and just give up on music or find an original niche: I have no doubt of their instrumental ability. I just abhor their shitty music.
A Note: the band have split up since this was written. I’m not too bothered.