Release Date: September 13th 2024. Record Label: Black Throne Productions. Formats: CD/DD/Vinyl
Star Beast - Star Beast - Track Listing:
WeeLuvU
Full Duration Burn
Got My Wish
The Sea
Rainbow Coloured Life
When We Hit The Coast
Wanderer
Galaxy Of Tears
Starlight
Ghost
Line-up:
Ruben Huizenga - vocals & guitars
Anthony Lombardi - guitar & keys
Kenneth Griffin - drums
Andrew “Chowder” Charters - bass guitar
Review
Star Beast offer a mix of Doom, Grunge, Stoner, Psych and Fuzz Rock attitudes with a complimentary 90’s Pop attitude where they unleash a torrent of melodic heavy grooves to match their sweet natured lyrics that make this album quite an interesting record for a debut release. Star Beast have a great style of their own making with sublime Post-Grunge sounds bursting into Psychedelic Doomed Out energy.
Taking cues from the 90’s Grunge/Stoner/Noise Rock scene with a fine amount of Space Rock and Shoegaze passages reminiscent of bands such as HUM, Soundgarden and Foo Fighters. This style of music is played very early on within the superb batch of opening tracks of WeeLuvU and Full Duration Burn. There’s a deep fascination of bands such as The Smiths, The Cure and My Bloody Valentine heard within the lyrics, twangy Indie Rock guitars and excellent pop-pitched vocals.
This is still a fantastic Doom/Stoner Rock album with Star Beast showing many different sides to their music. Star Beast have a similar way such as TORCHE on how they deliver their heavy grooves that goes against the grain of their POPPIER sound. The record has a dark aesthetic which gives them a stunning DOOM & GLOOM edge on tracks such as Got My Wish & The Sea.
Haunting vocal melodies and sludgy guitars become part of the normal action which manifests into thrilling modern guitar solos with a slice of Prog Metal ability starting to form. Star Beast only have a short running time of around thirty minutes to cover every base of Doom/Stoner Rock across ten songs within the whole album and they absolutely succeed. One moment, the album can be beautifully sweet and the next aggressively different with thuggish HUGE sounding instrumental passages on tracks such as Rainbow Coloured LIfe, When We Hit The Coast, Wanderer and Starlight.
The production values are first rate which allows Star Beast to have a STADIUM ROCK sized presence on how they deliver their music. Everything is loud and crystal clear even when the quieter POPPIER moments take over there’s still a heavy WALL of fuzz not too far behind.
Star Beast’s debut album is an absolute joy to listen to where it will surprise you with the many different changes in direction the band actually take within this album. I wish there were a couple more songs just to make the album longer. As it feels too short in places but it’s always best to leave people wanting more and this is what this album does so brilliantly well.
I’ll be waiting for further musical adventures from Star Beast as these guys have delivered the goods here which allows this record to become quite simply unmissable.
Words by Steve Howe
Thanks to Black Throne Productions for the promo.
Star Beast will be available to buy on DD/Vinyl via Black Throne Productions from Friday 13th September 2024.
Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/star_beast_toronto/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theStarBeast.music/
Bandcamp: https://star-beast.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4MUsRlw3uH2z1qCTe62BDB?si=hRjSTHAJRWeullRhshlcQQ
