Whew! I just zoned out for a minute there…was supposed to be writing about God Is An Astronaut, but man—guess I just got lost in my thoughts.
Don’t be surprised if this unconscious lapse in time happens to you when you listen to the band’s new album, Age of the Fifth Sun. It’s a spaced-out instrumental post-rock venture about on par with their last few albums, only this one is just a touch overproduced. A smidge, maybe. Okay, a big smidge. No more than you’d expect, I suppose, but much more than necessary, glossing the album with a too-perfect-to-be-true varnish. This has to be one of the regrettable defining qualities of contemporary music, much like reverb-saturated electronic drums were the bane of the 80s. The ease with which one can clean up a messy song, tighten up a loose rhythm section or alter a pitchy melody today can absolutely desecrate the soul of an album. Remember all those great songs off Coldplay’s X&Y? Me neither.
The first two tracks on Age of the Fifth Sun really threw me off. “Worlds in Collision” could easily have been a throwaway instrumental track from a Linkin Park album. With its heavily distorted bar chord chugs and digitized drum sequencing, I kept dreading that Chester Bennington’s voice would come roaring into the foreground. Not a great start. Then comes “In the Distance Fading,” a song that might as well be licensed to the next big summer blockbuster. It’s ominous, it’s triumphant, and it belongs in a trailer for whichever towering menace from comic books past will be threatening the existence of mankind this July. Unfortunately, someone back at headquarters chose this dud as the album’s first single. Roll credits.
But God Is An Astronaut relaxes for a handful of tracks thereafter. The next few songs feature more apparently real instruments and fewer synthesized swoops. When the keyboard takes a backseat to the guitar, God Is An Astronaut prove they’ve still got it. “Lost Kingdom” and “Parallel Highway” build up rather well, making for two of the three or four standout tracks on the album. “Shining Through” is another song that hovers above the rest because of its clever time signature shifts and jumpy snare. They still suffer from the overproduction that plagues Age of the Fifth Sun’s entirety, but it’s somehow less intrusive here.
On the whole, the band would be better off if they’d stop dicking around with their synthesizers and focus on songwriting. Airy string swells and police siren crescendos work well for creating atmosphere but not as a substitute for actual music, as it is on filler track “Dark Rift” and the too-modest closer “Paradise Remains.” And their title track certainly isn’t worthy of having an album named after it.
Age of the Fifth Sun is remarkably forgettable; no need to make that appointment at Lacuna Corporation. Though God Is An Astronaut have a definite command over their dynamics, that alone won’t allow them to hold a candle to many of their colleagues in instrumental post-rock, or even to previous albums such as 2005’s similar but much more interesting All is Violent, All is Bright. As is all too common in post-rock, with no lyrics to fill out the gaps, memorability will elude even the clearest verses on this sterile album. God Is An Astronaut’s shiny final product seems to have been soaked in studio bleach for far too long. What this band really needs is to take their instruments outdoors, beyond the city limits, into the stuff of the world. Put away your synthesizers and enlist in a mud wrestling competition. Don’t come back until your guitars are coated in filth, until your fingernails are dark with soil, until your drumsticks are waterlogged and soggy. In thinking of their name, I’m reminded of a Smashing Pumpkins lyric: “…cleanliness is godliness and god is empty…”
Just like most of this album.
Track List:
1. Worlds in Collision
2. In the Distance Fading
3. Lost Kingdom
4. Golden Sky
5. Dark Rift
6. Parallel Highway
7. Shining Through
8. Age of the Fifth Sun
9. Paradise Remains
