Review: The Voidz – Like All Before You

On the Voidz’ third album Like All Before You, the band’s experimentation gets distilled into…autotune and muted vocals?

 

Over the past decade, the Voidz have evolved from a place for the Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas to let out his “experimental impulses” to “a solid thing that has its own ecosystem.” In contrast to the seminal, accessible garage rock of the Strokes, the Voidz debut album Tyranny had the 11-minute, Mozart-sampling prog rock epic “Human Sadness” as its centerpiece. Four years later, the Voidz’s sophomore album Virtue went between synthpop, metal, R&B, and garage rock, occasionally misstepping through its broad ambitions.

However, on the Voidz’ third album Like All Before You, the band’s experimentation gets distilled into…autotune and muted vocals? There’s really not much else that distinguishes this album, which is Julian Casablancas’ weakest effort to date.

To be fair, the Voidz used autotune and other vocal effects on their past two albums, but they did so sparingly, and in ways that suited the particular track. But Like All Before You is unfortunately completely oversaturated with autotune from the get-go. After the brief “Overture” introduces the album with an organ-like synthesizer, “Square Wave” kicks off with a post-punk riff that evokes the band The Drums. You get to enjoy this riff for all of 20 seconds before Casablancas enters with garbled, incomprehensible vocals courtesy of autotune effects. Worse, they’re all over the place in terms of their volume mixing. Even though the track’s chorus has a pleasantly Stokes-like chord progression, this one definitely would have been better as an instrumental.

If “Square Wave” were the only track with terrible vocals, you’d just think “huh, that was odd” and move on. Unfortunately, it’s far from a single misstep. “All the Same” is the worst offender, with its gratuitous use of autotune and bad vocal mixing, which is especially disappointing since you can hear the foundations of a nice and accessible song scattered throughout. “7 Horses” starts a little like a much quieter version of “Selfless” from the Strokes’ The New Abnormal, and thankfully has clean vocals during its pared-back verses. However, whenever the volume kicks up for the chorus, the autotune switches on. Despite a decent instrumental outro, it’s an underwhelming song. “Flexorcist” has a good synthesizer part that resembles New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle,” but it’s basically the only thing carrying the track as puzzling vocal choices weigh it down.

Fortunately, not every track on Like All Before You has copious autotune, but even these are a bit of a mixed bag. “Prophecy of the Dragon” has a metal, Black Sabbath-esque guitar riff that will instantly remind you of the standout single “Pyramid of Bones” from Virtue. It never quite reaches the highs of that track, but it is easily one of the better tracks on Like All Before You because it has an actual melody, a good guitar solo, and actually discernable lyrics like “I used to be a lounge lizard, now look at me, I’m a wizard!” On the other end of the spectrum, “Spectral Analysis” mixes a delicate, lullaby-esque piano ballad with jarring sci-fi synth tones and lyrics that are seemingly about cults and suicide. It’s certainly experimental enough, and is certainly well-executed, but it might not be what you want from the Voidz. The new wave synthesizers of “Perseverance-1C2S” have a gloomy, ominous feel and there’s an exciting guitar solo halfway through, but I can’t tell if Casablancas is meant to sound dark and brooding or just bored. The dramatic “When Will the Time of These Bastards End” starts with some autotune, but this quickly gives way to heavily distorted vocal effects that pitch down Casablancas’ voice to somewhere between “evil robot” and “You’re a Mean One Mister Grinch.” Its tone is so over-the-top sinister, complete with a refrain of “who’s laughing now?,” that its campiness oddly works.

In the years after Virtue, the Voidz released a number of fairly good singles including “The Eternal Tao,” “Did My Best,” and “Alien Crime Lord.” Somehow, none of these made the cut for Like All Before You, an album that’s only eight full songs if you discount the ambient intro and outro tracks. This makes it seem like there was some stiff competition for inclusion on the album, but the tracks that did make it will have you repeatedly asking: “what were they thinking?” For every brief moment of brilliance on Like All Before You, there’s a noticeable dud, especially with the vocals. Let’s just hope the Voidz can only go up from here.

Rating: 5/10