Cinematic rock collective Starset have announced their U.S. spring tour, Immersion: The Final Chapter. In the same breath, vocalist Dustin Bates also announced the release date for his second novel A Brief History Of The Future; April 08th 2024. Keep reading below for more information.
Visionary modern rock band Starset, already riding high on the strength of a hit record and a billion (!) video views on YouTube, will pair up with Marvel Comics Original Graphic Novel, The PROX Transmissions on October 4th.Continue reading
This is a weird one, readers, so bear with me…
Let’s deal with the facts first. Starset is a rock band from Columbus, Ohio, formed by Dustin Bates, who, as well being the main protagonist, also has a bit of a scientific background… he’s been to university in other words. The band’s debut album Transmissions (Razor & Tie) hit #49 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. The band’s first single, ‘My Demons’ is now in the Top 10 at Rock Radio in the USA and has been on the chart for 32 weeks. They are quite popular.
So far, so promising new band story, right? Wrong.
Here’s where it starts getting weird. Dustin formed Starset, according to him, after being contacted by an organization called The Starset Society and its’ President, Dr. Aston Wise. Bates was asked if he was interested in forming a band to promote the organization’s message. At its core, the message is a warning that involves a scientific discovery that is currently being controlled and manipulated by an elite few.
Are you going “Uh-oh” at this moment? Good, you should be.
Remember Babylon Zoo? Yes, well now you’re starting to get the idea. This rampant silliness is all a bit of a shame for this debut because buried in the pointless over-production, the sound clippings from satellites and the wall upon wall of violins are a bunch of pop rock songs that sound fairly decent, are well arranged and, on occasion, hummable. Yes, there are tunes.
Transmissions is the sort of record that lots of people who should know better get inevitably excited about because it has classical orchestration on it which means that they will use words like “epic”, “visionary” and so on to describe a record that, if they were being really honest, sounds an awful lot like a Linkin Park tribute act playing over the soundtrack to Blade Runner. Fair play to Bates- he has got a bit of a vision thing going on – shame then that his vision is the same old hackneyed conspiracy theory trope about shadowy government agencies and mind control.
If you like this sort of thing, well you’re going to like this sort of thing. If you don’t, well you won’t. Each to their own…
5.0/10.0
MAT DAVIES