Album review: Starbenders – The Beast Goes On

From the day we first saw them it was obvious Starbenders lived in a world of blurred lines. While being genre elusive can be a good thing, the Atlanta quartet didn’t quite have the songs to start fires in the way certain other, similarly mysterious bands have. Perhaps leaving it to album number four is too late, but one’s thing for sure: they’ve got it right his time.

Both the title-track and Hello Goodbye come with that funereal goth-glam radiance so beloved by fans of greatly missed acts like HIM and Type O Negative. Then they punk things up on Nothing Ever Changes before striking out into classic alt.pop mode on Chantilly Boy. All this is just for starters. Brilliantly-named singer Kimi Shelter is just a shot away from perfect on the likes of Tokyo and Cold Silver, and the way the band layer timeless harmonies onto witchy, supernatural weirdness rarely fails to fascinate. 'If I was perfect I wouldn’t need the pills,' Kimi purrs on Cold Silver, one of several tunes that’ll simply be too good to ignore.

On board with this or not, it’s fun to think of rock’s gatekeepers getting all red-faced as this lot prance around in fishnet and lycra. That said, there’s nothing ephemeral about it – these are songs that straddle fashion, embrace everything from synth-pop to metal, and twist it all up with a disconcerting otherness that might yet make stars of them.

True, this 13-song album could have been tightened up by losing a couple, but they save a winning ace till the end, bowing out with 21st Century (Digital Boy), a merry gallop that mates retro with non-binary futurism. Indeed, what Starbenders do here only looks like ‘nostalgia’ for those who never liked those tropes in the first place. For those that did, The Beast Goes On is boundary-pushing and ear-grabbing, a silky goth delight.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Palaye Royale, Poppy, Ville Valo

The Beast Goes On is released on February 27 via Sumerian.