Album review: Starset – Silos

With one fan-made video racking up over 450 million views on YouTube, it’s fair to say that Starset’s relationship with their following is closer, more interweaved, than most. That fanbase is torn between wondering how a creative that’s this multi-dimensional, this unique and this affecting aren't as big as Sleep Token and being thoroughly relieved that it isn’t. Silos, the outfit’s fifth album, still feels like it’s ‘ours’.

Here, again, the widescreen vision of frontman Dustin Bates fills spaces we didn’t even know existed. It’s a bringing together of metal, symphonics and electronics into head-opening chasms, stuff that impacts, that pulls at heart strings. Certainly there’s distorted rock ire like Degenerate, with its suitably twisted video, and TokSik, a shout-out industrial rock anthem swiping at global figures and their hidden agendas. Then there’s an apt opposite, the quietly questioning Dark Things, deftly integrated ambience and probing lyrics.

The title-track and Brave New World bring all the above together, an entry point for the curious, no less dazzling for the converted. Several songs are linked by musical bridges, all crafted by Dustin, and all deserving of their place. Perhaps most effective are those that top and tail Ad Astra, the last song proper. As a finale, it’s worth waiting for, the nearest Starset has come to replicating the quiet storm whipped up by the revered Ricochet from 2017’s Vessels. Ominously perhaps, it also feels like a farewell, Dustin hitting highs usually only visited by rockets as he cries ‘Don’t forget me when I’m gone’ at the end.

Let’s hope it isn’t. Music needs visionary outfits like Starset, even if they must remain a cult rather than chart fixation. To their further credit they’ve maintained pretty much the same touring line-up, and the shows come with visual effects every bit as stellar as the sounds. The release of Silos, like everything Starset do, is loaded with surprise, with uncertainty. And, like any mission into space, it’ll blow minds.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Linkin Park, Nine Inch Nails, In This Moment

Silos is released by Fearless on September 12