Boston’s Astronoid interject beautifully dreamy instrumentation and ethereal vocals into black metal on their impressive debut full length Air, which was released in June on the Finnish metal label Blood Music. It cohesively blends shoegaze, thrash, prog-rock, black metal, and punk to form what they call “dream thrash”. While the five-piece embraces the clean atmospheric sounds of post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky, they also offer a pummeling and swift assault of black metal blast beats that shows off drummer’s Matt St. Jean’s solid skills. Instead of resorting to the usual harsh and guttural screams the black metal genre is known for, vocalist Brett Boland uses an elegantly clean vocal delivery that channels the airy sounds of popular shoegaze acts such as Slowdive and Ride. It would be easy to lose sight of their goal on an LP that pulls from an eclectic group of influences, but Astronoid do a fantastic job at forging a sound that stays consistent throughout the album. They will be playing at Great Scott on September 13th in support of Ghost Bath! – John Honan
