Julian Casablancas + The Voidz debut Tyranny Monday

There is no rhyme or reason in the throes of Tyranny, a synth city of rock and other things. Justly, its creators Julian Casablancas + the Voidz have been a hot topic in light of this upcoming debut, primed for a Monday release via Cult Records.

Tyranny is loud, angry, expressive, distorted, flexible, political, and unlike anything Casablancas has ever revealed.

The opening track, “Take Me in Your Army,” features building choruses that accentuate but do not purify the vocal track, instead tapering off into jazzy, flying-car metropolises. For a vocal-heavy album, the words are predominantly indecipherable. Is this an allusion to what Casablancas calls “tyranny,” the album’s title? Are we supposed to hear the outrage at the mega elites, or are we reduced to the muffled sighs of truth?

“Tyranny has come in many forms throughout history,” he says in an official press release. “Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause.”

Length-wise, most tracks orbit around “Human Sadness,” a gentle goliath that morphs into a tragic ballad. Check out the public reaction here.

As a whole, Tyranny delivers. No amount of obscurity or experimental debauchery could compromise the rhetorical prowess funneled through the band’s unprecedented musicianship. The Voidz is Jeramy Gritter and Amir Yaghmai (Salt and Pepper), guitarist Jeff Kite, bassist Alex Carapetis, drummer/producer Shawn Everett, and keyboardist Jake Bercovici, all led by Julian Casablancas at the helm of a raging moonage pirate ship.

Approaching prog velocity, songs like “M.utually A.ssured D.estruction” and “Business Dog” use eerie samplings and bleeping censorship to lightly coat heart-pounding, mad punk. From there, Tyranny gets weirder. “Father Electricity”’s deeply entrenched audio sounds good even when it doesn’t sound good, and possesses a dramatic tropical shift not unlike its afrobeat influences. This beauty is a lead-in to the much darker “Johan Von Bronx….”

Industrial, worldly, avant-garde — Tyranny is a genre of its own. Listeners will hear something they did not expect… but in truth, I think that in itself was expected.

Article by Jade Theriault