By Ayaan Bhagat.

TLDR: save your time and listen to the New Abnormal, Virtue or even Tyranny instead, because this isn’t it.

I would like to preface this review by saying that The Strokes are my favorite band, and I am a die-hard fan of Julian Casablancas’ songwriting. Though The Voidz’ first album Tyranny was a bit too raw and hard to listen to for me, I still enjoyed parts of the new non-conformist vibe that they were trying (Human Sadness is quite the listen). On the other hand, I greatly enjoyed Virtue, their second album; blending the experimental techniques from Tyranny with a more down-to-earth Strokes feel had exceptional results. Tracks such as “Leave It in My Dreams” and “Pointlessness” are some of my favorite Julian Casablancas songs of all time.

Safe to say I had decently high hopes coming into this album. Unfortunately, to put it simply, these hopes were not fulfilled.

One thing I really appreciate about Julian Casablancas is his very unique voice. His ability to break up and distort his vocal delivery to convey emotion is unparalleled by most other vocalists (Fear of Sleep is a great example of this). However, for this album, every single lyric was sung under a harsh vocoder, lacking any emotion at all and making the songs very hard to listen to. Don’t get me wrong, I think this effect can be extremely effective when used in moderation (like Leave It in My Dreams), but when every single song back to back has it in a manner that feels thoughtless and trite, it makes me feel like I’m listening to a robot.

Though parts of Tyranny and Virtue were a bit too experimental for me, I could always clearly understand and respect what they were going for. However, for this album, it just felt muddy and messy for the sake of pretending to be more profound than it is.

Overall, this album was a letdown in pretty much every aspect. Though there are some tracks that are bearable to listen to (spectral analysis), they pale in comparison to any track from Virtue or The New Abnormal. The substandard music, alongside the sour taste left in my mouth for using an AI-generated album cover, has left me feeling that this was just a low-effort compilation of singles and half-cooked drafts to make a quick buck.