Source: Album Artwork
There’s conveying a sense of attitude in your music, and then there’s Astroid Boys. The Cardiff mobs amalgamation of punk, a little bit of hardcore, and a lot of grime has so much edge and fire attached to it that it’s almost impossible to through one of their tracks without having some form of emotion drawn from you.
It’s a style that has helped the band clutch on to a sizeable a following in their short tenure as a band – debut full-length release Broke sees all the attitude included that you hoped for, but at times textured in a way that may catch one or two off guard.
Broke isn’t home to much that you can expect to cause a raucous in terms of future live performance, in fact, ‘Dirt’ is about as heavy as the record gets in terms of pace and power. But that’s not to say that the track itself doesn’t stamp with authority, because on the contrary – there’s still a forceful punch packed into the instrumentation of the song here.
Fans that were hoping for the record to sound like a more grimed up version of an early Enter Shikari may be left disappointed here, as while there are still certainly techno elements embedded into the record – they’re rarely used to culminate in a venomous mosh call.
Quality still shines through in abundance in some areas of the record though, and those that are pressing play for the hip hop aspects are going to be treated to a wealth of pumping rhythms and flow. Best song on the record ‘Cheque’ is a showcase of Astroid Boys being superb rappers and astute lyricists with a movement between vocal lines as smooth as silk and a chorus filled with bounce.
Throughout the record, the Cardiff crew do a phenomenal job of making everything sound supercharged and modern – and the way that styles are played with on tracks like ‘Foreigners’ and ‘Mask’ show a band in Astroid Boys that can crossover between genres, despite not being a whole lot more than a group of great rappers, with an audacious amount of flow.
Broke is a grime album that adds techno into the right places to make it a jarring, yet flavoured listen. While some may be hoping for the record to sit in a style similar to previous hit tracks like ‘Dusted’ or ‘Minging/Sticky’ what is here should still get the nod of approval from anyone who likes to hear a whole heap of attitude in their music.
