Band:	Starchitect
Album:	No
Style:	Post-metal
Release date:	2011

01. The Sun, The Rain
02. Light
03. Yeah
04. Friends
05. Silence
06. Face To Face
07. Murder

Starchitect is a post-metal band from Ukraine... and yet another adherent to the ever increasing list of bands I've started lumping into that "SSDD" (Same Shit, Different Dudes) category. Post-whatever basically means some cool riffs, songs that slowly develop and cover a couple moods - Mellow Moment TM chill parts and angry, angsty outbursts of distortion and intense instrument pounding, all topped off with horribly over the top screamo vocals.

Their latest album is conveniently entitled No. Convenient? Sure. It answers a lot of questions.

While the music is generally pretty cool, is it anything different than what anyone else is doing?

No.

While the music is generally pretty cool, is it better than what anyone else is doing?

No, not really.

Do they employ those screamo vocals to better effect than the various other bands you've bitched about using a similar approach?

Hell No.

Go check out the opening minute of "Friends" - a demo version is on their myspace page. If you can endure the opening minute's salvos of hooting and hollering without wanting to jam a pair of scissors into your ear canal in an effort to rupture your eardrums, bully for you, you might be able to enjoy the album. While the demo version is rougher than the well-produced final product, I would rather watch the whiny highlights of Ross from the sitcom "Friends" (my second least favorite TV character ever, behind only Scrappy Doo) for however long this album is than listen to either version of the song of the same name.

In all honesty, the music is not particularly different than anything anyone else in the field is doing. I've received a slew of these type of albums over the past 15 months, and they fit right in the middle of the pack of the lot. It's not bad, but it's not really groundbreaking or new... they create songs well enough, but not well enough to create their own identity and really differentiate themselves from anyone else. They blend in.

And I've already bitched about the vocals once, but I've gone a full paragraph without denigrating them and feel the need to do so again. They drag what is already middle of the road down. Somehow they seem worse or more egregious than all the other SSDD acts out there. They made listening to the album (which would have been OK as an instrumental) a bit of a dreaded chore... like vacuuming. And they are about as pleasing to the ear as the deafening, roaring whine of the crumb and pet hair gathering, Geneva Convention violating Hoover my wife uses. The one which I have affectionately dubbed "The Noisemaker." Usually I crank the tunes to cover the sonic torment of the machine. Usually.

When it comes down to it, would I recommend this album?

Sadly, No.