Artio – Unhinged
Similar artists: YONAKA, Nova Twins, Wargasm, Cassyette
Genre: Pop Punk, Alt Pop
Can you even fathom the fact that heavy metal was once the most popular music genre in the world? Punk-rock? Many punk-rock bands sold millions of records. Industrial rock, nu-metal, trip-hop? Some of the musicians who made that music are millionaires.
Despite the badge of Underground Loyalists, many of these otherwise extreme musical genres had a lot of commercial success. Did it just happen by accident? Sometimes it did. But very rarely.
Take 80s pop-metal. It got some bands playing to stadium crowds. Was there more metal or more pop in their sound? This could be debated all day. The point is that they knew the impact they wanted to have.
Artio’s Unhinged is embracing an approach of mixing pop elements with heavy, energy-filled music. It’s not the first to do this, no. But it’s a new way of blending extreme sweetness with extreme darkness in a manner that doesn’t sound out of place. It’s almost like making horror movies meant to become blockbusters. It takes a good degree of skill and vision for this.
Solcura – Keep It Close
Similar artists: Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Melvins, QOTSA, Deftones, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo Fighters
Genre: Grunge, Alternative Rock
Therapy used to be heavily ridiculed throughout mainstream media. It was the thing that anxious-ridden malcontents did. It was the thing that people with serious mental instability needed to do.
This is, of course, not the truth. The world has finally got on to this fact. But not everyone knows what to do with this information. In a world that seems to put more and more pressure on the individual’s psyche, many have found relief and a genuine strategy for developing themselves.
The undeniable therapeutic powers of creativity aren’t as often discussed. However, it’s easy to observe how they work. For example, take almost any earnest 90s alt-rock record from your collection and play it. It’s no wonder that the people who found commercial success in that way couldn’t help but feel odd about it.
Solcura’s Keep It Close sounds like music written in a therapy session. It’s soulful, angry, and vulnerable. It is all these things, and besides, it has at its core a very well-designed sound. This pays tribute to emotive, highly-professional alt-rockers.
This may be a work constructed on the back of effort and angst. There might not be another way to create something like this otherwise.
