Astronoid’s Stargod is an album of breathtaking contradictions: radiant yet crushing, ethereal yet anchored in something painfully real. From the opening moments, the Massachusetts trio launches listeners into a blur of luminous guitars, soaring vocals, and relentless percussion that feels almost transcendent. It’s easy to mistake that brightness for purity, but beneath the gleam runs an unmistakable undercurrent of longing and unease. Astronoid have always been masters of contrast, crafting songs that sound like sunlight bursting through static and on Stargod, they perfect that balance. Every shimmering chord seems to hide a shadow; every euphoric crescendo carries a trace of exhaustion. The result is a record that captures the dissonance of existing in a world both beautiful and brutal, where joy and despair orbit each other endlessly. It’s as if the band took the weight of the cosmos and found a way to make it sing.
Embark sets the tone for Stargod with a rush of open-hearted energy that feels both triumphant and uncertain, the sound of stepping into the infinite without a map. The track begins in true Astronoid fashion: soaring guitars cascade in layers of luminous distortion, while Brett Boland’s vocals float above like a voice carried on solar wind. There’s a sense of propulsion here, a momentum that never quite resolves, as if the song itself is reaching for something just out of grasp. Beneath its gleaming surface, though, Embark carries a quiet melancholy, a tension between the exhilaration of discovery and the fear of what lies ahead. It’s a stunning opener, one that distills the album’s essence into a single moment: light and weight, hope and hesitation, all colliding in a radiant burst.
The title track, Stargod, stands as the album’s luminous core, a celestial anthem that captures Astronoid’s gift for turning existential wonder into sound. The song unfolds in waves, each crest brighter and heavier than the last: guitars shimmer like solar flares, the drums crash with near-religious intensity, and Boland’s voice reaches skyward, equal parts devotion and desperation. Stargod grapples with the allure and futility of worship, not in the religious sense, but in the human urge to find meaning in something vast and unreachable. There’s an almost sacred energy in the way the melody lifts and fractures, suggesting transcendence but never quite granting it. By the time the final notes dissolve into the atmosphere, you’re left with the feeling of having glimpsed something divine, only to realize it was your own reflection burning back at you.
Third Shot hits with a sharper edge, grounding Stargod’s celestial drift in something more immediate and human. Where other tracks reach for the heavens, this one seems to claw its way through gravity, faster, tighter, more urgent. The guitars are more angular here, slicing through the mix with a sense of restless momentum, while the rhythm section drives forward like a pulse on the brink of collapse. Boland’s vocals, still airy and melodic, take on a subtle desperation, as if he’s fighting to stay afloat amid the swirl of sound. There’s a cathartic tension at play, the sense of running out of chances but refusing to stop trying. Third Shot feels like the emotional breaking point of the record, a moment when Astronoid’s trademark euphoria finally collides head-on with the weight it’s been carrying all along.
Beneath The Lights glows with a haunting stillness, a moment where Stargod seems to drift inward after all its cosmic reaching. The track opens on a wash of reverb-drenched guitars, each note suspended like starlight caught in slow motion, before the drums ease in with a steady, heartbeat-like pulse. Boland’s vocals are almost spectral here, gentle, yearning, but edged with fatigue, as he sings of searching for meaning in the spaces between illumination and obscurity. What makes the song so powerful is its restraint: Astronoid hold back their usual explosive crescendos, letting emotion build in quiet swells and luminous textures. As the chorus unfolds, light and sound blur together until it feels less like a rock song and more like an atmosphere, a meditation on awe, insignificance, and the quiet ache of beauty fading. Beneath The Lights captures the fragile balance Stargod inhabits so well: vastness rendered intimate, hope tempered by the awareness of how easily it flickers.
Arrival closes Stargod with the same sense of motion that began the record but where Embark felt like a leap into the unknown, Arrival sounds like the weary, awe-struck landing that follows. The song opens in a haze of shimmering chords, echoing the brightness of the album’s beginning, but there’s a heaviness now, a gravity that wasn’t there before. The drums hit slower, deeper; the guitars stretch out into vast, melancholic waves. Boland’s voice feels more grounded, almost resigned, as if the boundless wonder of Embark has evolved into understanding rather than discovery. Lyrically and sonically, it feels like the other side of a cosmic journey, not an ending, but a recognition that transcendence always comes with loss. In Arrival, Astronoid complete the circle they began: the explorer returns home, changed by the light they chased, carrying both its brilliance and its burn.
In the end, Stargod is less an album and more a voyage, a journey through light, faith, and the fragile gravity that binds them. Astronoid have always excelled at crafting music that feels like both ascension and collapse, but here that duality takes on a new depth. Every track radiates an almost spiritual intensity, shimmering with beauty even as it wrestles with uncertainty and doubt. By the time Arrival fades into silence, the listener has been carried across the full arc of discovery from the reckless optimism of Embark to the reflective calm of acceptance. Stargod isn’t about finding answers in the infinite; it’s about learning to live inside the questions, to find wonder in the weight. It’s a stunning, deeply human statement from a band that continues to reach for the divine and somehow, makes it sound within reach.
For fans of: MØL, Rolo Tomassi, Svalbard
‘Stargod’ by Astronoid is out now on 3DOT Recordings.
Words by Ell Bradbury
