Style: death / musical theater (mixed vocals)
Review by: Josh
Country: US-TX
Release date: 9 July, 2021
If I had a nickel for every time some dudes from Texas made a story-driven prog metal concept album in 2021 with plotlines paying tribute to the glorious cheesiness of 60’s sci-fi films, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
The storytelling of this album is such an integral part of it to the point where I’d be doing it a disservice in skimming over it. The Argonaut tells the story of a crew of spacemen sent on a quest to retrieve a powerful MacGuffin, confronting one of their former crewmates-turned-evil mastermind in the process. The whole thing has the same vibe as a so-bad-it’s-good sci-fi flick from way back when the genre was starting to pick up steam. I have to give the band props for this – if the writing on this album delivers on anything, it’s the vibe. The captain pulling out his hitherto-unexplained “trusty photon collision ray” as well as the crew introduction section throwing out names like Blade Stryker really harkens back to the band’s inspirations plotwise, and the cheesiness assists massively in creating the overall mood of the album. It’s almost like watching MST3K.
The plot itself, however, leaves much to be desired. There are plotholes aplenty, sure, but I assume that most of those are intentional, given its inspirations. Its greatest flaws lie instead in its pacing. The album’s 30-minute runtime is probably its greatest enemy, leading to the two fights in the plotline being compressed down to a minute and a half and three minutes, respectively. As a result, the conflict feels essentially nonexistent, given how enemies appear and then are brushed off before much time at all can be given for them to show themselves off. All of this leads to the two narration-heavy tracks at the end of the album feeling almost pointless, leaving the listener uninterested in the falling action. It’s not the fun kind of bad, just the bad kind of bad. Overall, this album could’ve been almost doubled in length and it would’ve come out far better.
Musically, there’s not really anything crazy going on here. A few moments stand out to me after my listens, namely the groovy, anthemic Set a Course and the solos on The Final Stand, but overall the instrumentals here aren’t that exciting. They fit the narration well, keeping the album a fairly entertaining listen even when the story fails to deliver, but there aren’t any standout moments in particular here, nothing that really sticks out as a highlight. For the most part, it’s just fairly standard thrash/death metal riffage. Everything does its job, but not much more than that.
Listening to The Argonaut for the first time was quite a fun experience and something I’d definitely recommend to anyone with 30 minutes to fill, but I don’t expect to come back much. It’s fun, but there’s not really any repeat listenability here.
Recommended tracks: if you’re gonna listen to this, listen to the whole thing
Recommended for fans of: Empire Bathtub, Devin Townsend (Ziltoid)
Final verdict: 5.5/10
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