Style: Experimental Rock, Nu Metal (vocodered vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Limp Bizkit and Korn if you ran the vocals through synthesisers
Country: Nevada, USA
Release Date: 31 May 2024
It’s well documented that we grow more conservative with age. Not necessarily politically so much as that as the world changes around us, we end up clinging to the things we know. Older people bemoan the ubiquity of smartphones and seem like fusty old dinosaurs, but we’ll likely be just as grumpy about the latest youth craze when we hit our sixties. More and more, we begin to fall back on the music, art, and literature that defined our youth, that makes sense to us. All of us will eventually come to find comfort in the solipsistic idyll that is “things were better in my day”.
But this is a prog blog, we seek out the innovative, the experimental, the New and Improved™. Enter Four Stroke Baron (please hold your engine lubrication and premature ejaculation jokes until the end). This duo out of Nevada—I don’t know what it says about these guys that I was expecting them to be Dutch; I’m not sure what it says about the Dutch either—create an eccentric brew of heavy, punchy nu-metal riffs, synth-pop textures, vocodered vocals, and hyperactively irreverent compositions. Originally conceived as two EPs, one metal-focused, the other a foray into electronica, Data Diamond explores the two ideas in a spectral manner1. “On Mute” sets the tone for the album, opening with eerie, manipulated vocals and bursts of synth noise segueing into warbly guitar and drums, before “Monday” blows things into the stratosphere with manic drum performances, pulverising riffs, and a sense of generalised chaos that ebbs away at your sanity.
And that vibe would be rather enjoyable if it weren’t for the vocals. I think there’s one instance of unmanipulated vocals on Data Diamond (the first couple of lines sung by the female guest vocalist on “Open the World” who is, as all things must be, heavily manipulated thereafter); everything is thrown through a vocoder and it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Sounding like the robot body to which the Russians are going to upload Fred Durst’s brain in exchange for his becoming a propagandist for Putin, the high-toned, watery vocals often abandon all pretence of coherence giving way to a series of shrieks and whoops. On my first listen, I started to feel physically ill after about four tracks. All of the ludicrous vocal ideas—the incredibly deep vocals ending “Monday” or The Offspring-esque refrain of “this is who I am, baby” on “The Witch”—are insufferable. Without them, Data Diamond would be great fun, but any possible aural pleasure the band might be able to produce is effectively counteracted by the choice to cyborganise the whole endeavour. Any time I come back to this album, a single track in isolation is just about palatable, but an entire album of those undifferentiated robot noises quickly becomes a terrible ordeal.
Vocoder is a texture and in the right hands it can be an asset. Cynic’s Paul Masvidal (who we’ll hear more from later) pretty much pioneered the use of it in metal, but he was judicious enough to use it as a complement to unmanipulated clean and harsh vocals. The Contortionist, VOLA, and Alkaloid are just some of the other prog metal groups that have employed vocoder since then, and all do so sparingly and to great success; it’s like seasoning, you don’t use a whole pot of nutmeg in a dish because it would taste disgusting and you’d start tripping your tits off.2 But that’s what Four Stroke Baron have done, overseasoned their entire body of work with an incredibly thick filter of vocoder, their music lumpen with it and with nothing to counterbalance it.
Nevertheless, it seems like Four Stroke Baron are having fun and the songs are undeniably energetic and punchy. The promo material helpfully informs me that “a Radio Shack CEO, an internationally acclaimed cyborg, an accidental trafficker of human body parts, and the leader of a death cult located in a convenience store” form just some of our subject matters here (the relentless vocal effects burdening every single word would make it difficult to parse what the hell any of these songs are about without that information). Four Stroke Baron simply aren’t meant to be taken seriously; certainly they’re not taking this seriously, they’re just some dudes playing some tunes, and I’m sure they’re cool guys who probably put on a pretty crazy live show, but I’m not having any fun. The one moment that stood out was them briefly pinching the lyrics to “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire and making them sound so much worse; the rest is just a slew of robotic sounding vocals traumatically lodged in my memory forevermore. No one else is making music that sounds like this, and for good reason.
Still, I should try and focus on some positives, and the fact of the matter is that Data Diamond is a very well made example of whatever the hell it is; the production and mix are fantastic—the synths shine and the riffs rollick—allowing me to fully absorb all of the musical choices that I find aesthetically repellent. Four Stroke Baron are undeniably a talented duo, I just find the final product baffles and repels me in equal measure. Matt Vallarino’s drumwork may well be the highlight of the album, an energetic and idiosyncratic performance that defines the band’s strange energy and speaks to their fundamental acumen. Adam Janzi of VOLA and Cynic’s Paul Masvidal guest on the final track, contributing drums and vocals respectively. I couldn’t really discern their contributions amid the roiling sea of sounds I can barely parse, but I assume that means they fit the Four Stroke Baron mould well.
Beefy riffs, punchy production, and killer drumming make Four Stroke Baron an instrumental force rendered completely unlistenable by the choice to run every single vocal noise through a bloody vocoder. You might say I just don’t get the new noise, but I can’t imagine kids are listening to this. Indeed, I think Four Stroke Baron’s audience must be composed exclusively of thirty-five year old Redditors on ketamine. The Nevadan duo are very good at what they do, it’s just that I don’t understand why they’re doing it or who it’s supposed to appeal to. But then again, maybe I am just getting too old for this shit.
- It’s kind of dumb that “spectral” is the adjectival form of “spectrum” and a description of ghostly things, but that’s the English language for you. ↩︎
- Please don’t take nutmeg, it’s an incredibly poor psychedelic that’s more likely to make you delirious and ill than make you see cool colours. The Progressive Subway takes no responsibility if you’re dumb enough to read this review and then think it’s a good idea to start shovelling nutmeg into your craw. ↩︎
Recommended tracks: Monday, Data Diamond
You may also like: Doodseskader, Osaka Punch
Final verdict: unrateable/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Prosthetic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Four Stroke Baron is:
– Kirk Witt (vocals and guitars)
– Matt Vallarino (drums)
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