Asylum's follow up their 2018 sophomore release "Alien Human Emotions" with their third album "Genetic Cabaret". They seem to have got themselves into a good album release cycle with an album released every 2 years; as their debut "Killer Brain Waves" was released in 2016. Although the singles were great, I wasn't a massive fan of that album. But "Alien Human Emotions" grabbed me more in every way and thought it was a good step up for them.
One of the main talking points around the album seems to be who it was produced by which was Steve Albini. He has produced albums from the likes of Nirvana, Manic Street Preachers and Pj Harvey to name a few. I realise he is a well respected name in the music industry and for a band it must be quite a coo to get a person like him produce an album for you. But at the end of the day its the band that write the music and play the songs. So I think they are the ones that should be getting full credit for this album. Steve of course deserves his name in the liner notes though.
Speaking of the actual CD case and liner notes this one is a bit of a strange one and may be showing where the record industry is at. The back of the album does not give you a track list. I remember always going into record shops and looking at the back of an album to see what tracks are on an album. Not this one. I say maybe its a sign of the times though that people are buying the albums online now so they can see track lists there. Also strange to have the lyrics in the liner notes with no spaces between words. So in other words its pretty useless as trying to decipher the lyrics in this booklet while listening to the album is almost impossible. I think having a bigger booklet for spacing out the words would have been more costly. But instead of the lyrics they could have just put in some pictures instead.
Anyway let's talk about the music. I would say on the whole this is another step up for Asylums. There are so many tracks on the album which could be released as singles. Although I think they made good choices with the tracks they did release as singles. Them being "Catalogue Kids", "Platitudes", "Perfect life in a perfect world" and "Who writes tomorrows headlines". Something they have managed to do with this album is to really keep the songs unique by sending them off in their own different directions. On the whole they are such upbeat, bounce around indie rock fun. Funnily enough I watched the James Bond film "Tomorrow never dies" the other night. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch it again without having "Who writes tomorrow's headlines" stuck in my head throughout. As the film is about about a baddy who owns a media company. I won't say any more than that though as don't want to spoil it.
I will spoil more of this album though as the singles taken from this album are not the only good songs off this album showing the depth of this release. Two of my personal favourites are back to back with "Distance between left and right" and "The Miracle Age". The "Distance between left and right" is so much fun, just a frenzied filled track which is another where you don't know which way its going to go next. Then there is "The Miracle Age". Now I can't actually think of a track that Asylums have done which even comes close to this both in terms of structure and magnitude. This is massive. It's one of those step up songs which gradually builds and builds throughout the track finishing off at a climax. It works wonderfully here and is testament to their progression as a band in terms of song writing.
The majority of this album for me is very positive but I do feel there is a weak link on the album and that is the last track "Dull days". To me the album up until that point has such a feel good vibe to it and this track just brings the tone of that down. I do think this will be track that people can relate to especially with lockdown at the moment but I just don't think it fits in the rest of the album. However overall this is a very good album by Asylums and I thoroughly recommend it. Hopefully the times will come around again when they can tour this album and give it the airing live that it deserves.
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