It is time to bend some brains and make some heads go crooked. Here we have something that is akin to a clever riddle, a genre-bending ride of prog, mathcore, post-hardcore, post-rock, and math-rock that feels dressed up in science fiction garb. A band of inventiveness and seamless flow that will make you believe the moon landing actually happened, here we have Star Thief, the newest album by the eccentric Two Brothers.
Whatever you read here is insufficient to describe this album. Star Thief has so much going on all the time that you are better off just hitting play than reading this. On a basic level, this album is most suited for people drawn to prog, math-rock, and post genres. From the get-go, Two Brothers kick things off gently with an acoustic track on "Only An Introduction." It is simple enough, but then the breadth of sound truly opens up once "Giving Up The Ghost" gets moving. Two Brothers can cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Tracks seamlessly shift and meld with alchemy-like ease. Sometimes they feel more like a jam track (see: "Wildly Inappropriate"), sometimes they channel band bands like Botch (see: "Contrast" and "Off Color Acknowledgement"). But no matter, they manage to keep things weird and unpredictable.
Star Thief is the kind of album that can please a lot of people but will still leave most in a state of disarray and bewilderment. Their Bandcamp summarizes them as "A little bit of math rock, a little bit of not." It is accurate, and simultaneously undersells and oversells the band, depending on your perspective. There is some kind of mad science fiction to this, and it is glorious in its constellation of sounds. Maybe if Pinback had spent some time ingesting more mathcore, post-hardcore, and emo, this is what they would have turned out.
Star Thief deserves to be experienced, preferably with a pair of headphones and a quiet room. Who knows, it just might levitate you in its brilliance. Or woo one with its galaxy span of sounds. It is weird and it is glorious. You can preorder the album here, and find the band these links here.
