Is it a curse? The metaverse.
An electronic rock band from Bergen, Norway just released their new album Media Consumption Pyramid on September 29th, the band is Datarock. Like many of their previous albums, Media Consumption Pyramid is a post-punk revival of several mid ’70’s and ’80’s rock influences.
The album opens with a blazing saxophone solo in “Armadillo Pt. II.” When the vocals come in, they are subtle and deep. Their lyrical articulation is held with exaggeration, the words blurring together. The next song, “Heart Shaped Circle” begins with billowing vocals that reveal the repeating hook, “love is a heart shaped circle of life.” Its disco/tech synth transcends listeners to another decade.
Track three “Metaverse” comes next with more extreme stimulation. The vocals start breathy, then become mechanical. The beat keeps quick time like a metronome. It comments on futuristic concepts with lyrics like, “Is it a curse? / The metaverse.” Many of the song titles on Media Consumption Pyramid allude to abstract, non-physical environments; for example, the track “Rabbit Hole.” On a surface level, the hole just resembles a rabbit’s burrow. Think deeper and it might resemble a downward mental spiral. The lyrics, “There is no place like home / So why do so many feel so alone?” and “You are not alive / You are just a ghost,” hint at an underlying emotional unrest.
“DISCObedience” mixes rock guitar and hard basslines with pop dance rhythms and scaling synths that sound like a videogame. Datarock brings back the saxophone feature for this track. The instrumentals on track six “Tick Tock” keep the rock wave going. The lyrics introduce a double meaning for the track title, “Tick tock, tick tock / Time is running out” and “Work our political Tik Tok dance.” Datarock references politics and encourages “Everybody [to] take a stance” and “Try to secure a fair election.”
Media Consumption Pyramid reawakens and reimagines past musical influences with conceptually modern lyrics. In the track “Video Store,” the lyrics compare nuanced experiences of Zoom and quarantine with generations that had “Grown up with video / Before YouTube and Blu-Ray.” Track nine “Digital Life” links social media and technology to our chaotic political climate, “What is a dark post? Customized face ads? Where are your knee pads / Behavioral Science, Machine Learning, AI, their limits are sky high.”
Datarock uses music to share their relationship and concern with digital takeover. The final track “Armadillo Pt. I” circles back to the obscure armadillo imagery from the first track. As the lyrics mention, Armadillo in Spanish means “little armored one;” could this be another Datarock double meaning?
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