4 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Keith Souza

Yeah, vocals – take a hike.

On Athletic Automaton’s debut, the drums-and-guitar duo’s basketball jersey-wearing shtick worked to establish them as post-Arab on Radar noisemakers, guided mostly in that comparison by ex-AoRer Craig Kureck’s noodly guitar. It was good, but also felt mostly like distraction: the fuzzed up recording and shouty vocals gave it a kind of off-the-cuff vibe; a side project.

After an intriguing (if uneven) teamup with AIDS Wolf, AA seemingly springboarded from that to wholly figuring things out: A Journey Through Roman’s Empire blows past “sounds like” comparisons, and gives the band a fitting, non-nepotismed spot on the Skin Graft catalogue. It strays a bit too far at points, but truly only rarely, leveraging big ol’ riffs to build out an album that surprises, amidst its bombast, how poppy it can be. Granted, my ears probably have a looser definition of pop, but if you can wrap your head around Kureck’s slightly offbeat playing – a purposeful affectation – and a kind of built-in stop/start way of structuring melodies, the duo give you legit themes and a kind of verse-chorus-verse structure to these tunes. Taken alongside the themed song titles, you could build out a little narrative here, something something ancient Rome, and observing the sports, the entertainment, and the culture; that’s not really important, but indicative of the way this isn’t all just racket – early Lightning Bolt may be a good top-down comparison, but Kureck and drummer Patrick Crump build in more nuance; more moments to breathe. It really is amazing how much they’re able to get from (primarily) two instruments, and even when a song gets stuck in a seeming loop, they’re shifting pace or pitch here and there to keep things moving.

Some of the more ambient / experimental moments are where it goes astray: The Gladiators Sandal Fight goes towards this in its final section, and though it provides a good pause, it goes past the point of being a coda and starts to draw attention to its wandering nature instead. Extend this to the 16-minute closer, The Smaller Ball Game, which mostly abandons percussion for keys and bass-like burbles. It’s not without merit, but it feels unfocused and improv-y in comparison to the preceding tracks, especially when the penultimate Hands Without Feet would’ve been a great place to stop.

I’ll credit producer Keith Souza with helping to shape this up. Souza has been all around noise rock for years, but has also stuck with some groups that go into slightly more layered genres or sub-genres, where it pays to be able to differentiate the different pieces that go into the noise. For AA, by focusing a bit more on drawing the ‘song’ out of their songs, they’re able to stay just as loud, but add in more identity and storytelling to the mix.