Starbenders The Beast Goes On

Starbenders bend genres on their newest album and stake a claim to becoming one of the 21st Century’s best bands by bringing the sounds of the past into the present and beyond.

Whenever a band opts for an all black and white album cover, starts dressing mostly in black, is releasing their second or third major label album, which takes on some darker themes, be they political, spiritual, or somewhere in between, it’s a pretty safe bet that they are about to take their music to the next level. Go back through your vinyl collection and see if I’m wrong. It happened for U2 with War, It happened for Pearl Jam with Vs. It happened for The Smiths with The Queen is Dead. It happened for The Clash with London Calling. All of these albums were 2nd or 3rd full length album releases, and all of them had black and white (or at least mostly black and white) album covers. All of this signaled a darker, more serious note lyrically and musically than was evidenced on their previous albums. For Atlanta’s Starbenders, their latest album, The Beast Goes On, is where “all of this” is happening with them. 

Never really fitting the iTunes categorization of their being “Glam Rock,” Starbenders often bended the many genres of rock music into albums full of amalgamated rock composed of hard rock, pop rock, and slightly goth rock. The “glam rock” came mostly from the band’s fascination with everything David Bowie, and the way they dressed (or in the case of their lead guitarist, failed to dress-he often went shirtless in concert and in videos). Now, for at least the duration of the band’s new video for the album’s lead single and title track, “The Beast Goes On,” he not only wears a shirt the whole time, but like the rest of the band, it’s black. It seems to do the band, and their new album, a disservice spending so much time writing about their look when it’s irrelevant to how good the music is here on The Beast Goes On. For a band with a uniquely, and purposely, cultivated look, it is only appropriate to mention it in overall relation to their new found claim to be one of the best and most serious hard rock bands of the 21st Century. 

I don’t make this assertion lightly. The art of the rock album is a dying one. For a newer band to take the time to write, record, and package a full length album (even if it was released over the past few years as a smattering of singles) is quite the accomplishment these days. Their first major length LP, Love Potions, which was released on February 14, 2020, had several stand out tracks, as did its slightly weaker follow up, 2023s Take Back The Night, but those albums weren’t nearly as solid from top to bottom as The Beast Goes On is. Opening with the album’s title track, the rock and roll ride starts off heavier here than anything from Love Potions and its follow up, and it gets even more heavy with the second track, “Nothing Ever Changes.” Here the band really revels in their hard rock roots. Both of these tracks resist the new album being pigeonholed as just another “glam rock” outing from a retro sounding rock band. “Chantilly Boy,” the album’s third track, swerves the band into a pop rock sound that hints at the album’s pop rock core composed of “hello goodbye” and “Saturday.” Singer/bandleader Kimmie Shelter’s wail and rhythm guitar playing power the whole affair as they effortlessly move between hard rock screams and hushed proclamations. 

“hello goodbye” is destined to be near the top of my 2026 Apple Music Replay. It’s already played on repeat more times than any other song this year on my iPhone. Perhaps one of the least heavy songs on the album, despite it having no shortage of wall of guitar riffage, it is the perfect area rock song. It speaks to a certain level of restraint that is necessary to write a song that fills up the air so fully without polluting it with an overabundance of soloing. While Starbenders definitely let loose with a 70s style guitar solo, more often than not on several tracks, they know how to let a good riff breathe and in turn take your breath away. “Hello goodbye,” and to a lesser extent “Saturday,” serve as a nice counterpoint to the heaviness that infuses “Nothing Ever Changes” and the guitar driven 80s homage songs “Summon My Heart” and “Somebody Else” later in the album, which in turn serve as a nice pallet cleaner for the revival of the arena rock sound that propels “To Be Alright” and “June.” The unrestrained pop punk riffs of “21st Century (Digital Boy)” that rounds out the album brings this masterful trip through a lyrical rock landscape of nearly 50 years of rock music genres to a satisfying end without ever feeling like a rehash of rock glories, or bands, past. 

So what about that more serious tone, subject matter, darker themes, etc. that define a band’s “taking it to the next level” album? Well, a healthy dose of occult imagery mixed with mainstream religious imagery rules supreme here. On the album cover, Kimmie grasps a rosary in her jaws seeming to betray a desire for a more visceral spiritual experience. An experience that, if doesn’t suit her taste, will be spit out vociferously. It’s all metaphor though, as it rightly should be considered. The “beast” that “goes on” in the album’s title track is revealed to be the cult-like dedication we, as humans, often indulge when in love, be it healthy or not. The warnings issued to the “chantilly boy” of the track of the same name are valid ones in this age of anti-trans sentiment (especially as it exists in the Deep South-where Starbenders hail from). It doesn’t take an English major to discern what the band is talking about, commenting on, and combating with their lyrics. 

Having experienced the band live at The RadioRoom in Greenville, SC, just a few hours from their hometown of Atlanta, I cannot wait to see them bring this new set of songs to life. Starbenders are a powerful live experience, especially in the smaller venues they are currently playing. I hope after their current European tour wraps up they play some dates closer to home and I get to see them up close again before the arena rock songs that permeate The Beast Goes On actually are filling up arenas.