The Ataris
So Long Astoria

THE REVIEW

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After selling tons of copies and exhausting the whole world with exasperatingly long tours, here are our four young champions of the losers back on track with a brand new album on a major label. Let's get it out of the way: this "So Long, Astoria" sucks.

Incredible but true, this is the worst work the Ataris have ever published (and that's saying something) so far: even the bubble-punk patina and some very weak incursions into emo-core are gone, leaving only pounds of syrupy and sugary melodies for fourteen-year-old lovers full of pimples and who have absolutely no idea what punk is.
Before talking about the album, one should reflect and understand why the Ataris are considered "more punk" than the likes of Blink, Sum 41, and the rest; compared to them, the mentioned ones seem like Dillinger Escape Plan. "So Long, Astoria", starting with the title-track that opens the album, is the most stupid, useless, and flat thing that the "alternative" music market can offer now. As already mentioned, the pace halves compared to the previous "End Is Forever" (which in the end wasn't so bad), so the quartet gives us as many as thirteen "similar ballads" all the same and very boring where it's hard to find any track (or even a single) that saves the work from disaster.

"In this diary" and "My reply" seem like leftovers from the previous work, while episodes like "Radio #2" or the deadly "Looking back on today" seem made to remind the audience that they play "emo-punk" (in a broad sense, of course). But please… bands that fool people like this should be banned from the Planet and prohibited from recording any more albums; unfortunately, however, they will sell thousands of copies and will continue for a long time to numb idiotic kids who will claim to be punk just because they steal Coca-Cola with their little girlfriend.
The only hope is that they vanish like a fart in the vast music market without leaving a trace, even if once again the big market of trash music has won over those who sweat to release good original albums played with heart or at least sincerely. Surely, after listening to this stuff four times in a row, I think I'll never set foot in Astoria by mistake.

Now I'll go play a nice album by Anal Cunt which, after 57 minutes of this stuff, I definitely need it.