Album Review: Skrillex

Skrillex,
Bangarang

You would have to be pretty much living under a rock to have evaded the bass wobbles and loud beats know as dubstep, sweeping over the nation and reflecting the sound of a new generation of music listeners. Leading this noisy army of sound is Skrillex. Sonny Moore, better known by his stage name Skrillex, is only 23 years old and has already turned himself into a pop music icon. It seems you can’t go a day without hearing his filthy-raw bass drops being blared from somebody’s open car window or topped-out iPod headphones. Hell, even farmers driving their tractors downtown have the stuff cranked. So like anything else that everyone around me seems to enjoy, I put off listening to it in a recreational capacity for as long as I could. Alas, my curiosity got the better of me recently when I sat down to give my full and undivided attention to Skrillex’s newest EP, Bangarang.

There are a few collaborations on the album, including an appearance by The Doors on the clubby track Breakn’ a Sweat. There isn’t a lot to say about the track, or the rest of the record for that matter. The album plays out like a broken record, and I mean that in every sense possible. Is the disc skipping? Nope, it’s just another Skrillex song! The glitchy, over-the-top tunes get old all too fast, with every song falling into the same dubstep formula as the last. Listen to Kyoto or The Devil’s Den and you have everything Skrillex is in a nutshell. It sounds like a kid who got ahold of Logic Studio and raped it with club and DJ clichés. Now I see the appeal: it’s ridiculous, loud, and dance-inspired club music. But a one-trick pony only rides so far, and Bangarang barely makes it out of the gate.