This album pissed me off. Vampirates spent 2024 releasing monthly singles leading to the December 13th, 2024 album release of #trending, something every music marketer will tell you is necessary in the digital age. The album’s sardonic title holds up thematically to the lyrical content of this nearly 18-minute squall of Zappa-violence.
The intro track “WTF?” shows the headspace the artists are working from, an introspective jab at being a creative that prioritizes riffs over substance in the punk community. The introspective deconstructing this album does in the lyrical content is extremely relatable in tracks like “So Cali Awkward” with lines like “I like going to shows and hearing all new bands, but try to talk to me? I don’t know what to do with my hands.”
There are some fun band-friendship songs like “Alluring Air” and “Good Time” that give me the same band guy touchy-feelies those old blink-182 documentaries used to give me. Those tracks are extremely catchy alongside the dank riffage that Vampirates are known for. We mix the introspection into those relationships we need in tracks like “The Breaks” and there’s a sense of difficulty in communicating the positive in your life.
“Party Line” bemoans the political divisions of the modern world. Even more poignant with this album dropping from a purple state during an election year. So you can imagine the reasoning behind many of this album’s hardest hitters like “Downfall Collective” and “Cancel Culture”, if you barely feel right in your own skin, how do you build a community in wasteland of consumption and self-destruction?
Empathy.
Vampirates managed to make an album so painfully close to home that I feel like they’re mad at me. That’s why this album pisses me off. Check it out!