Julian Casablancas is back at it again.

Best known for his work as the frontman for the classic garage rock revival group, "The Strokes" (themselves best known for hits like "Reptilia" and "Last Nite"), Casablancas has been spending the last few years working with a new group. Formerly known as "Julian Casablancas and the Voidz," the experimental rock group unveils their new identity as simply the "Voidz" with their new release "Virtue," the sophomore follow up to their 2014 release "Tyranny."

In stark contrast to "Tyranny," an album defined by its dark moods and themes, "Virtue" opens with a twangy, slightly crunchy guitar riff more reminiscent of an early "Strokes" song, followed by a leap into a synthy, atmospheric tune, aptly named "Leave It In My Dreams," with a driving beat that feels as though it would have been at home on "Comedown Machine."

However, it shifts quickly from this daydream of a tune—it's a trap.

We're misled slightly with the opening of the next song. It opens with a kind of sassy, sneering little synth line that feels like the opening to a more techy, poppy track. Then, it plunges us headfirst into a bass synth-driven military march accompanied by an alarm-like synth and guitar pairing that sounds like something out of a dystopian nightmare (which I mean in the very best way).

Awakening from the pleasant daydream of the opening track, we march into the reality of the album with "QYURRYUS," which lays out the tone of most of the rest of the album. In lines like, "Minor but major / I was gonna say / That's not your problem / at least not today," Casablancas outlines one of the major themes of the album, political unrest, and calls out public apathy towards it, mocking the procrastination of the uninformed who live complacently in a time of turmoil.

Between these verses are quickly spat -out lines "Hot track / hot dress," as if to mock the seemingly meaningless lyrical content of pop music and the broader public's general disinterest in deeper thought.

We see a shift from this into a more compelled and concerned portion of the song as the phrase "I lost what's mine" comes to be repeated over and over again in a cadence that resembles one that was popular with British new wave pop bands of the 1980s. The repetition of the line is also sandwiched between spoken word phrases like "trust in systems of the law," which are read with a kind of mock enthusiasm that suggests a robotic, austere quality, like an authoritarian voice commanding citizens of a dystopian future to fall in line.

Following that is the most obviously political song so far, "Pyramid of Bones," which begins with a very ripping hard rock riff. In the song, Casablancas sings from the perspective of a tyrant, possibly a personification of all evil, singing "I'm a devil / I'm a villain" and, in classic Orwellian fashion, "Lies are simple / Truth is complex" and "murder in the name of personal comfort."

In the chorus, he seems to be taking on the voice of a revolutionary or more "woke" individual, shouting "Don't you ever listen to the white man's lies."

Casablancas makes a lot of assertions of "wokeness" like this throughout the album, at times to the point of annoyance and redundancy. In that way, and in its use of interesting sonic textures and composition, the album is very reminiscent of my last review, Jack White's "Boarding House Reach."

However, I think Casablancas pulls off the whole anti-corporate-whistleblower-vibe a lot better. There are a few eye-rolling moments here and there, particularly with the song "Think Before You Drink," in which Casablancas, to a folksy lo-fi acoustic guitar, laments the "lies" and "poison" that were given to him when he entered public school, but luckily it doesn't match the obnoxiousness of White's album.

Other songs find a kind of playful and yet still heavy way to address these issues, like "We're Where We Were," wherein he compares the state of the USA to that of Germany in 1939.

The songs all have a very eclectic blending of sounds and influences, while still sounding interrelated and cohesive. "ALieNNatioN" and "Pink Ocean" have a very hip-hop inspired vibe to them. I imagine someone on Sound Cloud has already sampled one or both of them for use as a backing track.

Lastly, one thing I found that the album does consistently well is instill a persisting sense of doom and helplessness from the moment we're conscripted into the march of "QYURRYUS" that never fully leaves and ultimately culminates in the droning melancholy of "Pointlessness," a track which opens with several measures of solo organ droning on in abject misery, a recurring riff reminiscent of "Moonlight Sonata."

When Casablancas' voice first chimes in, there's a hint of redemption to the darkness, but this little flicker of hope is quickly stamped out as the main refrain of the song is introduced: "What does it matter?"

In spite of the impending nightmare that the album seems to predict like a squalid man wearing a sandwich board on a street corner, it's a beautifully crafted Jeremiad of an album with a bit of killer music sandwiched between the doomsday warnings. And, if you like just getting down and not worrying about the messages, it's just as good for that.

Much like the chaotic world around us that "Virtue" describes, this album is a great time if you can stop worrying about what a drag it is for five minutes.

8.5/10

Favorites: "QYURRYUS," "Pointlessness," "Wink," "Pink Ocean"
Least Favorite: "Think Before You Drink"