Trixter
New Audio Machine

American band Trixter is another on of these finds in archeological digs that Frontiers have made recently, with no album in over twenty years’ time and only two and a cover album before this you realise that this isn’t the most successful band ever from the eighties. They did have some moderate success in the eighties with one gold certified album and one top100 in the Billboard list. Their new album is called New Audio Machine and I don’t think that its cover art will attract anyone into buying it but maybe the name of this classic band can, after all they were 29th in a VH-1 hair band countdown. So maybe there are some who know about the band and likes them, for me this band is new to me although the video added to this review is from an older album as there was no new video to be found.

Comparing the music of this old video to this new album the sound can be said to be similar, only the production is more modern and better, otherwise it is stylistically similar to the old. Melodic rock with a catchy sound and sing-along choruses. I think that this album is stylistically very much standard for the genre, there is nothing new or innovative about it, and the eleven tracks, 42 minutes don’t show for that much variation either. Sure, you don’t need to be unique or innovative to be good but it sure doesn’t hurt.

This album starts out very well with two good tracks in Drag Me Down and Get it On which are a great opening pair with the second one being a track that you just have to sing along with. After those tracks comes more or less nothing interesting, just dull everyday tracks that could have been done by anyone in the genre and discarded by most, just the track Tattoos & Misery stands out amongst the last nine tracks. The thing is that the album starts with tracks making you want to award the album a high rating but in the end having the rating of four saved by Tattoos & Misery as the other tracks are boring enough to merit a garbage toss to be honest.

Thing is that this album feels like something good that is being wasted, the good tracks are really good but the rest is uninteresting and feels like they are tracks that should have been thrown away before making the album as they are just boring. So there are potential in the band as we can see but the question is: why don’t they make all the tracks in such a quality? Are they just a very average band that just happened to manage three good tracks for this album? I don’t know as I haven’t heard the earlier stuff although the video track isn’t particularly good if I’m honest.

I have a hard time really seeing a real point with this album, it has some good stuff but most of it is indifferent and pointless music that is as much fun as a game of baseball, which is probably the most boring thing you can imagine. So sometimes amused and sometimes bored to death is the lasting impression of this album.