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FStop Releases Hyperion Rising on ARC
Music is far more electronic, far less bouncy
Sulari, Suldanor
May 15, 5054


On Hyperion Rising, FStop makes music for an aging fan base and branches out to electro pop

Long gone are the days of FStop's skapunk inflected brand of pop. On the band's most recent release, Hyperion Rising, which was nearly three years in the making, we see a band who is, like many of their contemporaries, aging with their fanbase. As the fans and the bands enter their mid 20s, topics other than "being taken seriously" or "finding one's identity" or even "how to behave at parties" are replaced by songs that start to consider settling down, maybe starting a family, and all the while trying to remain true to that identity that you built all those years ago.

This is the tone on Hyperion Rising. Where it discusses relationships, the band talks more about relationships that are stable and longstanding enough to be taken for granted. On more than one song, Billie Pepper, who wrote the majority of this record, sings about marriage and having kids. It talks about loving unfaithful partners, it talks about the desires for domesticity. The songs are also far more quiet and introspective, for the most part. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but Pepper has said in recent interviews that her mind was not on massive concerts during the writing of this record but more on home, and both Teddy Singh and Tomas Edwards have gotten married between the release of Suburban Hellscape and Hyperion Rising. It is a very conservative album, especially compared to the band's earlier, snotty, devil-may-care offerings.

Fans responded well to the more mature sounds. Most praised the new wave moves made by the band which bordered on electropop in some places. The drums and guitars are still (mostly) analog, but there are synthesizer touches on the record that stand out more for their absence in previous albums, than anything unusual about their inclusion here. All this is not to say that the album is not a solid rock and roll album. Instead, it tries to incorporate a sound to make it stand somewhat apart from the Dana and Suldanor sound that gave rise to the band's popularity. Critics especially praised FStop's bold production choices (this is the first FStop record that the band itself produced).

"We tried to make a record that sounds like something that all five Districts can enjoy," said Pepper. "When we were preparing to write this record, we had been on a quasi-hiatus, needing to just chill after the blow up of Hellscape, and we all went to hear music in places like Kaliburg, and Vrassa, and over to Neveras City, and we tried to incorporate some of those influences." The effect is obvious: FStop retains strong punk and reggae influences of the Dana/Sulari scene that they came up in, but ventures into Kaliburg RF on songs like "Don't Let it Go Away" and "Former Love Interest", the cabaret rustic rock and gritpunk of Vrassa in songs like "Bathtub" and "Sacharine Girl" and the Stoney fusion vibes of Neveras on "Staring Contest" and "Who will be?" Over all, we can generally see similarities between Hyperion Rising and 420's recent release Electricity, with 420 going far out into left field, while FStop holds down the home front.

The Record generally expands FStop's sound, a fact which may be the most progressive thing about this album: these are solid steps forward for the band. It also comes out as rumors of a new GanJam look increasingly likely. If there is a new GanJam, FStop will likely play the festival along with bands like 420 and The Progeny and then the merger of the sounds will be complete in all but name.

Hyperion Rising is only seven minutes shorter than Electricity, but it seems that 420 was the lightning rod for the critics, because Hyperion Rising got none of the negative reviews about length or unoriginality that critics blasted 420 for. The record has already gone 4x Gold.