Nanoblu – Hero of the World – Album Review

Pop, EDM, and metal outfit Nanoblu’s latest effort, Hero of the World, has one goal…Okay, more than one goal: to offer escape; to create happiness; to offer danceable, catchy messages of positivity, motivation, and inspiration. Hero of the World is here to help minimize stress and get you through that daily mountain of tough and touchy stuff. Ready to sing along, loudly, in the car, and thoroughly lose those mundane human blues? Let’s hit the highlights.

What we’re digging (i.e., those aforementioned highlights)…

One of the group’s personal favorites, “Limitless,” kicks off with spacey chimes and a brief bass buzz. The electro-dance beat begins, and the vocals arrive, almost robotic in their lyrical dissemination. Transported to a dance floor somewhere in space, “Limitless” offers words of encouragement while encouraging liberating dance moves.

Another group favorite, “We’re on It,” begins with growling organ underneath an acoustic drum pattern. With mostly spoken lyrics, the chorus, a welcome changeup, is sung/spoken in layers both serious/playful. Featuring gurgling, blipping, and chalky, expansive synths, “We’re on It” will definitely inject a little digital confidence.

“Bliss Remix” offers a straight acoustic drum beat and a few opening electric guitar stabs. This is definitely leaning a bit on the Pet Shop Boys, one of Nanoblu’s espoused influences. There are some interesting, roboticizing vocal effects here, and the sounds of spouting and clashing machinery. This song may induce hip twists in the style of barely coordinated androids.

“With My Girlfriend” is cosmically attuned with flashy synth beams, gurgles, and fat synth pads. A soundtrack from a ‘70s/‘80s-era sci-fi flick, “With My Girlfriend” has, in my opinion, the strongest sounds, tightest performances, and sharpest production of the bunch (and, it happens to be a personal favorite).

“Electro Baby” features tinny voices in a distant, from-the-clouds delay. It’s a radio transmission projected by floating, programmable nano-clouds; it’s a dance anthem soundtracking the quick and pulse-fast lives of mechanically enhanced humans below. It’s a command to dance, to beam one’s uniqueness from the indiscernible circuiting of a billion blinking lives.

“Electro Buzz Remix” features robotic, delayed proclamations and quaking aluminum dance beats. It’s a non-stop, digital dance virus infecting everyone with only casual password protection. You simply nibble the software, and you’re moving. Dancing. Unable to stop the quick, erratic, spark-spraying swaying.

“Magical Memories” begins with an almost Stranger Things-inspired analog synth lead. And then it’s a casual, seductive chant over pulsing horns and blistering plastic percussion. With bendy, vocoder-like voices, synth sprinkles, and then a raining, airy synth chorus, “Magical Memories” lifts the human dream above mechanical mundanities.

“One Mindset” features whooshing jet streams, modulating beats, and penetrating laser beams as a robotic narrator echoes motivational mantras. Switching between hollow, crashing, and almost tropical percussion, “One Mindset” ends as aggressively, as immediately, as it began.

But is it good?

Hero of the World is, in fact, otherworldly, and very much a message from, and to, the future. It’s a soundtrack to inspire the human soul, and motivate the soul’s impressionable machinery. It’s a call to be happy, live peacefully, know joy, and release, and be excited by, any contemporary expectations. If you want to shed your terrestrial cares and embark on the hero’s journey – the kind involving an awful lot of play and dancing – let Hero of the World infect you with some happiness-sustaining software. Recommended.

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BELOW: Listen to Nanoblu and check them out on Soundcloud, YouTube, ReverbNation, Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music. Please support Nanoblu by visiting them online and playing, downloading, and/or purchasing their music. And, as always, thank you for supporting real music.