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Julian Casablancas and the Voidz look like The Warriors. They sound like John Carpenterminator. Tyranny is the sound of 80s New York sewer grime and gristle, Mean Streets remade into a cacophonic opera with a chorus of blood-speckled Travis Bickles screaming arias. When Eli Roth or Ty West remakes They Live and Roddy Rowdy Piper has to wear a hearing aid to complement his sunglasses, Tyranny is what it will sound like.
Bookended by tracks alluding to combat, the words to opening salvo, “Take Me in Your Army,” are cooed by what sounds like Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. The song’s a ghoulish menace, tailor-made for back alley ne’er do well trick or treating. When Bieber eggs his next house, this is the song he’ll be playing just before the egging. “Crunch Punch” will have all the kids doing the patented Pig Pen of Peanuts lore zombie dance in-between bouts of bobbing for apples. “M.utually A.ssured D.estruction” is built around the heavy metal drum setting on a Roland Boss Dr-770 drum machine and tears the roof off in two and a half minutes.
Quite a few songs surpass the five-minute mark. “Human Sadness” is Julian’s ten-minute attempt at vaulting Paul Williams’ opus from the album they both featured on – last year’s Grammy winner, Random Access Memories. The grinding beat to “Xerox” is bound to back the requisite Jessica Alba dance scene in the next Sin City. “Nintendo Blood” slows things down into a Castlevania haze with the Casablancas croon at its most Strokesian.
When The Streets released his debut album, Original Pirate Material, he offered some logo-emblazoned cigarette lighters as part of the promotion. Twelve years later, Casablancas gives us the Promo 2.0 – lighter-sheath with built-in USB of Tyranny (as seen on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon), complete with retro-Kenner rad action figure packaging. Come 2026, what kind of gimmick will our vape-spewing digital twins be hawking?
