Bastille – “Wild World”

Who doesn’t love concept albums about a dystopian future and bleak worldview of humankind? I know I do. This is a review of one.

Sure, London-based indie pop act Bastille doesn’t fit the typical “wannabe Dream Theater prog act” image of the band that makes sci-fi concept albums, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t deliver.

And yes, I know that most of you know Bastille as the band who provided the song “Pompeii” as the theme song of the 2015 film “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” (an excellent film by the way) but there’s more to them than that. Releasing an hour-plus, 19-song slab of music (albeit one that doesn’t sound unlike Imagine Dragons) is no easy task, especially with the fact in mind that the majority of concept albums fall prey to the trap of focusing too intensely on the story and not enough of the music. However, Bastille (for the most part) pulls it off.

Any fans that the band won with 2013’s “Bad Blood” will not be disappointed with “Wild World” in any way. It’s chock-full of the same catchy indie-pop that their audience has grown to love, and that is in no way a bad thing. Songs like “The Currents” (although heavy on the movie-sampling trope that haunts concept albums everywhere) are just as catchy and likely to stick in people’s heads as anything off of “Bad Blood.”

For Fans of: Imagine Dragons, The 1975, British Indie Pop