March 25 — “Suicide by Star” by God Is An Astronaut

God Is An Astronaut

If you only listen to one song today, make it “Suicide By Star” by God Is An Astronaut (2005, from the album All Is Violent, All Is Bright).
God Is An Astronaut is a four-piece instrumental post-rock band from Glen of The Downs, Ireland. Their “town”, from what I can gather isn’t so much a town as it is a Nature Reserve. It’s just down the road from a small village called Delgany (population 4,777). Whatever you want to call it, it’s a small place.
The band was founded in 2002 by twin brothers Torston and Niels Kinsella. They’ve released five albums and an EP. Last December, just ahead of the band’s 10 year anniversary, they remastered and reissued their back catalog.

Unlike many bands of their ilk, they make songs that are of “normal” length. Somewhere between three and seven minutes. They don’t do these epic, sweeping 18-minute anthems. They figure that they can accomplish in five minutes what some post-rock bands take 18 minutes to accomplish. And they do it without drawing things out and being repetitive. Not that they’re better. Just that they take less time getting to the point.

In the case of today’s song, they take 4:33.
“Suicide By Star” by God Is An Astronaut

Just as Low defiantly and ridiculously eschews the “slowcore” classification, GIAA wishes that you wouldn’t call them “post-rock”. I don’t know what else to call them. “Ambient instrumental rock” just doesn’t cut it. They are what they are whether they like the name or not. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

They are not a “Christian band” and religion plays no role in their music. I remember once reading an article (which I can’t find right now) in which they said something like “what we believe is our business, and it has nothing to do with our music”. In fact, they get their band name from a line in the 1990 Clive Barker slasher movie “Nightbreed”. The line goes:

Everything is true. God is an astronaut. Oz is over the rainbow. Midian is where the monsters live

The reference in that movie line is to “ancient astronomy”, which is the belief that all deities from all religions were extraterrestrials who came to Earth. Human beings, according to that school of thought, are either descended from or created by those ancient astronauts. This isn’t in any way an academic school of thought. Instead, it’s used mostly in science fiction novels.

Again though, the band gets their name from that line, and there’s no attachment other than that.

In today’s song, I like the sudden shifting of gears at 2:54. It’s mostly a light and airy song to that point. It gets much harder and much more grounded in a hurry. The guitar gets a lot heavier and the drums are almost heavy metal drums. When we hit the 3:45 mark, the drums go from “kinda, almost metal” to “metal”, complete with a double kick drum. It’s not the style of drumming that I usually go for, and I’m not even sure why I like it here, but it brings the song back down to earth after letting it soar pretty high. I might even say that it makes the song plummet down to earth. I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Whatever the case, I like it.

You can buy All Is Violent, All Is Bright, or any of the other remastered albums from the band’s web store here, in your choice of WAV, mp3, or CD format.