In some sort of parallel universe where everything was average, Casanatra would be the ideal band. Casanatra are the band that someone who’d never heard Soundgarden would make if they’d only been explained to them through the medium of charades: Not particularly bad but not really good either.
Casanatra play languid rock music that sounds like a composite of all the most popular hard-rock music produced in America over the past twenty years. It struggles to keep its head above water in a sea of shrugged shoulders and apathy, songs melt into each other and are difficult to tell apart, like a crowd of people wearing the same colour of shirt. ‘Split The Atom Again’ is like ‘Rated-R’ in the hands of less able musicians, middling and unremarkable.
It’s about halfway through the entire album before there’s any change from the opening meander and even then it’s hard to maintain interest as the change of pace in ‘Alien Me’ quickly reverts back to form and into the familiar ground of mediocrity. The best song on the album is ‘Empty Goldmine’ but that’s maybe because it’s the first track and the ideas don’t seem as tired that early on. The rest of the album plays out in a disappointingly similar fashion.
Casanatra are not a bad band, there’s hints of a good idea here and there but nothing really comes to fruition. It all means that ‘Split The Atom Again’ is uninspired and forgettable. There’s already similar sounding albums that are miles better than this, so why settle for less?
