Metro Station - self-titled Album Review

Review of Metro Station's self-titled album.

Based in Los Angeles and formed in 2006, Metro Station members Trace Cyrus and Mason Musso are respectively the older siblings of Miley Cyrus and Mitchel Musso from the Hannah Montana craze. This debut album was originally released in 2007 but is getting a new push, presumably due to the popularity of the aforementioned younger family members.

On learning that Metro Station have played alongside the likes of Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco and Simple Plan, you might get the impression that their music may fit into the punk-rock genre. This couldn't be much further from the truth. It turns out that this quartet are practitioners of electro-pop, with the type of backing rhythms and beats that are common to cheesy
dance tunes from mainland Europe - and this is most definitely not a good thing. Add a dash of synthesisers and effects from an eighties' video game and the results are something that will hardly have the likes of the Pet Shop Boys quaking. Sure, songs such as 'Seventeen Forever' might put some movement on the dancefloor, but 'Tell Me What To Do' features the type of rapping last witnessed on Robbie Williams' 'Rudebox'. Even the big hit on the record, 'Shake It!' (which went Top Ten in USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia), is such utter tripe that it makes Busted seem like pioneers of quality music. Like the rest of the record, which is thankfully only ten tracks long, there is a lack of quality hook, playing, lyrics or anything else and this is quite frankly one of the worst records this reviewer has come across.

Alex Lai