BORN ASTRAY – DANGEROUS

New Orleans based, Born Astray, release their latest single, Dangerous, today (21 October 2022) and we here at the Send Me Your Ears studio have been taking several listens to this powerful alt rock track today.

Born Astray are Jesse Roger on guitar, Ryan Henriquez on bass, Sean Doria behind drums, and vocals fronted by Cody Pala. Their forthcoming debut album, Kinsey Six Genesis, is due for release in the Spring.

The album’s theme is of the challenges met my Cody Pala having come out in his late teens and then feeling as though he’s had a second “coming of age” in his twenties. He speaks of feeling unauthentic in his teens and the album addresses themes around this era in his life.

Dangerous starts with a filtered EQ section, giving the song much more power and effect when the full sound comes in. There’s some great use of stops in this track that work well to build energy. We especially like the stop with a little laugh in it!

The whole song has a slightly grungey indie rock feel to it, with some definite punk nods in there too. We felt moments of Linkin Park throughout the track – especially in the choruses.

The rise and fall in this track is done extremely well, with the use of stops, but also with some great builds. There’s a lovely “floaty” guitar break down section with some really interesting drum patterns that builds back into the chorus which we’re now finding ourselves singing along with!

Kudos to Pala for the quality and consistency of his high vocals throughout the choruses. There’s a great technique used in the vocals here and the addition of some harmonies make them even stronger.

The song returns to a filtered end, in the same way as the beginning and this serves to emphasise the aggression and power that we felt in the middle section of the track.

From a production perspective, we felt that a boost around 160Hz would fill a gap in the sound and add some extra punch making the whole track a little warmer. Bringing the bass guitar up in the mix should help to fill this gap too. The top snare mic is peaking at around 190Hz so a careful surgical EQ cut here would help reduce that tone. To our ears, a small cut around 800Hz and a small and wide boost centred around 8kHz would balance out some honky tones and increase the overall brightness and presence in the track.

An exciting and powerful track for fans of alt /emo rock and one which will definitely appeal to fans of Linkin Park, Three Days Grace or perhaps Disturbed.