This selection was chosen by Gen X dad.

Gen X dad says… Maserati, who hail from Athens, Georgia, started out as an instrumental outfit in 2000. Since then they’ve released eight full-length albums, including Enter The Mirror. Over the course of their career they’ve dabbled in synth rock, electronica, and psychedelia, all while developing and maintaining their own sound.

Side A kicks off with the atmospheric instrumental 2020. This segues seamlessly into the Moroder-esque pulse of Warning In The Dark, which features heavy vocoder vocals. Killing Time quickly follows with a blast of soaring guitars, synth pulses, pounding drums, and more vocoder-processed vocals. This track morphs seamlessly once again into the closer for the first side, Der Honig – a fast droning piece of purely instrumental rock.

Welcome To The Second Side cheekily begins side B with some initially lo-fi drum pounding, but before long the vocoder vocals and familiar slabs of guitar and synths are back in the mix. The following Empty bounces between hard rock, near thrash metal, and some bits of industrial stomp in equal measure. The nearly 8-minute Wallwalker closes out the album with a synth pulse echoing the 1980s and guitar riffs reminiscent of David Gilmour’s work on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This is a bit of a fake out though as the latter half of the song morphs into more of a dance track with sampled vocal bits accenting the beat.

Unlike some of their instrumental peers (i.e. Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, etc…), there’s never been much nuance to Maserati’s sound. They’re talented, slick, and know what they want to do. That’s not a bad thing. Enter The Mirror is another solid entry in their discography.

Gen Z son says… The Post-Rock genre has always been something I’ve listened to, and enjoyed, a lot. However, Maserati, who reside in Georgia, are not like your average Mono or Explosions In The Sky. Hell, you probably can’t even call them a Post-Rock band at this point. Enter The Mirror, their newest release, definitely shows that.

We start with 2020, an ambient piece with a hypnotizing, Boards Of Canada-esque synthesizer riff that intrigues the listener before segueing into the 2nd track, A Warning In The Dark. Influenced by the Electropop of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra (and featuring a vocoder), this song fuses Synth-Pop and Post-Rock together into quite an enjoyable tune.

Then, Killing Time and Der Honig turn up the tempo a bit with a two-part Shoegaze song, replicating the noisy pop of such bands as UK act Ride. Welcome To The Other Side, with its Joy Division-reminiscent fusion of Post-Punk and New Wave, is definitely one of the best songs on here. Empty, with its noisy, fast drums and screeching guitar, is more complex and experimental than the other tracks, but it works. And, intentional or not, the subtle nod to Pink Floyd in the appropriately named Wallwalker is simply awesome.

To sum it all up, while Enter The Mirror is short (only 7 tracks), it is unapologetically diverse with its influences, and will definitely appeal to any – and every – rock fan.