Audio Antihero, Reissues & The Passing of Time

'There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time', the title of the short-but-brilliant album that The Superman Revenge Squad Band gave the world back in 2013, may well be the truest ten words ever to grace my iTunes library. There really isn't anything more frightening than the passing of time - it happens so damn quickly (I can't believe, for example, that it's been almost two years since I reviewed There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time), and once it's happened, there's no way to make it un-happen.

The music industry, mind you, LOVES the passing of time. It gives them an excuse to recycle their old stock, to make more money on the same old product by adding nothing more than a smattering of crap bonus tracks (boo, hiss!) and telling everyone to re-buy something they already own simply because it's a particular number of years old now.

Even Audio Antihero, the self-professed "specialists in commercial suicide" who released There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time back in 2013, have decided to get in on the reissue game; to be fair to 'em, though, they're playing it a lot cooler than most.

Today, Audio Antihero are reissuing Frog, a lo-fi, seven-track mini-album from the New York band of the same name. You remember Kind of Blah, Frog's full-length debut, released earlier this year? Well, that album went down so well that Audio Antihero decided to dig up the set of recordings that preceded it and rehash it on their own label so as to ride the Frog wave that little bit further.

Five Years of Audio Antihero

An antihero is, put simply, someone who does heroic things but doesn't behave in a heroic way. Wolverine is a common example; he fights on the side of good, but he's a drinker, a smoker, and a bit of an all-round curmudgeon, none of which are normally considered to be heroic qualities.

Let's apply this trope to the music industry. A traditional 'hero' would be the label who put out catchy, accessible music that everybody instantly loves. Audio Antihero, on the other hand, have a slightly different approach:

"We know, we know. You THINK you want a squeaky-clean pop song, but deep down, that's not really what you're looking for. Here's the music that you really NEED: some wonky punk stuff, a folk song that sounds like it was recorded in the bowels of a ship, and a nine-minute droney thing."

I only came across Audio Antihero last year. The first AA release I listened to was There is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passing of Time by The Superman Revenge Squad Band, and while that one grabbed me more or less immediately, it was followed by left-turn after left-turn after left-turn.