Meteor Police - New Type Destroyer

Meteor Police was not the band any of its members wanted to form. Bassist William Pompeo had wanted to start a group where he would not be “stuck playing bass again.” After years of frustration and disappointment, vocalist Shawn Clancy did not want to be in bands at all anymore. Similarly, guitarist Dustin James had mostly resigned himself to being a solo act and was playing more omnichord than guitar at the time. Drummer Justin Wright had always dreamed of starting a progressive or psych rock group and didn’t care much for punk. So when these four people met up in the pandemic spring of 2021, their combined ideas of what kind of music they wanted to make should have been an insurmountable contradiction; and yet here they are flourishing.

Contradiction is a good word to describe Meteor Police as a whole. Their music layers progressive song structure and pop sensibilities on a foundation of punk rock snark and aggression. Being from the Jersey shore, a trace amount of surf rock sometimes surfaces in the mix as well. These different elements are held together by driving bass lines and precision drumming that always keep the songs on course no matter how far the guitar and vocals wander afield. The resulting sound lands somewhere between classic DC post-hardcore and contemporary post-punk, with comparisons running the gamut from Fugazi to Shame to the B-52’s. The contradictions continue in the bands presentation where front man Shawn Clancy delivers dead serious attacks on historical revisionism, incel culture, and trauma voyeurism while wearing a cardboard box on his head.

With the release of their debut album “NEW TYPE DESTROYER” on 7/28/23, Meteor Police has become another proof of concept for the idea that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Highlights include the surf-goth love song “Nihilist Jazz”, the raging descent from angular post-punk to even more angular post-hardcore of “Incel King”, and the wandering experimentation of “Routine Miracles/Endless Thirst”. The record is a collection of hard fought compromises and pure chance discoveries born out of four individuals deciding to eschew common sense and see how far their opposing sensibilities could push each other. After listening to it, you will likely come to the same conclusion that they did: common sense is overrated.