Photo Credit: Steve Gullick
Many rock musicians start bands hoping they’ll have enough success to never have to work a typical day job—or in some cases, avoid college and the studying it takes to earn a degree. Dustin Bates, the man behind the band Starset, is not one of those musicians. In fact he holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Ohio University and was positioned to work on leading-edge technology before the opportunity to have a viable music career opened up before him. He had finished his course work and was doing a dissertation, while also doing research for the Air Force when music intervened.
“I did numerous projects in automated robotics and highly accurate navigation,” Bates said. “My goal was to be in the forefront of automated vehicles, and it was timed just right that I really could have done that and been part of that movement.” But instead, the band Bates had during college, Downplay, started making the right kind of noise. Specializing in a mainstream rock sound with a bit of an alternative slant, Downplay released several independent albums, and in 2010 signed to Epic Records, which green lighted a first album for the label.
“Almost simultaneously with the completion of the record, the label got a new president, and we were dropped instantaneously as they changed the direction of what they wanted to do,” Bates said. “They wanted to focus on pop.” This, obviously, was a major disappointment and a genuine setback for Bates. But looking back, Bates feels seeing the Epic deal end was not such a bad thing. “I didn’t know if I was going to go back into studying. It was a very low point,” he admitted. “But it was good, though. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but it allowed for a sort of cleansing of the palate. I was able to [reconnect] with finding a direction in a weird way.
”Bates began thinking about a new musical direction and forming a band with a much more substantial message, one that actually tied back into his collegiate and post-graduate studies. He came up with a concept for a fictional science organization known as the “Starset Society” led by an equally fictional president, Aston Wise. The society had received a transmission from outer space that foretold the demise of humanity on Earth but also included instructions on how to prevent this catastrophic outcome. This message would be brought to the masses through a very real band called Starset.
That group released its second album, Vessels, last January, and its music and message have connected on a fairly major scale during its brief existence. Starset’s 2014 debut album, Transmissions, spawned a single, “My Demons,” that set the record for the longest run of any song to stay in the top five on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart at 41 consecutive weeks.
The album’s impact was perhaps even more considerable online. The band opened two YouTube accounts to host its videos and other content. According to a Billboard article, those pages generated more than 85 million views. But Starset’s music exploded primarily in the gaming and anime communities on YouTube where account holders uploaded video content from the band and/or created videos set to Starset’s music. A whopping 534.8 million views were generated by fan-created content.
The music Bates has created fits with the scientific and technology-related themes of the lyrics. The music brings together elements of electronic music, hard rock and metal (at times, the new album even incorporates a few metalcore-ish screams into their otherwise melodic vocals), while also adding in a good bit of expansive pop (“Satellite” and “Die For You”) and even a touch of progressive rock (“Starlight”). Despite its diverse ingredients, Starset’s sound is cohesive, cinematic and impactful.
Bates is excited to take the latest music to the live stage; the group is bringing some visual bells and whistles to its show when possible. And with Bates out front on vocals, keyboards and guitar, the other band members—bassist Ron De Chant, guitarist Brock Richards and drummer Adam Gilbert—continue to wear the space suits that have become the band’s signature. But there will be differences from previous tours.
“We’ve upgraded the suits this time,” Bates said. “We’re calling them the ‘Mach III.’ They’re a lot different. We’re excited about that. We’re actually going to continue upgrading those as the tour goes on.”
Starset headline The Rave on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. with openers Palisades, Grabbitz and Year of the Locust.
