Album Review- Castlebeat- Revival

Recently a friend was talking about bingeing television shows. You have probably had that conversation. There’s no commonality as there was 40 years ago with Network TV or even 25 years ago with Cable. Everyone uses different steaming services and our experiences are not as shared. It’s even more so with music. There’s so many ways people experience music than there used to be. I will hear someone reference a band I never heard of, and I will look and they have a million monthly listeners. Of course, there’s no secret society of music that is keeping me out of the loop. 

Things have just changed slightly. For example, I don’t recognize a lot of top rock bands, but I also don’t listen to rock radio. Despite technological changes, I don’t think you can discount the influence. When I talk to people about where they discover their new favorite artists, I still hear people saying that they get them from Spotify and Apple’s features like new music playlists. But I also hear a lot of people saying their biggest influence is word of mouth from friends. Also, I often hear a lot of people’s new favorite bands start as opening acts for existing favorite bands.  

In fact, I am surprised things are as homogeneous as they still are. As an indie rock fan, you would think tastemakers like Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, RateYourMusic and their respective fanbase almost exclusively landed on Geese’s “Getting Killed” as the best album of 2025. Pull down a list from any of those sites and their Best of 2025 lists look like near carbon copies. But even if the world of music hasn’t busted wide open, there are still an incredible wealth of music out there out to be discovered. Having said that, there are a lot of places to discover music, and if we are being honest I am not sure quite where I first heard Castlebeat (usually stylized as CASTLEBEAT) but it was probably via Streaming. It was at the time of their debut album 2016s self titled Castlebeat. 

Another modern (if not really that modern) aspect of the band is that it is largely the one man project of Josh Hwang, and he rarely performs live and releases his (and others') music through his own label- Spirit Goth records. I left 2016 listening to the band with the expectation of any artist that there may be more or there may be less. The band has risen in popularity, that is for sure. I inevitably was going to keep my eye on them but they fell a bit off my radar. What I didn’t expect was that their fourth album- 2025s Revival would be such a realized album. Revival is an appropriate name for a band that is so in debt to the 1980 and early 90s- Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order/Joy Division, Bowie. Even the song tracks and cover seems to reference a vibe with an end of 1990. While 2024s Stereo felt like sort of generic indie pop, I love that this album has a certain feel. I love Castlebeat’s Lo fi approach to synth pop but there’s no denying the catchy pop hooks. I am definitely looking forward to more from Castlebeat and rank this as one of the great 2025 "under the radar" albums.