Magnolia Park have gone full Coheed and Cambria – a sentence which has probably never been written before, and no one ever expected to be written. Rather than stick to their skate punk roots or dip their toes back into the world of nu-metal, they’ve decided to write an album about robot vampires. No, really. The half-cyborg protagonist immortalised on the cover art, Aurora X1, seeks to free her cyberpunk world from the grip of a cult via a ritual that transforms her and her followers into vampires according to the first two chapters of her story shared online. Thankfully, much like Coheed, the world-building and narrative in ‘Vamp’ are implicit rather than full musical theatre. This is still a record that can be enjoyed without knowing anything about robots or vampires. Now we know where Josh Roberts and co were planning on heading with their sound, we can look back on their last album, 2023’s ‘Halloween Mixtape II’ as a turning point; the skatepark, Blink 182 whimsy which…

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