Estrons: High Energy Alt Rock from Wales
March 11, 2016
One of this week’s featured artists is the Welsh alt rock band Estrons (their name translates to “Aliens” in English). Their latest single, “Make a Man,” helped them to climb 20% on the A&R Moneyball charts, leading to this artist feature. The band is still early in their career, with only two songs released, the other track being their first single “C-C-Cariad!” (translating to “L-L-Love!”) whose lyrics are written and sung in Welsh.
The instrumentals of “Make a Man” fit perfectly in that awesome harder side of the alt rock genre,
almost feeling more like a mix of active rock and punk rock, with its fuzzed out power chords blaring over a driving beat from the drums and bass. Led by a female singer, the track is topped off with vocals that fit somewhere between singing and yelling, contributing to the high energy of the track with lyrics of a woman’s desire to be with a man. Their other track, “C-C-Cariad!” is also a great listen. While no one here at A&R Moneyball speaks Welsh, it’s still easy to appreciate the music, which is quite different from “Make a Man,” being slower and more syncopated, with an especially interesting bridge.
One of the greatest keys to Estrons’ ability to break into the mainstream will be whether they continue to focus on writing songs in English or Welsh. Obviously, the songs in English have a much broader appeal, regardless of quality of the song since the majority of rock music is currently written in English, with over 335 million English speakers in the world. The fact that Estrons is already getting this much attention on their first English song is very promising as this isn’t typically something that most bands will see right out of the gate. When talking about harder alt rock bands from Wales, it's hard not to think of A Joy Formidable and how much success they have had over the past few years, which also bodes well for Estrons.