STYX — Kilroy Was Here (review)

STYX — Kilroy Was Here album cover Album · 1983 · Non-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
Mr. Roboto might have been the hit single, but the rest of this concept album resembles the style that Styx used on Paradise Theatre with a somewhat bigger synthpop influence. They don't go full synthpop, mind - just like they didn't really go full prog on The Grand Illusion - which makes Roboto a bit uncharacteristic of the rest of the album, which is a shame because it's an undeniably catchy song. (Though it's rather unfortunate that the droids on the album cover or in the music video look like racist caricatures.)

The really big shift here is that whilst Paradise Theatre's concept was fairly restrained and sober - a state-of-the-nation look at America at the end of the 1970s through the allegorical lens of the rise and fall of a legendary concert venue - Kilroy's story is absolutely goofy. "Rock opera about a dystopia where music is banned" is very, very well-worn territory by this point; Rush got the idea out of their system on one side of 2112, Zappa stretched the concept to 3 LPs in the Joe's Garage series (but wasn't really focusing on the story that much, if at all), Dream Theater would base The Astonishing around it and that Queen jukebox musical uses the concept too.

Styx may well have been beating Queen and Dream Theater to the punch here, but Rush and Zappa had told this story before and done it better, and had done it not that long before Styx did it. Sure, the subject matter probably felt more immediate to Styx due to Christian groups objecting to Snowblind from Paradise Theatre, but even so it feels like they don't really have much to say about this concept which hadn't been said better by others, and DeYoung's quasi-Messianic posing as Kilroy is unquestionably cheesy.

If you like Styx's brand of cheesiness, that's not necessarily a problem, especially if the idea of a substantially more synth-focused take on Paradise Theatre appeals to you. If you fell in love with the sound of The Grand Illusion or Pieces of Eight, I can see why this album might bug you. I like it, but equally it clearly marks the point where the band's sound has strayed so far from their prog-adjacent hard rock roots that it's no surprise that they needed to spend the rest of the 1980s taking a break from being Styx after this.
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