We Are All Bots is what happens when a rock band stares too long into the glowing eyes of a Boston Dynamics dog and asks, “What if this was operatic?” In just under ten minutes, Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice manage to craft a concept EP that sounds like Queen crash-landing into 2001: A Space Odyssey, then waking up to find Vangelis scoring the wreckage. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is, but somehow it all works.
The title track is a chaotic little electro-rock firework. It opens like a sci-fi B-movie trailer, then launches straight into a Muse-adjacent synth-rock pulse that’s one part warning siren, one part rave invitation. Lyrically, it’s what would happen if Isaac Asimov wrote poetry while doom-scrolling. The track pokes at our digital dependence with enough self-awareness to know it’s also part of the system. It’s the anthem your toaster would play if it became self-aware and developed anxiety.
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on this thing, track two says, “What if we left Earth altogether?” To The Space and Beyond swaps the robotic pulse for swelling strings, synth arpeggios, and full-blown cosmic yearning. It’s not so much a song as it is a metaphysical spaceship launch. You can practically hear the infinite void staring back. It’s dramatic, it’s a little overwrought and it absolutely slaps.
And then comes Eternità, which sounds like Freddie Mercury came back from the dead, learned Italian, and started writing operas about transhumanism. This one’s about immortality; or rather, the terrible, awe-inspiring idea of it. It’s sung with full theatrical grandeur, leaning hard into operatic territory with crashing percussion, sweeping strings, and vocals that demand you sit down and contemplate your entire life. It’s a bit absurd, incredibly extra, and honestly? Kind of magnificent.
What’s brilliant about We Are All Bots is that it doesn’t flinch. It takes enormous, unwieldy ideas like digital identity, the meaning of humanity in a post-human future, and the myth of immortality and wraps them in sonic excess. But it never feels like it’s doing it for show. There’s heart underneath the spectacle. Real questions. Real awe.
In a music landscape where irony often drowns sincerity, Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice are not afraid to be earnest. They sing about robots, space, and death not because it’s kitschy, but because it’s what they actually care about. And that, frankly, is punk as hell.
So no, We Are All Bots isn’t chill background music. It’s an unapologetically maximalist, space-opera fever dream for people who overthink their Spotify algorithms and cry during sci-fi movies. It’s weird. It’s sincere. It’s excellent. And most importantly, it reminds us that even in a world increasingly full of bots, someone’s still out there writing symphonies about it.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
