Astra is the sound of a band coming apart at the seams — and, against the odds, still making a decent record. Released in 1985, Asia’s third album arrived after a chaotic run of firings and line-up changes that had cost them their guitarist and nearly their singer. Synth-drenched and polished, it flopped on release, but has since been reclaimed by many fans as an underrated slice of 1980s melodic rock.

The short version

Astra (1985) is the third studio album by Asia, and the last by anything close to their original line-up. John Wetton returned on vocals and bass, and Geoff Downes and Carl Palmer stayed on keyboards and drums, but Steve Howe was gone — replaced by Swiss guitarist Mandy Meyer, formerly of Krokus. Produced by Mike Stone and Downes, it’s a keyboard-heavy, harder-edged AOR album that sold poorly at the time but has aged more kindly than its reputation suggests.

The turmoil behind it

The making of Astra was pure drama. After the disappointment of Alpha, John Wetton had been forced out of the band he co-founded — briefly replaced by Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Greg Lake for the celebrated ‘Asia in Asia’ concert at Tokyo’s Budokan, the first gig broadcast live via satellite on MTV. Wetton returned in 1984, but on one condition: that Steve Howe leave. Howe duly departed to form GTR, and Geffen brought in Mandy Meyer, whose harder, more metallic style pointed the band in a new direction. The personnel upheavals, Downes later admitted, were demoralising.

The sound

With Howe gone and Meyer’s guitar mixed much as Howe’s had been, Astra is dominated more than ever by Geoff Downes’s keyboards and John Wetton’s voice. It’s a glossy, synth-heavy 1980s rock album, a little harder-edged than before, with Wetton turning from the lovelorn ballads of Alpha back toward bigger, more topical themes. The songwriting, once again, is almost all Wetton and Downes, and the album lives or dies on their partnership — which, for all the backstage tension, still had real chemistry.

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The songs

The album opens with its lone single, ‘Go’ — a punchy, driving rocker built around Meyer’s guitar that reached number 46 in the US and earned another popular MTV video. ‘Voice of America’ features some of the band’s finest vocal harmonies, the Queen-esque ‘Rock and Roll Dream’ stretches out past six minutes, and the closing ‘After the War’ gives Wetton one of his most powerful vocal moments on the record. Ballads like ‘Wishing’ and ‘Hard on Me’ keep one foot in the AOR mainstream, but the album’s stronger, harder tracks are where it comes alive.

Reception and legacy

Astra landed with a thud. Where the debut had been a phenomenon and Alpha a solid seller, this third album stalled at number 67 in the US, and Geffen cancelled the tour for lack of interest. Not long after the single ‘Go,’ this incarnation of Asia simply folded, bringing the original era to an end. Yet time has been kinder: critics and fans have increasingly reassessed Astra as a solid, even underrated 1980s rock record, praising Downes’s keyboards, Wetton’s singing and Meyer’s contributions.

The verdict

Astra will never carry the myth of the debut, and it’s weighed down by the chaos that surrounded it — but judged simply as an album, it’s better than its low chart placing suggests. If you enjoy 1980s melodic rock and Geoff Downes’s widescreen keyboard sound, it rewards a fresh listen. Start with ‘Go’ and ‘After the War.’ John Wetton, whose voice anchors the record, died in 2017; Astra stands as the final chapter of the Asia he first led.

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