| 01 | Kyuutai Instrumental | 球体 Instrumental |
| 02 | Houkou | 咆哮 |
| 03 | Ageha | アゲハ |
| 04 | Hide and Seek | ハイドアンドシーク |
| 05 | Kagerou | 陽炎 |
| 06 | Lemming | レミング |
| 07 | Oz | オズ |
| 08 | Fuyuu | 浮遊 |
| 09 | Sanbika | 讃美歌 |
| 10 | Sora to ito | 空と糸 |
| 11 | hanabi |
Before I begin with the review of the album, I’ll just make it a rule of thumb that all instruments already get stuck with the “mediocre” score because I hate them. Kyuutai’s “Instrumental” is no exception. Most times, I find that they really don’t add much to an album but I can’t rate each individually for personal reasons. So Kyuutai Instrumental gets a five. I consider the real start to this album to be Houkou. Dark and sinister describes this album up until it hits the chorus, in which the song loses steam. The whole dark-light contrast in rock music kills me badly and this song is no exception. Barring the trip-up at that part of the song, Houkou is one badass song that’s a representation of what’s to come. It gets an 8.
Ageha shows how far MUCC have come from the trash metal that they used to record early on in their career. Just compare the heaviness in Ageha with the heaviness in, oh, Daikirai and you’ll notice what I mean. Ageha, a single that was released before this, is a merciless attack of smart composition and wildly fluctuating musical styles. The song begins with a seemingly innocent, mellow acoustic guitar and a whiny, bright electric guitar duo; however, this is immediately contrasted by heaviness beyond immediate comprehension. The track is riddled with slap-bass, courtesy of YUKKE, and aggressive, skillful guitar lines by Miya, showing that MUCC isn’t afraid to experiment with the absolute extremes of music. This song gets a 10. Hide and Seek immediately follows this track, and seems like an addition to Ageha more than a track all its own. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. The beginning has some techno beat followed by a guitar intro that will make your brain melt from the awesome, and that techno beat comes back a few times in this song. It helps to diversify it on this album. It still carries the attitude and funk from the previous track and even includes a similar heavy breakdown to the one used in Ageha. The lighter chorus fits in better here than in many other songs that I’ve heard, so when Hide and Seek fades out it gets a 9.
Kagerou is the breather that you know you need and thankfully it doesn’t ride off of the excellence of the first few tracks. Tatsuro’s voice is as strong (and deep and overly dramatic) as always and YUKKE’s bass is extremely noticeable in this song, moreso than Miya’s guitar. The solo is the highlight of this song for me because it’s able to highlight it’s rock and jazz influenced sound without becoming needlessly heavy or loud. Any listener that compares this track to their earlier stuff sees how much their tour with American bands have influenced them, and so far I’m getting the impression that they’ve learned to adopt the heaviness to a lighter song and still make their style effective. I give Kagerou a 9.
Lemming is another blast of hard rock, but it feels like a mixture of bands and styles. This doesn’t sound like regular MUCC, but then someone tell me what “regular” MUCC is. Can’t name it? Neither can I. Lemming isn’t a bad song, but if I wanted to listen to a hard or fast, catchy song I’d just move to the next track. Lemming does have it’s good points but it’s main curse is getting shoved in between two tracks that far outshine it. With that I leave it at an 8 and move on to Fu-, err Oz. Call this song Fuzz + psychedelic techno effects. Oz feels like the counterpart to Fuzz and it shares much in common with that song, including the attitude-driven intro. Oz immediately got a 10 from me the minute the opening riff went on, and the rest of this song went on to make it sexplox. The best part of this song is that, much like Fuzz, the chorus doesn’t lose steam. It doesn’t suddenly change from dark to light or angsty to sugary-sweet. It keeps the flow and the vibe and makes this song better. It also helps that Miya’s solo comes right after. This is definitely one of the highlights of Kyuutai.
Fuyuu was wise to go soft after Oz, because you can’t top a song like that with another of the same breed. It’s a slower-paced song that starts off on a nice stereo acoustic-guitar run and resolves to a lower-octave first. Then, in 1:08 from the right-guitar, there’s this jazzy, flowing counter-melody and it’s followed by a few chords in the left-guitar. The track starts to take shape only a few minutes in as an organ and a harmonica weave themselves into the track. Unfortunately, the instrumental variety doesn’t carry onto the chorus, so it ends up dropping this song to an 8.
If you play classical music, Sanbika will seem very familiar. This is MUCC’s rendition of Ave Maria, without the original lyrics. However, with the entrance of the vocals, it isn’t the first verse of Ave Maria quite yet. But the introduction is gorgeous and around the two minute mark the song explodes into whole-note guitar-chords and octave-vocals that are just breathtaking. The actual Ave Maria portion starts a few minutes in while Yukke keeps the bass line flowing. The guitar takes a variation of the vocal notes, which is pretty cool I guess. Tatsuro jumps back in a little later and sings Ave Maria and then jumps back into some Japanese. When the song eventually ends, I’m just wondering what hit me because it was beautiful but tame at the same time. I don’t want to call it a ballad but it eludes all sort of classification and I find that I just struggle to give it a rating.
I’ll pick a 9.
The first three seconds of Sora to Ito remind me of “Colors of the Heart”. That’s not the case at all with the rest of the track, but this track is really techno-inspired. There are more octave riffs with the guitars and Yukke keeps strumming on back there while Satochi keeps this nice steady beat as he always does. What kills me the most is how it starts hard and then moves in all poppy around 0:30. Gah, you get a 7.
Hanabi is an extremely nice closing song to the album. It starts out with solo altered-vocals and piano enters a few seconds in – of which the vocals are back to normal. It picks up slightly around the minute mark but the song gets started two and a half minutes in. It starts with a guitar riff that builds into some more drum-work and then winds down for another verse from Tatsurou. The strings and piano come back the song to balance out with the rest of the band. A nice guitar solo is in there for a few seconds before the vocal-bridge is brought out with a slow build up with some strings before giving to another guitar solo. The band drops out of the picture for a bit before they jump back in and a short bass solo followed by a guitar solo ends the album. It gets a 9. Must you ask?
For a band that I originally was on the fence with, this is an album that might push me over the edge. It’s less experimental than their previous works but in my opinion it’s more streamlined, and this makes it more accessible of the first few listens. With so few songs receiving low scores from me, I don’t need to tell you to go buy it.
BUY IT (this is for those that don’t get the message).
4.2/5
If it weren’t for that damn instrumental this album would have gotten even higher. Go on, give it a try and LIKE IT. Please?
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