“obstacle progress” – 2:51
迷彩 – 5:03
“MAD-ROID” – 3:48
“confusion” – 3:23
“under the chaos” – 4:11
“CHILDREN OF DESPAIR” – 3:48
サイレントイヴ – 4:50
サイコカルチャー – 4:08
“GRUDGE OF SORROW” – 4:08
“M.F.P” – 3:34
妄想被虐性癖 – 4:16
"a holy terrors” – 4:01
“Empty Room” – 4:23
“Barking the Enemy” – 3:29
サヨナラの果て – 5:41
There are a few tracks that I MUST acknowledge. obstacle progress from the single "Dekiai" has to be one of my favorite heavy metal openers of all time. People say it sounds just like ‘Kodoku ni Shisu, Yueni Kodoku’ but it’s only because the bass is tuned the same. I just listened to the two of them and although I see similarities, it isn’t as blatant of a copy as Enishi (Giru) and Kodou (Diru). Anyway, the song starts out slow, ends slow with the same bass carrying it along, and is hard all through the middle. It’s worth a listen.
Meisai, from the Suicide Machine, is a mixed bag with indies stamped all over it. If the guitars were awesome but stale, the lyrics would be stale but awesome. It’s nothing new that we haven’t heard before, because girugamesh's [Goku] sounds extremely similar to this song. This song is…generic but a good kind of generic. It’s neither the mass-produced boy band pop rock depressing kind of music nor is it the bathroom metal trash of a lot of American metal. It’s somewhere in the middle and doesn’t associate itself with either.
Starting with a scream of epic vibrato proportions and having some of the sexiest singing in the chorus that I’ve heard from Sadie, MAD-ROID is definitely worth a listen. Please don’t ask me what the title MAD-ROID is supposed to mean. I’m going to translate the song at the end of this post and then maybe after that I can figure out if it’s supposed to be a name or an acronym or just plain broken English that’s supposed to sound cool but then ends up failing miserably. I don’t know about the rest of you but MAD-ROID sounds like a killer robot dog nipping at my car tires as I try to run it down.
I'm just as iffy on the next track as well. confusion is one of those tracks that has two riffs going on at the same time, with one playing higher than the other in the background that reminds me so much of a typical style of Sadie playing. This same playing can be found later on in the song Empty Room. Other than that, this song is no more inventive than the one following it.Straight off The Trend Killer, under the chaos is another track that’s hard and strong, but deserves a listen. It perhaps has the most stereotypical riff in all of visual kei music, and it really doesn't do much to stand away from the last two tracks, especially MAD-ROID in particular. It's a good track on it's own, but better can be found on this album so let's keep moving.
The lack of creativity corrects itself with CHILDREN OF DESPAIR, which storms in with strong bass literally in between the two guitars and takes off until Mao roars like he's dying into the microphone. If there was a "classic" Sadie song that they could have re-recorded, it would be this. It's surely one of the better songs on this album, and that's saying a lot considering the caliber of most of these songs. The only thing that nags me is the very end, when Mao's voice is doing that reverb thing. It was unneeded.
I originally disliked Silent Eve, but as one of the only two ballads on this album I have come to appreciate it more. The two guitars take off in opposite directions as the song takes off and Mao's singing is the highlight of this song. I like this one more than Sayonara no Hate, and it's up there with CHILDREN OF DESPAIR as one of the best songs on this album.
Psycho Culture was also one that I originally disliked but have come to appreciate. In this instance, it's even more so since I'm drawn towards harder numbers than soft tracks. The beginning riff will either entice you or annoy you but overall the song is a solid one. Mao's English could use some work but his growling here is pretty good. I'd put it on the same level as MAD-ROID.
GRUDGE OF SORROW is perhaps THE Sadie song in my opinion. It's got soft verses, harder parts, and beautiful vocals all blended around English verses that are audible and don't sound like babble and a Japanese chorus that takes off right after the deepest growls in the song. It's pure gold.
Anything I can say about M.F.P. is the same thing I've said for GRUDGE OF SORROW, but throw in an infectious beat and an even higher chorus as well as the ending growl that ends the singing perfectly and you have my personal favorite Sadie song of all time. This song is just SEXY. The falsetto, the growling, the little interlude with the guitars, the classic way Mao ends his singing with the growling, the step up technique they use to end the song. This is where I began and I remain happy that I did. Also pure gold.
I question in the first place why they elected to re-record Mousou hi Gyaku Seiheiki. It's easily the worst song on the album. It is also too repetitive by even this band’s standards and could have used a lot more work. It just feels shoved onto the album without any refinement and something like obvious ballade, deadly masquerade, tsuiren no hana, or meranchoria would have been a better option. A definite skip.
a holy terrors is a tricky beast because it doesn’t know whether it wants to be hard or soft, so instead it wades in between both. The beginning starts off hard but then it goes all soft on you. The hard parts have some of the most bizarre and interesting vocals on this CD (i'm SURE they digitally altered those!), and it’s what makes this song stand out.
Empty Room dragged me in with that guitar riff at the beginning. I SWORE that I heard it somewhere before and that I loved it the first time, and I loved it in this song. That riff just made it for me, and the rest of the song doesn’t fall into obscurity. This song is also similar to M.F.P. in that it has lighter vocals but it can still manage to stay hard. The lighter parts are accompanied by some acoustic, and I’m a sucker for acoustic in all the right places. The bass solo at the middle with the little drum part is fantastic.
Barking the Enemy is another repetitive headbanger, fitting in somewhere between confusion and Mousou hi Gyaku Seiheiki. Not only is the song too long for it's runtime, but in the 3 and a half minutes the song rumbles along it does nothing to satisfy me. Another skip.
Sayonara no Hate is the obligatory mid-tempo epic that's supposed to wrap up the album, and let's say it does it's job. It starts off slow, rises through many stages to become a delicate but brutal piece of work, and never lets down at any part of the song. In this song, they also did a similar tactic to Empty Room except this time they distorted a riff at a part. Mixing acoustic with electric is always a common trick and it works. I still prefer Silent Eve to this track but Sayonara no Hate ends this album in a way no other track could have.
In all, this track only has two tracks I would recommend you skip, and another two that I'm not too fond of. It's a definite buy for any fan of heavy metal that hasn't heard this band yet, and I consider it infinitely superior to it's sister album Master of Romance. 4.5 out of 5.
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