Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Review: D'espairsRay - BRILLIANT


01. BRILLIANT
02. Cocoon

It's upbeat but not poppy. It's rock but it's not soft. It's perplexing to describe and yet to sum it up it's actually brilliant. It's a rapid change from the sounds of Mirror and sounds related somewhat to Kogoeru Yoru ni Saita Hana, but it looks like the boys cleaned up their act this time around and delivered a solid track. At first I didn't like it because I was a Mirror fanboy and I was expecting their next single to be...not so polarizing. It also cut down on Hizumi's unique screams, which was a trademark sound in many of their older songs. However, every subsequent listen made me like it more and more until I considered it one of their best singles in a while. The instrumentation gets to show off more than ever and it appears D'espa wants to be known for it's music as well as it's singing. The type of sound that they need to utilize if they want to appeal to bigger markets while not changing their style too much, Brilliant is a good show of how flexible they are.

In order not to send their fanbase of hard rock fans away, they give us Cocoon. Cocoon blows away almost every hard track they released on Mirror without contest, and then trumps almost every track on Redeemer. It's a rendition of what they would have released back in their early days, except they infuse their experience with their anger and create a track so divinely wrathful it's hard not to fall into it's grasp. Why it's here and not on the album I won't know, but I'm not complaining. As dark, heavy, and full of screams as it is, Cocoon feels very similar to Brilliant even though the both of them are polar opposites. Naturally, I gravitate toward Cocoon just because it's harder but both songs are equally as good.

9/10

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