I really shouldn't have said that though because MUSIC doesn't have many good points. First off, this entire album is really short: no song is 4:00 in length and I've seen EP's longer than this. It's a failure if you keep me waiting this long to shove an album in my face that is no longer than 35 minutes tops (not counting European edition). Second off is that it doesn't have Volcano on it, which means this entire album is drenched in some nuclear electrorock crap that totally isn't Giru but they somehow manage to pull it off. Sometimes.
Third is that I chose to review it today.
01. INTRO
02. Break Down
03. ULTIMATE 4
04. FREAKS
05. ANGRY JUICE
06. evolution
07. -INST.-
08. puzzle
09. Asking why
10. DEAD WORLD
11. Ishtar
12. Enishi
With a title for this album as creative as MUSIC, did you expect to have a creative opening? No, you shouldn't have. With the mind-bogglingly complex title INTRO, one has to imagine what girugämesh will throw at us? Will it be a dueling reverie of guitars flying into the stratosphere? Will it be an obvious Hakuri clone that was oh-so-original when The GazettE did it second? Will it cause me to orgasm?
No. Barely stretching out over a minute, INTRO kindly introduces you to what you should be listening to and then sounds like my garbage dispenser gargling on something sticky. Skip.
Break Down is sadly one of the better tracks on this album, and it's no musical miracle. I hate the poppy chorus and the reverb on Satoshi's voice but the verses are tolerable. Even though Break Down features some unnecessary hip-hop elements it's digestable enough for me not to skip.
ULTIMATE FAIL is next and it tries to be hard and loses the steam 25 seconds in. Don't start off with a digitized, schizophrenic chorus just to slow down into a bass-laden, not agressive chorus. The constipation grunt before the half-shouted, half-sung chorus doesn't bring back the energy and it keeps shifting back and forth. I hate the abuse of cellphone effects here and there is some unnecessary voice distortion around 1:40. It's clear by 2:16 girugämesh was out of ideas and started recycling things we heard before because they stumbled upon a listenable few seconds before they went back to the crap they started with. No. They've made better moshers than this.
FREAKS works better as a harder track simply because it keeps the anger straight through but it still has that distorted slow down that sounds like they just lifted it right out of the last track. I suppose they didn't expect you to get that far. The fact that this sounds like a revised version of the last track is enough to make me not care too much, but it has some good parts. The chorus is the most fitting one up to this point and it doesn't come off all confused as to what it wants to be. It's straightforward and manages to suck just a little less than everything this far.
Angry Juice wins the award for the most lulzworthy title here, but it's not like there was any competition. It mixes electronic effects with a slap-bass that remains constant throughout and that's a little cool. Then again, it has an excessive use of electronic effects, more hip-hop effects, and a chorus that ends in ANGURIIJUSU. What makes this song listenable is how it isn't a bass-laden remake of FREAK and does something different with the ending. Sucks about as much as FREAK, maybe a little less.
evolution sounds like Utada Hikaru's on helium and duetted with Satoshi on a gender-genre-confused track that doesn't know if it wants to be pop, rock, techno, hip-hop, or some abomination of the four. I facepalmed at the bad Engrish (Listen to my evorushun? No.). Listen to my finger....press the skip button.
-INST.- and puzzle should have been combined into one track, because puzzle is the best track by far. It's short runtime hurts it a little but it's the one track so far where I think girugämesh managed to mix electronic effects and their core sound well and create something great. Satoshi doesn't throw in any useless English phrases and there's no senseless distortion in the screams that aren't needed or included. Once again, I feel like it's a half-a-track and this should have gone on for longer.
-INST.- is a nice sounding, if a little creepy, instrumental that should have been combined with puzzle but fails on it's own because it's a randomly placed piece of work. I'll be nice though and consider it part of puzzle though, since girugämesh did.
Oh my fucking god someone gave girugämesh a copy of Meteora. Asking why doesn't fit in at ALL on this album and Satoshi fails at rapping. He's trying to sound like both Shinoda and Bennington and ends up sounding....like Satoshi. I'm guessing that's why they overlayed his voice with more distortion than necessary. The whole DISCLOSE....ASKING WHY part gets old pretty quickly since that's what catches your attention, and then the whole shift into a lighter but still attitude driven section does not mix at all with the crunching guitars. A nice idea (gone wrong) that was executed by Linkin Park (in 2003) that is long dead. Stick to your own bland style and don't sample a worse one.
DEAD WORLD sounds like a combination of everything we've heard so far in a not-so-suckish way until it gets to the slowdown when it feels it needs to channel some ULTIMATE SUCK. Everything that was coming before it was tolerable, even if it was stale, but that point in the track just swerved it in the face of "we can do ANYTHING but we didn't say we could do it well". It's OK....but no. Take that part out and we have a decent song. Somewhat.
Ishtar is supposed to be a digitized Kowareteiku Sekai but it comes off boring and underinspired. It sounds pretty with the piano playing in the background but Satoshi's forceful introduction was not strong enough. That lack of force causes the rest of a possibly decent song to remain tame. Even when Satoshi was given a second chance to amp it up he doesn't do it enough. This WAS a good idea but they need to take it back and work on it again and make it more passionate.
Enishi is almost a carbon copy of Dir en grey's Kodou in some parts, and I'm actually going to praise that because it's the best hard rocker on this album. What do you expect from a band that actually takes time to put thought into their compositions instead of just churning the synthesizer faster and faster and calling that a new song? At least this time, they decided to take some ideas from a band that took an electronic song and did it right. If this wasn't so obviously "inspired" I would call it the one good song that girugämesh came up with this album. I can't, so I'm instead going to say it's the one good song that Dir en grey came up with for them.
And that's a trip through the world of MUSIC. I wasn't kidding in the Border review that this album was pretty bad. With only two songs I'd actually recommend you download, this is not a good album. Not at all. Was it a good way to experiment? Yes. Did it fail? Pretty badly. If you need background music or just something to listen to that you aren't going to pay close attention to, then this is pretty good. Otherwise, if you try getting technical like I did, you're going to turn up empty handed
Why do I think it fails? Because all girugämesh did was put some electronic effects over the songs, and in many cases the songs themselves would have fared better without them. An example would be FREAKS. That song didn't need any effects and the inclusion of them made the song less stellar. The only two songs that made the effects work for them were Enishi and puzzle and that's because they were thought out. MUSIC feels rushed and incomplete. So, for a quick blow-by-blow:
Intro - Shit.
Break Down - Decent
ULTIMATE 4 - Shit
FREAKS - Decent
Angry Juice - Decent
Evolution - Shit
puzzle - Short
Asking why - Shit
Dead World - Inbetween Shit and Decent
Ishtar - should have been better
Kodou - Stolen
Recommended:
puzzle
Enishi
Score: 32%
No. Barely stretching out over a minute, INTRO kindly introduces you to what you should be listening to and then sounds like my garbage dispenser gargling on something sticky. Skip.
Break Down is sadly one of the better tracks on this album, and it's no musical miracle. I hate the poppy chorus and the reverb on Satoshi's voice but the verses are tolerable. Even though Break Down features some unnecessary hip-hop elements it's digestable enough for me not to skip.
ULTIMATE FAIL is next and it tries to be hard and loses the steam 25 seconds in. Don't start off with a digitized, schizophrenic chorus just to slow down into a bass-laden, not agressive chorus. The constipation grunt before the half-shouted, half-sung chorus doesn't bring back the energy and it keeps shifting back and forth. I hate the abuse of cellphone effects here and there is some unnecessary voice distortion around 1:40. It's clear by 2:16 girugämesh was out of ideas and started recycling things we heard before because they stumbled upon a listenable few seconds before they went back to the crap they started with. No. They've made better moshers than this.
FREAKS works better as a harder track simply because it keeps the anger straight through but it still has that distorted slow down that sounds like they just lifted it right out of the last track. I suppose they didn't expect you to get that far. The fact that this sounds like a revised version of the last track is enough to make me not care too much, but it has some good parts. The chorus is the most fitting one up to this point and it doesn't come off all confused as to what it wants to be. It's straightforward and manages to suck just a little less than everything this far.
Angry Juice wins the award for the most lulzworthy title here, but it's not like there was any competition. It mixes electronic effects with a slap-bass that remains constant throughout and that's a little cool. Then again, it has an excessive use of electronic effects, more hip-hop effects, and a chorus that ends in ANGURIIJUSU. What makes this song listenable is how it isn't a bass-laden remake of FREAK and does something different with the ending. Sucks about as much as FREAK, maybe a little less.
evolution sounds like Utada Hikaru's on helium and duetted with Satoshi on a gender-genre-confused track that doesn't know if it wants to be pop, rock, techno, hip-hop, or some abomination of the four. I facepalmed at the bad Engrish (Listen to my evorushun? No.). Listen to my finger....press the skip button.
-INST.- and puzzle should have been combined into one track, because puzzle is the best track by far. It's short runtime hurts it a little but it's the one track so far where I think girugämesh managed to mix electronic effects and their core sound well and create something great. Satoshi doesn't throw in any useless English phrases and there's no senseless distortion in the screams that aren't needed or included. Once again, I feel like it's a half-a-track and this should have gone on for longer.
-INST.- is a nice sounding, if a little creepy, instrumental that should have been combined with puzzle but fails on it's own because it's a randomly placed piece of work. I'll be nice though and consider it part of puzzle though, since girugämesh did.
Oh my fucking god someone gave girugämesh a copy of Meteora. Asking why doesn't fit in at ALL on this album and Satoshi fails at rapping. He's trying to sound like both Shinoda and Bennington and ends up sounding....like Satoshi. I'm guessing that's why they overlayed his voice with more distortion than necessary. The whole DISCLOSE....ASKING WHY part gets old pretty quickly since that's what catches your attention, and then the whole shift into a lighter but still attitude driven section does not mix at all with the crunching guitars. A nice idea (gone wrong) that was executed by Linkin Park (in 2003) that is long dead. Stick to your own bland style and don't sample a worse one.
DEAD WORLD sounds like a combination of everything we've heard so far in a not-so-suckish way until it gets to the slowdown when it feels it needs to channel some ULTIMATE SUCK. Everything that was coming before it was tolerable, even if it was stale, but that point in the track just swerved it in the face of "we can do ANYTHING but we didn't say we could do it well". It's OK....but no. Take that part out and we have a decent song. Somewhat.
Ishtar is supposed to be a digitized Kowareteiku Sekai but it comes off boring and underinspired. It sounds pretty with the piano playing in the background but Satoshi's forceful introduction was not strong enough. That lack of force causes the rest of a possibly decent song to remain tame. Even when Satoshi was given a second chance to amp it up he doesn't do it enough. This WAS a good idea but they need to take it back and work on it again and make it more passionate.
Enishi is almost a carbon copy of Dir en grey's Kodou in some parts, and I'm actually going to praise that because it's the best hard rocker on this album. What do you expect from a band that actually takes time to put thought into their compositions instead of just churning the synthesizer faster and faster and calling that a new song? At least this time, they decided to take some ideas from a band that took an electronic song and did it right. If this wasn't so obviously "inspired" I would call it the one good song that girugämesh came up with this album. I can't, so I'm instead going to say it's the one good song that Dir en grey came up with for them.
And that's a trip through the world of MUSIC. I wasn't kidding in the Border review that this album was pretty bad. With only two songs I'd actually recommend you download, this is not a good album. Not at all. Was it a good way to experiment? Yes. Did it fail? Pretty badly. If you need background music or just something to listen to that you aren't going to pay close attention to, then this is pretty good. Otherwise, if you try getting technical like I did, you're going to turn up empty handed
Why do I think it fails? Because all girugämesh did was put some electronic effects over the songs, and in many cases the songs themselves would have fared better without them. An example would be FREAKS. That song didn't need any effects and the inclusion of them made the song less stellar. The only two songs that made the effects work for them were Enishi and puzzle and that's because they were thought out. MUSIC feels rushed and incomplete. So, for a quick blow-by-blow:
Intro - Shit.
Break Down - Decent
ULTIMATE 4 - Shit
FREAKS - Decent
Angry Juice - Decent
Evolution - Shit
puzzle - Short
Asking why - Shit
Dead World - Inbetween Shit and Decent
Ishtar - should have been better
Kodou - Stolen
Recommended:
puzzle
Enishi
Score: 32%
This may be my favourite review of yours so far. I hated this album so much x_x.
ReplyDeleteI liked the band's two full albums before this one and I considered myself somehow as a fan of them. I especially liked the fact that those CDs had reasonable lenghts and that they included (I think) only new songs. No songs from previous singles! Which is a ridiculously rare thing now with Jrock and VK bands.
But now they have changed, in too many ways for me to keep being a fan. I went from love to hate in a quite short time with this band, actually.
Well I know 13's Reborn included a few tracks from previous demo tapes and singles but only Kaisen Sengen was an A-side.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea when girugamesh got hit with the suck stick but they did and the wounds are still healing. That's why the new singles suck less than these tracks.