Monday, August 3, 2009

Review: Lycaon - Chains of Collar

I wrote this review on the 24th of June, when I had actually gotten this single, but for some unfathomable reason I hadn't posted this. I think I had set it aside for later and then completely forgot about it until today. I was also thinking of redoing this review and when I go to look for it...I can't find it. Instead of posting what I have in a section no one is going to see ever again, I decided to put it up towards the front so it could at least get one view. Let's see how generic my cross-dressers have gotten.



01. the chain which ties you
02. chains of collar
03. INSANITY

Now, as for the first track, I despised it when Nega had an instrumental on a three track single and when ScReW had two on their mini-album Racial Mixture. The same stands here for Lycaon. the chain which ties you is obviously an instrumental and it's not a very good one, being full of background S.E. and feeling more like the audio to a movie than the audio to a track. Skip it because it would take me longer to explain why than it would for you to finish said track.

Lycaon hasn't been the band to push the envelope in their short existence as a band, and produce wonderful but unoriginal melodies. chains of collar isn't much different. If you want to get into a new band that doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard before, skip Lycaon because their releases offer more of the same time after time. In comparison to their superb mini-album Ambrozia, I feel that Lycaon took a step forward and a step back. In songs such as suckin' on a lollipop Yuuki's voice was atrocious and didn't fit well at all. Here, on chains of collar, his singing not only has improved a fair deal but I can't find one specific portion where I want to gouge my ears in from the sudden transition. In songs such as Alejandro and the similarly hard rocker The end of [Delusion] the instrumentation was a hell of a lot more inventive than it is here. That's not to say that the work isn't great but it isn't their greatest. I would really hate to say it but this isn't their best single, but it's definitely the best offer here.

Insanity's riff sounds just like System of a Down's Toxicity. I can't listen to this song seriously after realizing that and as such I don't like this song. Lycaon was never an original band but to go ahead and take such a similar riff makes it less enjoyable than it already is. Go ahead, shoot me, but I didn't steal a riff.

So at the end of the day chains of collar is decidely average, just like most of Lycaon's output. Shame really, because this band wants to fill a void in the Visual Kei scene, and they really can because they carry a unique sound but it just appears that they don't know how. Here's hoping their next single blows me away like Red Rum and Ambrozia did and that they change up their signature sound and become more diverse.

Recommended:

chains of collar

Score: 61%

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