Review: Lycaon - EROS

I want the creepy bassist and the pink-haired tranny back.

Seriously Lycaon, what the fuck happened? ID is the lamest SE you've ever come up with - it even beats flowing in terms of lameness. But even as this went on, I retain my hope.

VERDICT: n/a

Then EROS comes in.

As much as I want to like it, you made it damn near impossible. It's earsplittingly bad to the point where I'm pretending it doesn't exist. The longer it goes on, the more I want it to end. For all intents and purposes, I'm going to call those elements they incorporated (badly) "country swing" and they make me feel like I'm in a bad strip club where Yuuki's squealing at me while he's removing his thong. Not good. Rito and Satoshi's needless twin guitar melody doesn't mesh with all the crap going on in the background and I'm too busy applying brain bleach to remember anything noteworthy Hiyuu did. I know there was a poorly-placed bass interlude but other than that I can't care.

VERDICT: ...

PINK MILK WITH DRUGS MY DRINK. sounds odd. I'm going to call what Yuuki does "vocal vomit" here because once he starts he doesn't shut up ever. He keeps attempting different things but from the badly processed barking to the YEA YEA YEA's and the UH UH UH's make what he does do right inconsequential because sooner or later he's going to do something to nullify it. It's psychotic but not in the good way. It could have used some fine-tuning and a Yuuki that dropped his vocals just a bit.

VERDICT: meh

Mary is the only good track on this single and it's great in comparison to everything else on here but it's just an average track when compared to the rest of their output. This is straightforward Lycaon with their new guitar tuning and it's the first song where I'm not polarized enough to be able to appreciate Hiyuu's bass lines. Yuuki also doesn't screw up in the vocals either and the guitar melody actually WORKS. Hey Rito, we need more songs like this and not that disaster called "the rest of this single".

VERDICT: OK. It's listenable. I might even like it after a while!

MAD NEUROSIS CHILD isn't bad. The effects they put over Yuuki's voice work to his benefit in my book - I detest it when vocalists put effects over their voice but it makes him sound less annoying so I'll take it. However, I find the guitar tuning to be ill-fitting for this song - it's supposed to be heavy but where they have it set takes a lot of that away. Still, this is the song on the CD closest to their older concept of "hunting instinct" - at least in sound anyway.

VERDICT: Why wasn't this the single?

I've taken to not writing too many reviews because of time constraints but this is just exceptionally bad and the fans need to know what they're in for. They are capable of SO MUCH BETTER so I don't what happened but Lycaon needs to tune the guitars down a notch and Yuuki needs to lay off the helium. Back to the drawing board guys, and this time come back with something respectable. I'm counting on you.

EDIT: I just glanced over the lyrics and...Yuuki screams YEAH in almost every song. Just worth noting that whenever he can't think of something worthwhile to sing he just screams that.