Review: Lycaon - Royal Order

After the announcement of them postponing their album for two months I want a damn good explanation as to why they postponed this album in the first place. Royal Order might as well be considered a compilation album because there's barely any new material on this release. Yeah sure, the limited edition gets Plug > into the > Socket (It's SOCKET, not Soket. So WHAT if they accidentally published it as SOKET on their live demotape? How many of you MP3 ripping, downloading whores actually HAVE the demotape in your possession? I would say very few of you do. Secondly, you're recognizing that it's an accident, a typo. THEY'RE JAPANESE. They didn't type it because it alluded to some deeper meaning that by omitting the "c" made an ethereal connection to their lyrics. They don't speak, read or write English very well, fucked up and by the time they realized the mistake it was too late/too expensive to pay to have it fixed so they decided to leave it be figuring that their fans would be bright enough to figure it out on their own! For Jesus' sake, it's printed PlugintotheSOCKET on the PV! IT'S THE SAME EXACT SONG JUST WITH A C in the word SOCKET! If you're still shitting me they announced that it was called PLUG > INTO THE > SOCKET when they first announced Royal Order's 500 singles. I swear, only J-Turd fans can be this retarded. It almost makes me want to poke my eyes with a spork like the time I discovered that people were arguing over what to call ALSDEAD's Violent of Reason single. Because, you know even though it's printed Violent of Reason on their OHP you have to scrobble it as Violet of Reason because they forgot the N on their album covers, or even VOR because you know Violent of Reason was just too fucking big to print in the booklet and acronyms take precedence over whole titles when the band themselves fucking refer to it as VIOLENT OF REASON. I don't see D'espairsRay manias referring to Murder Freaks as "muder freaks" even though it's misspelled as that on the back of the Terrors EP. They refer to it as MURDER FREAKS because they have functional brain cells that tell them "oh, they meant this". Thank you D'espa fans for having sanity) and the three 500 press Like an Edison singles are included and re-mastered and there are three more tracks on the regular edition but it doesn't justify having roughly half of your album previously released in any way.

Speaking of Plug > into the > Socket, it's awesome but the music video is shit. For crying out loud Yuuki at least SING when you're singing in the music video. Go fire your PV editors and hire me - I could have done a better job. Go YouTube it because it's not on the album at all even though it should be.

Back to Lycaon's compilation album, the tracklist itself induces vomiting. Cordyceps Sinensis, Declaration of War and A Box in Beautiful should be on the album, but not one after the other. It unbalances the album because the singles aren't spread out enough. Chains of Collar is iffy but it could be included on the album. It's not their absolute best song but it is one of their most identifiable ones and that's probably due to the live-distributed version of this single that's turned every fan's head and still has many waiting on the hope that Enslavement Beauty (once again, Beauty not Beuty. They misspelled this one too. If you're going to pronounce it beauty, and define it as the word beauty, you might as well fucking SPELL IT BEAUTY. See "muder freaks" argument) will eventually surface on the Internet for all to download and sex like there's no tomorrow. Kesshou Hana is also dated but that was included out of necessity. As this review goes on, you will realize that Royal Order follows a sickening pattern of cheaply made, two minute thrash numbers punctuated by real musicwriting and salvageable pieces of work that almost make this album worth all the money they poured into it. Kesshou Hana is what saves Royal Order from becoming another VERSUS and it's presence alone changes the tone of the album (and I will argue that it saves it at the same time). However, there is no reason that Red Rum and Hisame need to be on this album. They're very dated sonic soundscapes of generic in a record that I can analogously describe as a pubescent teenager whose balls are about to drop and the re-recordings just aren't as good as the rest of the track here. I even believe that the re-recording of Red Rum, whilst pimped out with better production is inferior to the original. If they absolutely MUST have included older tracks to fill out the empty spaces in the album both Kohakuiro and The[1st] degree genocide holic would have fit in much, much better. However, I believe that there is no reason why a band must absolutely include their oldest singles on their first album. I hate to use Dir en grey as an example but both Jealous and -I'll- never made it onto another album (although I can see an argument stating that they had five other singles released and that including those two would have made a Royal Order-esque fest a decade earlier but I just prefer to state that they suck) and Gauze is just fine without it.

However, I would have preferred more new tracks. Howling and Flowing are both horrible wastes of space on Royal Order. I believe they included these two because if they told you that they only had 10 tracks and 6 were older songs Lycaon fans would pop a hemorrhoid. The album should have jumped straight into Lily, which is a different type of Lycaon that I'm receptive to. Excellent music writing and experimentation with some new sounds combined with a catchy, almost Gazette-ish chorus makes for one of the better new tracks. Lily makes way for Royal Order which comes busting forward with Yuuki's burpy growls and crunching guitar riffs that made me wonder what the hell happened to Ambrozia era Lycaon. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an instance of a very badly placed track. Off-kilter entrance pushed to the side, it does that hard verse-poppy chorus arrangement that I'm not too fond of but they do it with enough attitude to convince the casual listener that yes, this isn't something you've heard once or thrice before. This album does worse so I'll let Royal Order slide.

Declaration of War is a tough nut to crack. Look at the title - DECLARATION OF WAR. You would expect some screaming, hard, rough, insane track to be shoved up your vas deferens and into your testes. It influences you to think you're going to get something you aren't and then when you hear this track you'll be mildly disappointed. Excusing the name, Declaration of War is not that bad of a track. I can describe this as a softer touch to hard rock. Sure, it has it's handful of screams and rough passages but the rest of the track is a bit more melodic than we're used to Lycaon composing. This isn't a bad thing by any means but this lacks balls, especially when compared to the rest of the album. If you come into this track looking for something to headbang to skip for now. If you're here to just listen to some pleasant music this is an excellent track. It just...doesn't belong after Royal Order. This following Lily would have been a much better move.

On to something a little more respectable, Cordyceps sinensis is a very hard, catchy song with lots of high pitched grunting mixed with a very addictive opening and reverb yelling. I actually like the pre-chorus for the alternating guitars although the regular chorus isn't that bad at all. The name has absolutely nothing to do with anything, as I've read the English lyrics and nothing about "Chinese mold" comes to mind at all. Whatever you crazy cross-dressing rockers, you just do whatever makes your music that much less generic.

A Box in Beautiful is around where this album peaks in quality. I personally think it's the best song on this album and has more of that Lycaon sound than most of the other tracks on here. Unusual guitar tunings and a steady source of rhythm is all over this song. Yuuki screeches and yells with the best of them but his singing is what really gets to me. It's so beautiful, mesmerizing, expressive...and screechy. He brings the track down in some parts because his vocal range just doesn't stretch that far but I can look past that part because he doesn't massacre the vocal department the way other shit bands do.

Plus, ever since my friend mocked Yuuki with CRYING IN THE LAAAAAND, I don't take this song seriously anymore. I hope I haven't ruined it for you as much as the revelation that Dir en grey's egniryS cimredopyH +) an Injection is a song about cocaine and masturbation ruined my friend's entire perception of Macabre. The song is great, but if Yuuki's voice was just a bit stronger this song would have been brilliant.

Depending on what edition you have you either have Chains of collar or two wastes of space before Chains of Collar. Miss.EVIL INSIDE is Lycaon's attempt at being hard and they get points for doing it well and a nice nod of the head for incorporating unexpected double bass rolls into their screaming chorus but this is an earache and a ball of repetitiveness. I don't like mindless screaming from a band that dresses like they walked into the female section of Macy's and cut up clothing to don to call themselves shock rockers. This track asserts my belief that Lycaon is attempting to figure out what they want to do and it alternates (literally) between harsh, thrashy screaming numbers and more melodic numbers. Pick a fucking style, damnit.

**88** is another short, thrashy number that they included a bit later on but I'll cover it shortly now because I just have to say I like it even less than Miss.EVIL INSIDE. It really took you guys two extra months to write 6 minutes of material? Are you fucking me with a purple dildo? **88** has a pretty rough intro and plenty of screams thrown around but the chorus appears like a foot gunning for my crotch. By the time I know it's here the waves of nausea are already making their way up my nervous system. **88** isn't all that good and that scream at the end made me go deaf...when I had it playing on speakers. Ouch. Move on.

chains of collar isn't much different than what we've been presented with, and with this atrocious pattern going on you could even tell what type of song it was going to be. There are no sudden transitions in this song that causes vaginal cancer to suddenly spew out my orifices and consume my body and there's definitely some vocal work redone here because Yuuki doesn't sound as sketchy as it did back when it was released as a single. It's a great song but really, the chain of singles need to end. Now.

who's bad psycho party is actually a lot better than it's title lets on. I read someone somewhere describe this a dancey number. No. It is not. When someone says dance, I think of MUCC's Fuzz, or D'espairsRay's LOVE IS DEAD, or the GazettE's SILLY GOD DISCO. No, it just has a four to the floor disco beat going on at some points during the song in addition with some electronic effects. This and pAIN kILLER are the best out of the newer tracks that they presented to us - it's just a shame that the former isn't included on the limited edition. In an effort to condense the rest of this review I'm recommending these along with just about everything else on this album. Just keep your ears open for these two.

Hisame is a faceless tune that I couldn't recall if you cuntpunted me and commanded me to. I've tried sitting through it and when I'm paying attention it drags so much I feel the need to skip it and move on to Kesshou Hana, which is a very beautiful song and that's quite possibly because it's the only track here that breaks the mold. Yuuki’s falsetto is used a lot here and that risk pays off. It also comes with a piano introductions whose inclusion isn’t solitary and doesn’t pause to get into the track. It also is packaged with a twin guitar solo which takes the song off of the “ballad” path long enough for the listener to take a breather and listen through the rest. This really isn't everyone's cup of tea and if I tell you it came from Ambrozia some people just might skip it but at least it's something different (I was going to say new but I just said it came from Ambrozia).

R[UIN]ED RUM isn't an ending track, didn't need to be re-recorded, remastered or included on Royal Order. This should have been left on the single it came from. Yuuki's opening scream is gone and the song just lacks the indies charm that made it bearable back when they first descended upon us. Instead of being bastard children of Versailles and Kisaki, they should have included Plug > into the > Socket SOMEWHERE on this album. This spot would have been fine seeing as how no other tracks (except maybe Kesshou Hana) would have ended the album much better. RED RUM relies too much on nostalgia to get on by and if you aren't a longtime Lycaon fan you really aren't going to care all that much. These last four songs are all songs that not everyone is going to like and it's really stupid to put them all back-to-back to end your album. It's supposed to end on a good note, not a bad one.

So Royal Order is a mixed bag. I enjoy this album a lot more because I enjoy Lycaon's discography and all the songs I like are mostly songs I've heard before. Royal Order definitely has a few surprises here and there but it's got a few duds as well (well actually, more than a few if you count the instrumentals as music). I recommend it, but only if you've been exposed to some form of their style before.

Review: SCREW - X-RAYS

With the announcement that Yuuto decided to leave the band today, I figured that it'd be only right that I finally take a look at X-RAYS and see what his final work with SCREW was like. I'm not going to beat around the bush and banter on and on just to have a set structure: X-RAYS was pretty average in some spots and downright terrible in others. A few issues plague this album through and through and there are plenty of other bands that do this genre and do it better but for an album X-RAYS really isn't all that bad. It just isn't all that good either.

Byou, the vocalist of this band, cannot scream. His singing voice is great, as illustrated in songs like DYSPNEA and Yurikago, but he cannot scream. X-RAYS has a notorious amount of distortion on the screams and instead of filling out Byou's weak spots it just makes the song sound funny and the screams sound stupid. There is such a ridiculous amount of distortion that I don't blame anyone if they stop listening at track five. This little glitch wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that ScReW considers themselves to be a heavy band so we have tracks like dust box and DRASTIC SLAVER which are ridden with nothing but screams and growls muffled by tons of distortion.

The album starts off with answer, which I treat as more of an album opener than a track on it's own. It's under three minutes but it's full of screaming, whispering, tinny drumming, distorted vocals out the window and a respectable guitar line that keeps this song from sinking. It leads into one song that I must point out for review purposes: VII Cardinal Sins. This song is the epitome of "born syndrome": deep heavy verses contrasted with a sung chorus that doesn't fit together well. Throw in some unintelligible growled Engrish and distortion of course and you have a track that's just loud but not clever.

Thankfully this album is miles above the crap Racial Mixture EP they released before this and I do have to say that since they recorded all new songs for this album it's good in that respect. Some noteworthy songs for listening that I need to point out are Ruin and Dread, Dyspnea, Black Monster and Yurikago. These are among the best songs on the album because they showcase Byou's strengths while leaving the massive amounts of technical aid behind. Ruin and Dread combines their crushing sound with the grace of a piano while Dyspnea throws in a nice little acoustic solo over Byou's great singing voice, both of which add more to a song than "scream, scream, scream, layer this shit with distortion, scream some more". Yurikago has a nice tempo change midway through the song that keeps the listener from falling into a sleep from listening so long and Black Monster is that token "we're diversified" track that doesn't fit in on the album. Normally I crucify these but in the context of this album I'd take anything that doesn't outright suck.

EDIT: Due to the comment of an anonymous visitor, it came to my attention that I somehow missed the incredibly good Firefly. Don't ask why I didn't notice it wasn't here the first time but if you're going to pick up X-RAYS you need to invest serious time in this track. I didn't and I missed it the first time around D=. (Perhaps then I would have given X-RAYS a second look)

And then we have tracks that outright suck....what a shame since the songs above highlight that Screw knows what it is they're doing but they just make very poor musical decisions. As stated before, VII Cardinal Sins is a page ripped right out of "born's tips and tricks to making dysfunctional music" guide while dust box is a roaring wall of noise that ought to be destroyed next to it's cousin HEEL (from Racial Mixture). answer and Drastic Slaver both have somewhat cool guitar lines racing throughout but Byou's vocals kill it and Genei no Kusari has a cringeworthy chorus that neuters a somewhat good song.

At the end of the day, Screw is where they are at because they produce what it is they want: music that's great to listen to one minute and just "what the fuck" the next. Byou is nothing more than a poor man's Mao when it comes down to it (and Mao doesn't need digitalization on his vocals to make them "harsh") and ScReW can't keep a leash on their wild side as tightly as Sadie (the band that most jumps to mind when you figure what it is they try to imitate). X-RAYS is very hit and miss as an album but there are a few tracks in here worth putting your attention towards.

If ScReW wants to improve, they'll need to get a vocalist that knows how to scream/growl and compose songs that aren't needlessly heavy and without direction like "dust box". The EQ levels also need some adjustment. Would I ever want to see some songs re-recorded for a future compilation? Sure, but just the good ones.

Recommended:

DYSPNEA
RUIN AND DREAD
Yurikago

Listen: Maybe

Review: The GazettE - Disorder

I figure whilst I have time this morning (which I feel is going to be a rare occurrence so watch the scale of these reviews start to curtail drastically) I'll get an album out of the way so I'm not completely lazy so today we're going to review an album I don't have to listen to in order to formulate thoughts about. That would be Disorder, and I have to say that The GazettE are pretty good at describing what it is their albums sound like. This album is loud, messy, brash, in your face about it, and when it's all over the fake Jesus on the cover just serves to tell you "you should have known all along that an album called DISORDER wasn't going to be friendly with your eardrums".

Both the Intro and Disorder Heaven, the outro, are pretty lame and aren't even worth mentioning in two separate breaths. The real starting track, The $ocial Riot Machine$, is barely coherent in English even with the lyrics since it relies on puns and word play in Japanese and it's supposed to sound more like a riot than a musical track. Screaming Ruki's duetting with screaming Ruki's complement buzzing guitars, loud drumming and thick bass and they all come together to cause as much compositional discord as possible for three and a half minutes. Senseless violence has never been captured better in a track but if you're looking for something musical (read: skip this album then) then you're going to facepalm at how disorganized and loud this track is.

Then again, this is what most people think metal is so I like it just out of spite, not for any redeeming qualities it may have. Perhaps a little more restrained in the veins of hard rock would be Carry?, which in this album's terms means just slightly psychopathic. It shows a little restraint and musicality in the verses that are punctuated by noise and then the chorus is there with Ruki's nasally singing that makes you wish he'd shut up and go back to screaming his little head off. Carry? doesn't carry the same mindless genius that made the last track stand out (pun not intended) but the little girl muttering "you[r ears] are almost dead" before the band falls into the apex of insanity is the high point of this song. I do feel the ending to this was dragged out and this shouldn't have been any longer than the previous track but it's still worth listening to if you have eardrums of steel.

Maximum Impulse feels like the last two tracks had a baby and then the baby stubbed it toes. Combine the racing pulse of the first track with random background screams, some hoarse singing, and you have something that's very interesting up until it gets to the chorus. I was getting a little interested in this album until it got there and then I wanted to just stop because it was so freaking BAD. The whole hardkoar kvltic metal portions mixing with the insane screaming does not go well with the high school choir chorus and then there's a whole helium portion before it goes into it the second time that makes me want to die. Unlike the last two hard tracks, I implore you to stay FAR FAR away from this one.

And no Ruki, you are not fucking welcome.

Zakurogata no Yuuutsu is a different type of sonic rape in that it's boring, chaotic, and messy in all the wrong ways. It’s also betrayingly upbeat for the message that Ruki sings about and the tone of the guitars doesn’t match the lyrics at all. It also has annoying special effects all throughout the song and what really kills it for me is that annoying trumpet or whatever instrument in the background. I just think it’s set a tad too loud for my ears, and the whole song a bit disorienting. The best part of this song would have to be the solo. Out goes the annoying noise and in comes the nice, clean guitars. It’s also pretty badass and leads right back into the chaos nicely. The part where everyone pauses later on in the song is also pretty cool, as I find Ruki really, REALLY nasal in this song and it grates my nerves. As for the lyrics of the song, I believe it’s about someone with a fatal disease of sorts and the memo certainly sounded like said person’s lover had killed himself to offer up his organs (or some other body part) in order to save the one he loved. This is such a sad story and the upbeat, messy tune doesn’t show the seriousness of the lyrics or any emotion to any extreme at all.

Shishigatsu Youka isn't as bad as it is boring. As much as fans orgasm all over Wakaremichi I actually don't like it all that much and having "conceptual" songs on the middle of an album that has nothing to do with a CONCEPT turns me off. Bluntly stated, this song sounds boring and ill-fitting, as if any generic VK band just poured this track out because it evokes a response from even the most brainless of fans.

Oh wait....what is the GazettE again?

The album would have done better to end with Saraba, the anti-war song that's probably my favorite off of this entire album. The riffs are strong and brutal and there doesn't happen to be a chorus problem anywhere in here (is still recovering from Maximum Impulse). Ruki's lyrics are pure poetry and one of the few from this album worth translating to find the meaning. It's one of the few songs here that actually doesn't suck and isn't a roaring mess on wheels and heroine. Speaking of heroine, SxDxR sucks dicks royally. It's supposed to stand for Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll but it's just not very good all around. I have no idea what the fuck the beginning is supposed to mean and the entire track just sounds chaotic and messy. This is truly disorder at it's finest form and it does not channel any of the GazettE's sound. The chorus also sounds annoying as fuck. Needless to say I don't recommend you listen to it.

Even in all this chaos the GazettE managed to find time to experiment. Anti Pop starts out sounding like a jazz club late at night before it goes off into some crappy, chaotic rock. It's one of those songs that sounds like the band got together with the sole intention to mow down the listener with every type of loud, insane, and crazy sound that they could find. It lags around the second minute with it's repetitiveness but otherwise it's another one of those weird tracks you can throw on to scare the shit out of your friends. And last but not least, Hana Kotoba is the necessary ballad requirement on every album that doesn't fit with the entire "disorder" theme but is definitely welcome as I only recommend two songs off this album in all seriousness (and this is one of them). It isn't as deceptively soft as the beginning will have you believe but compared to everything else on this album, the fact that there are acoustic guitars and violins in the background should tell you this was a risk and it works well.

Disorder blows in my opinion. It's too loud, chaotic, messy, and tries to do too much but then doesn't get anywhere with it's diversity. the GazettE needed to rein in some of their experimentation and focus more on delivering listenable tracks instead of bashing on their instruments and recording what comes out.

Recommended:

Saraba
Hana Kotoba

Score: 48%

Review: MUCC - Shion

I think it's about time I touch upon something most people might actually have on their computer. Shion is actually the place where I started with MUCC and then I worked my way back to their earlier releases and knowing one of my Internet pals she's probably been looking forward to seeing what I think of this album without explicitly asking me to review it. Now she doesn't have to, since I'm going to do it today.

01. Suion
02. Fukurou no Yurikago
03. Nuritsubusunara Enji
04. Fuzz
05. Game
06. Flight -Album Version-
07. Anjelier
08. Chiissana Mado
09. Semishigure
10. Shion
11. Sorawasure
12. Shiva
13. Libra - Album Version-

I jest, I jest. I've actually listened to most of this album - just not all in one sit. Shion is pretty thick to get into and if you like it all on the first listen there's obviously something wrong with you because this album needs to grow on you. Like fine wine, good cheese and yours truly, this needs time to grow on you for you to begin to truly appreciate it.

That doesn't mean there are parts of this album that blow more than others. We'll get to those in due time.

With that said, Suion isn't one of them. It's actually one of the album intros worth listening to because Miya took a risk and put a lot of thought into it. The puddle sounds and continuous repetition are great for starting out the album out and it builds up from really simple to...not so simple. It's also the perfect length and doesn't become dull with subsequent listens. Go interesting introduction!

MUCC usually puts their strongest offerings right up at the beginning of the album, so I'm not surprised that Fukurou no Yurikago is solid. I actually expected it to be considering that in most MUCC albums the memorable songs come first or early on (Zetsubou, Bouzenjishitsu & Ware, Arubeki Basho) Fukurou no Yurikago wastes no time in getting the album started, since I don't know many people that would consider water dropping into a bucket "music". Every review out there says that this album channels "Middle-Eastern" themes and as much as I would like to be an ass and disagree I can't get the image of Aladdin flying on a rug out of my head when I listen to this song. That means Fukurou no Yurikago does sound like it borrows elements from Indian music and culture and it comes packaged with a chorus that actually does it's JOB (i.e. making the song better) so when it's repeated what would normally annoy me actually sounds epic. The fact that this song moves into Nuritsubusunara Enji smoothly only helps to add up the points even more. It's definitely worth a listen.

For some people, this mass experimentation with styles is bound to start pissing them off...now.

Nuritsubusunara Enji is a sampling of the hard, screamy MUCC from the older days mixed with some of their new influences but the piercing yells and the punk metal riffs loses steam at the chorus. In fact, the chorus is the entire low part of the song because everything else is so much better than it and the transition to it is choppy. It also feels weird coming after the soaring rock number that was Fukurou no Yurikago because the transition is not doing this song any favors. One final comment about this song is on the length because I feel that it runs on for a minute too long and the energy dissipates after the awesome solo at the three minute mark. What Nuritsubusunara Enji has going for it is raw, pulsating energy and a cleaner ending than Fukurou no Yurikago. Tatsurou's growls and screams have also improved dramatically and are pretty solid. The fade out on the guitars mixes with the intro to Fuzz cleanly and leaves this song feeling decent at worst.

If you don't like Fuzz then I cannot help you. You also might want to stop listening to this album while you're at it. Fuzz is 4:54 of win and unlike most other electronica songs it doesn't suffer from monotony. There are breakdowns every half a minute, a thick contrabass current thanks to Yukke (he can be seen playing it in the PV), and a semblance of the badass rock attitude that I expect out of every band. The acoustic strums in the first verse are also pretty fucking sweet and the touches with the harmonica take some getting used to but personally I can't see how the song would be the same without it. What I could go without are the reverb on Tatsurou's voice: it's slight at most but it does get annoying after a lot of listens. About Tatsurou's voice: it fits well into this song and it's good to see MUCC playing to his strengths instead of mashing along and forcing him to keep pace (which they incidentally do at some point later on in this album).

Game continues the genre-bending game with a thick, soaring track that combines the elements of dark and heavy without necessarily considering the two synonymous. Tatsurou's voice once again channels some Middle-Eastern influences in the verses and the way the two guitars complement each other under Yukke's bass leads to the song feeling rich with tension. I'd venture to say the best part of the song is when Miya's strumming the guitar alone before Yukke and Satochi come in with their respective instruments and have the entire song regurgitate awesome into your eardrums. The fact that MUCC decides to explode at the halfway mark and then keeps the tension throughout shows that they're not in this album to replicate what all the other bands do. They're here to do their own things and even if they sample some inspiration somewhere else they still keep it MUCC at the core.

Flight was re-recorded for Shion but this pop trash still burns in my eardrums. The good thing to this song is that it's placed right after Game to pick you up but it excels at that job and then comes off as obnoxiously happy. That irritates me to no end. For once Satochi lays off the long cymbal lines and focuses more on the rhythm and Miya's guitar is cleaner throughout. I'm not a fan of songs that sound like anime themes (and this one does) so I often give it a pass. If you like happy, upbeat songs check this one out. Then again, what the hell are you doing reading this?

ROLLER DISCO BABY! Anjelier contains the same ingredient of unnecessary upbeat sounds but what makes this song ultimately enjoyable is that it's not afraid to abandon that sound for segments at a time. The way it switches atmosphere so quickly by inserting a synthesizer here or dropping down a note there makes the song less standard and more subject to repeat listens. I'm wondering if Miya composed this just to piss Tatsurou off because the notes that he has to climb at the chorus strain his voice to the limit and I'm afraid to hear him sing this live. HOWEVER...I do have to wonder what the hell a disco anthem is doing in the middle of the album and I also have to wonder WHY MUCC chose to do disco in the first place. They did fine but Anjelier doesn't fit here.

Another ballad already? Yeah, Chiisana Mado is another ballad and it's inevitably going to be compared to Game since it follows on it's heels rather quickly. Don't even try because the two sound so different a comparison isn't going to get you anywhere. It's passionate without being overly dark and it incorporates some nice strings and some ethereal guitar strumming along with a stunning solo section complete with a piano and some acoustic guitars. Yukke threw in the entire kitchen sink composing this one and this is easily the most majestic song on Shion. Despite that it sticks closer to the album's core sound than you might think.

Semishigure irritates my eardrums at the beginning but other than that it doesn't sound much different than from when it was released on "MUCC LIVE BOOTLEG #2" in 2006. (then titled "Gokusai Part1 ~RARE TRACK~). I still don't understand why MUCC had to fuck that part up because it pierces my eardrums and it honestly hurts after repeatedly listening to it. It channels some of the atmosphere from the last track while sounding a little like Nuritsubusunara Enji and that creates another track that sounds alright but doesn't stand out too much. Tatsurou's voice remains in control here and he doesn't sound like he's straining himself here. If nothing else this sounds like a warm-up to the next track, bridging the gap between a majestic ballad and a heavy number with punkish rhythms and solid singing. Semishigure doesn't blow me away but it doesn't suck either.

The self-titled track Shion doesn't let down and in some ways sounds like the culmination of what the entire album wants to be. MUCC keeps it interesting throughout the entire five minutes and is full of singing, chanting, falsetto, and screaming along with quiet portions juxtaposed with brutal riffs and oppressive drums. Shion has so much going on that it takes more than a few listens to grasp everything that was put into this track. Some things going on in this track are so subliminal that they lend to the mood without you even noticing it. One such passage is when the track slows down into some bongos while Satochi's drums slowly speed up creating a sense of tension that explodes right back into the chorus. Tatsurou also throws in some duetting falsettos that are almost inaudible if you're not listening for them and there's a riff section going on in the chorus that I almost didn't notice the first time around. Tatsurou brandishes some death vocals on us don't translate well with the overdone chorus but do better at the slowdown which is dragged out a little too long. Other than that Shion is nothing less than mindblowing.

Sorawasure feels like it was placed here to wind the listener down from Shion. Tatsurou jumps right into the verses which is a bit different than from what I'm used to hearing and the chorus isn't too jarring. The slowdown was a little too typical but that's not too bad. Nothing about this song is pushed to the limits and because they keep the song simple while adding in slight changes to the typical formula and adding neat additions like the acoustic/string and the solo solidifies this as one of their more creative songs. I'm glad to see that they manage to keep the album going with another good song after something great like Shion. It shows you get your money's worth when you buy an MUCC album.

Shiva is that song that's going to make me eat my words. I hate Shiva with a passion. It starts out with what sounds like a speed metal riff and it keeps the deception going for a good 20 seconds before it evolves into some unlistenable pop-punk every other fucking genre under the sun shit. It tries to bring back the attitude later but that's about as believable as Barney busting into some gangster rap about friendship. This and Yasashii Uta are two songs that I could see them ending a tour with but I'm glad the album didn't end off with this. It's disappointing whe I get ready to mosh and I can't because it breaks out into a treehouse anthem. Skip.

Libra is heaven to my ears after sitting through Shiva. MUCC shows that they can be deep and sinister without having to resort to primordial screaming for five minutes on end and that showed with the transition between dark Tatsurou and the blasting guitar portions. The chorus takes away from the gothic and creepy atmosphere that the song is mostly made up of but other than that Libra does a good job of ending the album off, even with the unnecessary silence at the end of it.

In a change of pace (and because I see it pointless to review the singles for this album after this), I've placed reviews for all the singles for this album underneath (excluding the title tracks of course). Perhaps starting now will help to alleviate the "scroll syndrome" I envision having in a month or two.

The only song to talk about here is Touei. It's nowhere near as strong as Libra and actually comes off as a leftover track that could have been sandwiched in easily on Gokusai. It provides a nice contrast to Libra but if it's left to stand on it's own two feet I honestly doubt that Touei could leave much of an impression on the listener. It's got a few interesting passages but nothing that really grabs your attention overall. It's not a bad song but it's not an assertive one either so that's probably why it's delegated to the lone B-side position on this single. MUCC has created better than this and they know it.

Recommended:

Libra

Score: 70%

01. Fuzz
02. Chain Ring
03. Mae e (live)
04. Fuzz Electro Cruisin' Remix

The title track was featured in Cloverfield but even the B-side got some screen time somewhere else. Judging by the way this song sounds I would call Chain Ring an anime theme out of derision but it actually IS an anime theme (anime: Zombie Loan) which just calls for lulz. I actually remembered this song when I got up to take care of some business and when I was listening to it the first two times I wasn't paying much attention to it. Chain Ring actually isn't that bad and for a B-side it's completely superior to Touei. I find the mix between rough and light to be on point and the acoustic twangs before the chorus hits were a nice addition I didn't catch the first four times.

The third track is a live track which automatically means that without visual accompaniment it sucks. Mae e doesn't come with visual accompaniment but it does have a few nice touches like Tatsurou's harmonica portion, crowd interaction and an elongated solo section. I do believe that MUCC put this here for a reason. Even though Mae e was released back on Homura Uta and Fuzz was released on Shion there's a similar feeling both songs give that show that MUCC hasn't really changed all that much with their sound so to speak. Mae e very similar to Chain Ring was well. Compared to other lives I've heard this doesn't sound too bad vocally or instrumentally so if you don't have Homura Uta this is a good song showing you what some parts of it sounded like.

Barring some odd rhythmic patterns and the obvious effects that the remix had on the song, Fuzz electro cruisin' remix doesn't sound too different from the title track. The reverb on the voice is more noticeable but it sticks out less like a sore thumb here. What sticks out more and annoys me to no end here is Tatsurou's "whoas" in the chorus. I miss the acoustic guitar in the first verse and the punch that Yukke's contrabass had on the song in the verses so this remix pales in comparison to the title track. It still was an honest effort at trying to do something different and it didn't really fail too much. It just didn't live up to the standards set by the first track.

Recommended:

Fuzz
Chain Ring

Score: 77%

01. Flight
02. Kanashii Hanashi
03. Libra (Live)
04. Yasashii Uta (Live)

I listened to the single version of Flight before I got to Kanashii Hanashi and I have to say that Miya must have gotten fond of a certain distortion, equalizer or amp effect because it stays the same between Flight and Kanashii Hanashi. Chain Ring is still the king of B-sides here but Kanashii Hanashi doesn't lag far behind. I'm liking the fuzz effect on Yukke's bass and the attitude on the chorus is pretty cool. The classic "step up" method used in songs at the chorus to amplify it's meaning before it's over doesn't work too well here though but it's nothing that renders the song unlistenable. It's worth a listen.

Live, Libra lacks the punch that studio recording and mastering has in the way of the instruments. MUCC can't replicate all the little fancy touches that they have on the album so it's rather straightforward with some S.E. support in the background to make the song sounds somewhat like the recording on the single. I do have to mention that there are some frills here and there that remind you that this is live and they do like to take some spins on their music and the way the song ends off is smoother than the ones they've recorded for sale. Tatsurou's voice is also in prime form and for a live recording his voice is excellent.

And last in this super-spree of reviews we have...an eleven minute live recording of Yasashii Uta. Perhaps an explanation as to why it's over twice as long as the original recording is that it's the last song in a live tour in Germany (Tats says so himself in broken English at the beginning) but it really overstays it's welcome seven minutes in when all I have to hear are "lalalala" over and over again. I'm actually happy this song ended because if you're not in the moment at the concert you're not up for hearing an 11 minute track that has been condensed into a listenable 5:13 beforehand. I think the main reason this was included was because it shares similarities to Flight but it would have been nice if it was short and to the point.

Recommended:

Kanashii Hanashi

Score: 60%

Review: Stolen Babies - There Be Squabbles Ahead

WOT TEH HEEL ARE J00 DOING REVEWING STUFFZ IN ENGLEESH?

Well you see, during the review of swamp man yesterday I got really bored with just sticking to music in one language and hearing music that sounds all alike. I was talking with a friend about it and she suggested that I should try to review a band I'm completely unfamiliar with in a language I don't normally listen to. I remembered this band from a few months back when she showed me and I listened a few times and I didn't know what to think. I said I would get back to her and tell her what I think of it.

And then as I was about to bring up this band and ask her what she thought, she brought up this band and requested that I do it. So, here you and I go on a trip through this demented circus...

1. "Spill!" – 3:21
2. "Awful Fall" – 3:44
3. "Filistata" – 3:17
4. "A Year of Judges" – 3:20
5. "So Close" – 4:21
6. "Tablescrap" – 3:54
7. "Swint? or Slude?" – 2:16
8. "Mind Your Eyes" – 4:04
9. "Lifeless" – 5:56
10. "Tall Tales" – 3:41
11. "Push Button" – 4:07
12. "Gathering Fingers" – 5:20
13. "The Button Has Been Pushed" – 1:45

Holy hell, almost every cover I can find these days has the face of some multimillionaire faggot with a face full of botox grinning at me in some sheepish, "hand me your money" fashion. With a cover that looks like something Tim Burton scribbled on a notepad in his sleep, Stolen Babies should immediately come off as a band that isn't normal.

They aren't.

Music has become so stale and mainstream all over I was falling into a rut of "This melody follows a progressive 5/4 pattern while curtailing any strain of originality in the rest of the package", or "The album jacket looks awfully standard and boring and reminiscent of the album sitting next to it in my media player", or "These zomboidic pentatonic lyrics are grating on my eardrums and provide no intellectual stimulation".

I am here to tell you this has to be one of the most refreshing trips through music I have ever taken. No matter how much metal you may think you know, or how much you think you know what avant-garde music sounds like, you cannot immunize yourself for this album. There's some thick bass, accordion, bone-crushing guitar, glockenspiel, jaw harp, tuba, what sounds like seven different types of drums, and violins all wrapped around a package of amelodic rhythms, dark atmospheres, sharp contrasts, and a vocalist dressed like Harley Quinn. Said vocalist, who has to be one of the hottest front women in the metal scene, alternates between pop singing, black metal screaming, Broadway-esque vocals, screeching, and sounding like something from Satan's toilet.

If Kyo had a vagina and was hot, he would be her.

In the hands of any other musician, which most likely means any incapable person who holds a guitar backwards and calls himself competent, such a mélange would cause you to immediately dismiss the album as "alienating trash" and force you to sprint back to your cookie-cutter staple artists. In the hands of Stolen Babies, they concoct a 40 minute piece of work that does a superb job at scaring the hell out of anyone not ready for it. Many review sites will tell you that it's going to take you a few spins through this album in order to "get it".

I "got it" in one.

A track-by-track analysis is impossible for this album because it was put together with meticulous care. Stolen Babies intended for you to sit down with album in hand and listen from the first jarring notes of Spill! to the almost inaudible mumbling that ends off The Button Has Been Pushed. All the parts of this album are so melodically off and so purposefully eccentric that if you pick one and try to use that one song as a comparison to the rest of the album you will fail miserably. Songs like Push Button and Lifeless are things that you might want to play for your friends to get them interested in Stolen Babies because it's as "commercial" as this album gets (which means it just toes the line of musical sanity) but sound nothing like Mind Your Eyes, Gathering Fingers, and Awful Fall.

Hell, this band even destroys the normal conventions of a track list that many bands exploit in order to make some quick cash. Although devoid of an opening instrumental, Swint? or Slude? has to be one of the most creative instrumentals ever placed on an album and shows a large degree of thought. Instead of programming some lame electronic beats or sampling some piss out of the piano cooler they go ahead with something I can only describe as the circus orchestra. I could live without the last track but it's among the more creative in the line of album endings. Neither one of those two manage to screw up the quirky pace of this album in the slightest. When a band can take something standard and flip it on it's head and make you wonder why it sounds so different, they've made music.

This is the section where I would normally give you recommendations as to what to listen to but I cannot in this particular instance. There Be Squabbles Ahead sounds like a ride through a demented circus and at the end of the journey I can assure you one of two things: you'll press play all over again or you'll be running away from this faster than the kids on the jacket. There is no in between. You will either love or hate this band but I can guarantee you that you haven't heard the extremes of music until you've given this a try or six.

Score: 90%

Review: HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR - swamp man

There are so many ways that I could start off this review but I decided this time I would cut any stupidness and get right to a few things that bug me. One is the title. At first, I was under the impression that they strung together the title because English is "ever so cool" and they thought swamp man sounded badass. Seriously, what's not kvltic about SWAMP MAN? It's a man...from a swamp!

Then I realized that it actually stems from a philosophical thought experiment handled by a scientist that was trying to explore semantic externalism. I have yet to figure out how that exactly translates into what HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR was going for with this album but they have confirmed that that is where they took the name from. If I had to guess, I guess it would have to be about how they're reinventing themselves musically with their new singer.

The second is that with the preview of the two songs they've given us (XYZ and good bye) I cannot figure out why the album cover looks so fruity. We have a roaring Yusuke and crunching guitars behind a skull in a baby blue sky with a friggin' rainbow. Does. Not. Compute.

The third is something I figured out just today - High and Mighty Color are once again indies. Yay or nay? That's all up to you.

01. swamp man
02. XYZ
03. good bye
04. eyes
05. fly to the other moon
06. pain
07. 7.2
o8. hate
09. living
10. you

I kid you not - most of the titles are indeed one word and none of them are in Japanese.

I was originally going to do a track-by-track analysis but I gave up at good bye. This is a drastic change in High and Mighty Color and although I was praising this hard, heavier style that I've wanted them to pursue I feel like this album is still missing that vital "ingredient" that makes me like songs.

What neuters swamp man for me is the fact that the construction of six of the ten songs are painfully simple. They may be cohesive, effective, and sound good but they aren't satisfying over the long run. They don't tug at my heart strings, they don't make me want to get up and mosh in my kitchen, they don't do anything!

At least we know their core sound hasn't changed one bit.

swamp man also comes packaged with an introduction, which is a first for High and Mighty Color. This introduction, eponymous of the album, does nothing to deter my never-ending hate of introduction tracks. In some aspects, it fuels my dislike even more. Starting off with some crackling behind an ominous sound, a piano kicks in and it continues on including so many odd and unusual sounds causing it to go from "ominous opening" to "continuous what the fuckgasm" and ends off with Halca mumbling gibberish in English. Most of the time, the strength of a few songs in the album more than make up for a bad opening but swamp man was so memorable in a negative way I can't excuse this.

hate, living, eyes, and pain are typical hard rock tracks with dual vocalists which means they are nothing special even by this bands lackluster standards. They are among the weakest on the album for one reason; they channel too much San-period Haikara and not enough swamp man Haikara. With this album they sought to return to their Anti-Nobunaga roots but they haven't been able to seperate themselves from the formulaic approach of their last albums completely (which still explains the lack of creative instrumentation - they tried to be hard for hard's sake and came up short).

Although those four tracks sound much more refined than the 80's love child that San turned out to be with great guitar solos and good vocals, what is missing is the "teamwork" between Yusuke and Halca. The passion, the dynamic, the team that Yusuke and Maki once made cannot be repeated. As a group, Yusuke and Halca haven't been able to work off each other's strengths and cover one another's weaknesses yet. Even though Yusuke has gotten better and Halca isn't as forceful as I would like her to be, these tracks feel empty and provide a mediocre amount of replay value.

On the other hand, the other tracks on this album belong in the category of "download and like" because they hint at a subtle maturity that has been festering in High and Mighty Color's pocket for the last few albums.

7.2 packs the Middle Eastern flair reminiscent of Haitoku no Jounetsu with the more evolved stylings they've touched on with stuff like Toxic and this results in something purely swamp man. The electric guitars lack that bite that a lot of the other tracks have and HALCA's vocals are great here but they still lack a bit of punch that would draw me in. It's still a standout. fly to the other moon possesses a Halca that experiments with what sounds like an uncomfortable falsetto and a Yusuke that doesn't feel like he has to scream up the track. It comes off as a wholesome effort to try to not pump out the same two types of songs repeatedly and I have to admit it's rather catchy. Channeling some hard guitars with this mentioned falsetto and well-placed electric effects produces a sound that they haven't yet played around with. Very interesting.

you is the end-of-the-album mid-tempo rocker that once again sounds completely devoid of any of the 80's influence of San. This still feels like some older High and Mighty Color ballads but somehow they were able to keep this song fresh, letting it own the position at the end of the album that it was granted. It's not a new sound from this band but it sounds purposeful and refined (even if it is a little simple). It was a wise choice for them to end the album off with this song.

This just leaves XYZ and good bye as the last two tracks I have to speak about. I left them for last because these two are the "rock" tracks here. XYZ is the harder track but it suffers from Halca's delivery and an overabundance of Yusuke. It's not too much of a bad thing but older tracks used to rely on Maki's strong vocals for impact and this sudden change is causing withdrawal symptoms from me. good bye isn't as hard but it contains more Halca, who sounds better in this atmosphere. The contrast between distorted vocals and clean vocals at the verse is genius and Halca's English is very good. Both contain heavy guitars reminiscent of Anti-Nobunaga work mixed in with some earlier High and Mighty Color. What hurts these two tracks are that they are placed right after one another and then no other track tries to channel this attitude later on. If you were hoping for an entire album full of XYZ-esque tracks, you're going to be let down. Hard.

In a nutshell, swamp man sounds like High and Mighty Color is trying to cover themselves. This record is evident of a lot of potential waiting to be tapped but musically this band stripped themselves down so much there isn't much left for them to work with. This isn't a continuation of Rock Pit so if you want to enjoy this album you're going to have to discard that idea. When it comes down to it, Haikara really did "Go Over" with this release and they sound like a completely different band.

I am going to be honest with you all - I struggled writing this review because this album causes me to draw so many blanks. This sound is new and I was expecting it but at the same time I was not. I'll also admit that I had my hopes up too high for this album and I was let down a little bit. Some sketchy choices concerning production mixed with inexperience with this new sound lessens swamp man's impact but overall I think there is something in this album that hasn't clicked yet. Due to that, I will withhold judgment until it's "proper release", when I will revisit this album and try again.

Review: Virgil - Judgment # 005 Omnibus

In this review I will only tackle Virgil's song at the end because I am too lazy to go track down the rest. I have become increasingly disinterested in looking up and liking Visual Kei indies bands because their releases are hard to locate and they tend to break up before they get better. The reasons why they break up are understandable but it's just not worth my time and effort.

Another reason why I opt to review a Virgil song today is because their new two-type single was released. I don't have that but I did manage to find this today so in lieu of that release I will do this one. I highly doubt most people even know that this band exists but for those that do, you will be rather happy with this one song.

I don't give a fuck it's on here somewhere...

Remember the whole broken stone awake sevendays double release they had going on a few months back? They gave us five songs in total and this one song is harder than anything on those five releases. The song in question is called Around the World and it's a catchy rock piece with very simple guitar riffs and standard drumming. I would expect to make something like this myself or go to a random garage band and hear them play this. Virgil stripped all that made their music sound distinctive and tried to go for that "heavy sound contrasted with light vocalist" and they did well....up until the chorus. The whole "alound the world! alound the world! alound the world!" portion of the lyrics are as irksome as the Black Stars chorus from Sadie's Kagerou single and drag the song down.

Haku's voice is fine when he doesn't try to stress his death metal chants but I don't like it here. Those growls sound horrible and I get the impression he choked on some Listerine beforehand but they do not feature heavily in this song so it isn't too much to deal with.

So, what is my main problem with this song? If I can put it simply it's that I don't like it. With their last release, I was lenient since I figured it was their first release and they could improve given time. With this song, Virgil took a step back and played it safe. The only thing that both the releases I have heard have in common is that it shares a disjointed, haphazard nature. Virgil has no musical flow. All of the musicians sound like they recorded their tracks seperately and then overlayed them with one another and it just happened to come out sounding the way it does. I expect more from this band - way more. These aren't newcomers to the musical scene so can anyone tell me why their music sounds so uninspired and boring?

Oh yes, I forgot. This is Visual Kei.

Score: 48%

Review: The GazettE - STACKED RUBBISH

Alright, it's about time I bounced back from this momentary pause and started looking at music once again. Although it would be "the honorable thing to do" to review Versailles music today I can't at the moment so I'm going to take a freebie today and stab STACKED RUBBISH over and over again until it falls over. Consider this a release of my latent anger.

1. "Art Drawn By Vomit" – 1:49
2. "Agony" – 4:15
3. Hyena" – 4:16
4. "Burial Applicant" – 4:27
5. "Ganges ni Akai Bara" (ガンジスに紅い薔薇) – 4:08
6. "Regret" – 4:30
7. "Calm Envy" – 6:05
8. "Swallowtail on the Death Valley" – 4:06
9. "Mob 136 Bars" – 2:39
10. "Gentle Lie" – 3:53
11. Filth in the Beauty" – 4:11
12. "Circle of Swindler" – 2:58
13. "Chizuru" (千鶴) – 5:47
14. "People Error" – 2:58

Art Drawn by Vomit - F
I want to scream at the title track right now. Art Drawn by Vomit is a horrible 1:49 full of bad English, overused female vocals and clips of all the songs that are coming up on the album. At no point is this track rewarding. I would categorize this alongside -------- as one of the worst introductions I have ever heard. Skip.

Agony - D
Not as bad as the previous track, but still pretty atrocious. Agony is supposed to be a stripped-down Linkin Park clone, laden with more cases of bad Engrish and lazy instrumentation. What makes this song worse is that it sounds so empty and hollow as if it were a last minute addition to the tracklist. There is an abuse of turntables and a guitar lick in the background that becomes very repetitive over the pentatonic bass and the standard drumming. Nowhere in this song does Agony take a turn from the hip-hop/rock infusion that was done badly - so badly that you actually might laugh at The GazettE's attempt at being serious. Skip.

Hyena - B
Hyena actually has some energy to it but I expect nothing less from an A-side I heard and liked already. It flows nicely from the last track and when it launches into the screaming verses you forget all about the first two tracks. The switch at the chorus sounds natural and is a nice switch from the screaming Ruki that we heard earlier on in the track but the repetitive structure wears on my ears with continuous listens. The first two tracks should have been skipped and the album should have started with Hyena.

Burial Applicant - A-
Finally, a real song that doesn't suck. The beginning has some atrocious hip-hop elements that song could have done without, some passages sound like Repetition of Hatred, and the ending is a bit rough but overall Burial Applicant feels like the "start" of STACKED RUBBISH as a song. Burial Applicant feels a lot like Hyena in structure and especially in the switch from the verse to the chorus but I don't mind this. I say this this early on because I know that later on in the album you will be wishing some tracks sounded as good as this one.

Ganges ni Akai Bara - C
It does not feel right coming after Burial Applicant. In fact, Ganges ni Akai Bara doesn't feel right anywhere on this album. The former track has this melancholy atmosphere surrounding it and contrary to almost every other song on here "Ganges" feels needlessly upbeat. I would say Reita has a "bass solo" but it's so badly done I don't even want to mention it. Also, by the end of the song, all the Ruki parts become overwhelming and it's too much to enjoy. It's obviously a rehash of the abomination that was on NIL and even though it is done better here, poor placement and poor song choice delegate this to "mediocre" land.

Regret - C
Once again, senselessly upbeat but at least the two upbeat songs are stuck together to create a portion of suck instead of dispersing the suck throughout the CD. Regret is not a ballad or a rougher number so classifying this genre-wise is tricky. What this song does embody is a feeling of "playing it safe". All the instruments come together nicely, Ruki's voice sits atop them and belts his notes well, and the production is nice and crisp but it's all too damn standard. None of the members try to take a turn and do something unexpected and at the end of the day Regret comes off boring.

Calm Envy - C-
The first "ballad" of the album, Calm Envy is a stereotypical Visual Kei ballad. That is intended to be an insult by the way because The GazettE is capable of creating intense, drawing ballads and I do not feel anything from Calm Envy. Looks like even their forte was fucked up on this album. Add the obnoxious female vocals that do NOT need to be in this song and come in every three fucking seconds, a weak chorus that has no energy injected into it, and the solo that grabs my attention halfway into the song, and you have a weak excuse for a ballad on this album. After the solo things start to pick up a little because Ruki doesn't take a stereotypical, formulaic approach to the ending lines and there's a second solo leading out. Even though BOTH solos don't fit I will just pretend the first three minutes did not exist and that the last three minutes of Calm Envy is all we need to hear.

Swallowtail on the Death Valley - C-
No....no no. Night of pussy? The WORST example of overuse of female backvocals on the album thrown in without any thought whatsoever? Swallowtail here had the capability of being a catchy number but the obnoxious vocals every three seconds makes it very difficult for me to enjoy. Ruki also tries to sound sexy and isn't completely successful at what it is he does. Add that in with a song that doesn't fit coming after Calm Envy and we have a song that was actually overthought. If the extra elements are cut out and the track order was rearranged somewhat, I think I could grow to like this song more. I actually want to like this song but there are so many elements in this song that make me dislike it I have to leave it with a C- and move on.

MOB 136 BARS - D-
Does the suck not stop? Ruki's screaming sounds like someone shoved a drill in his ass set to hyperspeed and the instrumentation is just a riff-fest of suck. Drums are loud, bass is lazy, structure is redundant at best. What 136 comes off as is a bad attempt at trying to be American rock instead of Gazerock. This definitely does not belong here in between two softer tracks and it's inclusion just sounds awful. There is no getting used to this wall of noise in any way whatsoever. Skip.

Gentle Lie - B+
Finally, this musical schizophrenia pops out something halfway listenable! Gentle Lie is quite the entertaining track, even if it isn't typical GazettE. On this album, I will take anything that is performed well and although Gentle Lie is jarring coming after the screaming 136 we just sat through it manages to take the listener in a different direction. There are no annoying female vocals to deal with and Ruki delivers his lyrics well. The whole "no no no" thing he does sounds better when it's three of him and not three digitized women. The structure of the song is also fluid and there isn't one part that I can complain about. I am not a fan of this song in the slightest but I do have to acknowledge when The GazettE does something right.

Filth in the Beauty - A-
It's a love-or-hate deal and I am a fan of this track. Filth in the Beauty is such a departure from everything else we have heard so far and that makes this track better. It's the first time we were subjected to such monstrous amounts of female backvocals but what makes this song tolerable in my book is that the ladies actually sing their own lines and don't parrot Ruki, which is what really grinds my gears with a lot of the songs above. The whole solo section to screamy part is done well and the entire message - incest fyi - is just wrapped up so well that this refreshing song is a good reward for anyone who managed to sit through this album long enough to get to this point.

Circle of Swindler - B-
It's in the same vein of MOB 136 BARS but listenable. Circle of Swindler channels some aspects of American rock with Ruki's vocals completely in English and a rhythm section that sprints flawlessly. The solo at 1:12 is pretty good and that is followed by a quick bass solo before they jump back into it all. I would usually categorize this as "not the best here" but it IS the one of best here so just imagine how bad the rest of this album is. Circle of Swindler takes some getting used to and in this album of many different, clashing melodies this might be a song that fans of the harder side of The GazettE can appreciate amidst all this chaos.

Chizuru - A-
It's another ballad but I find this one more entertaining than Calm Envy. There was something about the former track that upset me. I am not sure if it was the guitar lines, the constant female vocals, or the lack of a tangible atmosphere. What that track got wrong is what Chizuru got right. The female backvocals are set perfectly in the mix and they add a haunting dimension without having to repeat what has already been said in a copycat way. The bass and the electronic distortion work together in the beginning of the song to create a dark, sorrowful tone and halfway in The GazettE manages to change pace without leaving behind the atmosphere too much. Chizuru moves inbetween two atmospheres very well and makes for an interesting listen hat doesn't take half of the track's lifespan to produce. I lower the rating of this track because it was re-recorded and the original on the Hyena single was superior due to the fact that the muddy bass was working in favor of the track's darkness.

People Error - B
*obviously inspired by Shinsou*
With that aside, People Error is pretty nice but it doesn't belong at the end of the album. In a way, it does belong at the end of the album but Chizuru was strong enough to end the album on it's own. People Error should have replaced Art Drawn by Vomit as the opening to this album because that would have been preferrable to....whatever the hell the intro track was. I hope having a pure piano instrumental ending does not become another staple Visual Kei trick because it seems almost every band wants to do a variation of it (Dir en grey, The GazettE, Nega, etc.) but here it's the nice, unpredictable way to end the album off.

So this is the eponymous STACKED RUBBISH for you. It starts off like a mess, gets decent around track four and then plummets like a rock until it gets to track 10. After track 10, the album becomes alright in my opinion but having a 14 track album go down this hard is a terrible waste of time, money, and talent. DIM is a complete turnaround from this.

What STACKED RUBBISH suffers from is incoherency. Some tracks are shoved onto the album almost at random and don't work where they are placed. Other tracks try to incorporate too many elements into it and instead of coming off as something fresh it ends up confused and over-saturated. Other tracks just plain suck and don't belong on this album. The worst stab that makes STACKED RUBBISH an epic failure is that there is no central "theme". These "theme" can just be in tone. DIM has a theme of "darkness" and NIL has a theme of "loneliness". STACKED RUBBISH feels like two EP's jammed together and constantly fights with itself as to what it wants to do.

At the end of the album, all it makes me want to do is not listen anymore.

Recommended:

Burial Applicant

Score: 39%

Review: girugämesh - girugämesh

MUSIC (ex. SHIT THE ALBUM) is a piece of shit. Have I made that clear? Good. Now that we have that settled, realize that I am going to refer to the album as Girugämesh and the band as girugämesh. I decided to review Girugämesh because I want (read: need) to stop the row of bad albums I have been coming across in my random searching lately. I purposely picked this one because I saw it in Hot Topic and even though I didn't buy it then I'm thinking about buying it at some point because this song contains some of my favorite songs from girugämesh.

And because of MUSIC, I am going to be ruthless with this album just to show you that even when I'm harsh it's miles better than MUSIC.

01. Intro
02. patchwork
03. Vermillion
04. stupid
05. Barricade
06. Shining
07. Shiroi Ashiato
08. CRAZY-FLAG
09. Shoujo A
10. ROCKER'S
11. Dance Rock Night
12. Domino
13. Kowareteiku Sekai

01. Intro
02. Patchwork
03. Vermillion
04. stupid
05. Shoujo A
06. CRAZY-FLAG
07. Shining
08. Shiroi Ashiato
09. ROCKER'S
10. Kowareteiku Sekai

Intro is, well, an intro. I think this is the second intro (first one being Lyrical Sympathy's Intro) that I actually could get along with. It's got some tribal drumming going on aside relentless drums, sparse use of the guitars that creep in over time, and an ominous tone that starts flowing once the guitars come in for good. Hear that going on in the background? You don't? That's called "the lack of superfluous electronic effects that the song doesn't need not being present". It gets a little repetitive towards the end but the fact that I managed to sit through it and not be bored to tears means it's OK as far as introductions go. I still would rather jump into the album.

patchwork is where girugämesh tries to channel some MUCC (hey, look at the coincidence) into their sound. Miya co-produced half of this album and Tatsurou provides backup growls for this song. If you are unsure which one it is, it's the deeper ones. girugämesh made a wise choice putting this song first as it is one of the stronger tracks on Girugämesh. Unlike SHIT THE ALBUM, the rock portion of girugämesh is clearly on display here. Satoshi's singing contains some fucking passion and isn't distorted to all hell, and the guitars even have a break down section that even Break Down didn't have. The end duetted scream just ends this song off right. For once in a few days, I can't bitch.

Vermillion is a less stellar patchwork. It continues in the vein of hard rock and the chorus is a tad off-putting compared to the rest of the song but overall it fits alright. A part of me wants to like Vermillion but it's construction is overall just not as good as the last track and it's nothing a band member did wrong per se but it's just that the song is. It's the way it was made and it could always be made better but I have no suggestions as to what to throw in in order for me to like it more. I could rattle off more inventive guitarlines, something other than a breakdown, and an ending that rivals the creativity of the beginning but that's all copout garbage spewing from the mouth of a weeaboo that doesn't know what he speaks of, right? That music video is the generic, spin around the rosey shit that is alright but overdone to all hell. What this song sounds like is 2007 Dir en grey done right, with pinch harmonics in the right place and drum lines that aren't as static as asswaffles. Three things put this lower than patchwork: one is the pitch the guitars go for at the beginning and when Satoshi ends his verses (lessens the badass feeling of the song), two is the lack of Tatsurou, three is that it came after patchwork.

stupid is...goddamn stupid. It's not even two minutes long and it's just Satoshi participating in some bark-and-call with the band. It sounds like a heavier, crapped up, sped up version of patchwork. patchwork was heavy enough. What doesn't help is that stupid is 1:44 and it repeats the chorus. Fuck, it's so short I wouldn't have minded 20 seconds cut off if they just cut out the stereotypical end and made a senseless, short mosher. But no, what does girugämesh do? Make an obnoxiously short-yet-lengthy senseless short mosher. It's such a fucking contradiction it takes more time to figure out than it does for stupid to play. I hate short songs that are placed in the middle of an album that aren't epic, and this is one of them. I hate stupid. Moving on.

Barricade starts out with some sampling of a beating heart and some singing, which makes you think it's going to do something other than be senselessly heavy. Then a few seconds in, it becomes one of those songs that alternate between loud passages and quiet verses (this time amped to the max) before the song devolves into a bunch of screaming after the chorus. That's when it loses the energy for me because screaming your ass off pointlessly no longer impresses me as it had two years ago. Sure, the screams are punctuated by a sung verse and there's a faint meow somewhere in there but Barricade comes off as a (much) weaker version of patchwork. Why is it that the last three tracks sound just like the second and it's all been worse?

Even before the advent of MUSIC and the suck of girugämesh I did not like shining. The electronic effects are weaved into the rock more and it comes off as an 80's piece that does not feel like girugämesh. I cannot complain because it's not another patchwork but I hate the chorus. It does not fit, and not in that "harsh contrast" way I usually bitch about. It just feels obnoxious and awkwardly placed. What is sad is the fact that this song would not fit into the soundscape of MUSIC because it is too good but it doesn't fit here either so it's existence boggles me. I can't even say it's a new sound because the new sound births shitbuckets next to this. I dislike it now because I KNOW what it is they have become and it gives me flashbacks to the feelings I felt while listening to MUSIC. If they at least started pouring out more types of music like shining some of the hardcore fans of this band might give a passing mention to girugämesh. Back to shining, and sans any mention of le MUSIC album it suffers from poor track placement and poor chorus melody.

I don't get what this is doing here either. Shiroi Ashiato is yet another stumble in this album and it seems like after Vermillion this album took a huge tumble. Is this supposed to be a sentimental ballad, because that solo portion at about 2:01 sounds too damn hopeful to fit in here. I can't even find any part of this song to get attached to: Shiroi Ashiato is slow, uninteresting, and full of plodding bass thanks to ShuU. It feels longer than the four minute runtime it gives itself and by the end of the track I have no incentive to go back. For once JaME and I agree on half of something, and that is that Shiroi Ashiato just isn't that good of a track. It's also another victim of bad track placement.

CRAZY-FLAG is a stupid title but it's the best offering we've gotten since...Barricade. It doesn't sound like Barricade but it is an upbeat rocker piece so if you need something to rock out to and you don't want to use one of your "good" songs this is a safe bet. It sounds similar to Barricade but that's girugämesh's "sound" working to good effect here and these two tracks before it breaks the monotony enough for you not to notice. Do you notice why I keep comparing these two tracks? It's because they are about equally as good, which means CRAZY-FLAG is mediocre. I don't want a patchwork part five.

Shoujo A is our first stab at a rock piece that doesn't sound remotely like patchwork and it's fucking great. I would sex this song every day of the week; Shoujo A is that rare song by girugämesh that doesn't sound like something they've done before. It's sexy, seductive, hard and experimental. What this track has is substance, something that most of the tracks this far haven't had in good amounts. Some gripe at the short run time but I view it as a blessing that it doesn't ruin the sexiness by going on too long. It's just the right length. If you walk away from this album wanting to listen to one track, this should be right up there. It leads in to ROCKER's and I think that was rather stupid and ROCKER'S should have just had the fade but whatever. It's there and I have to deal with it. It's still highly recommended.

ROCKER's is also another pretty dumb title and it's another hard rocker not named Shoujo A. It feels slightly different than the others this far because it has Nii rather than Ryo as a composer but it's inevitably a "girugämesh" hard rocker. What it reminds me of most is a Loudness cover but it's actually decent. The chorus is a little off but Satoshi manages to make me like it with some not-completely atrocious falsetto. It's more of the same but it's a little better than the rest of it's "kind" and that's saying something since everything before shining wore me down with the feeling of "it's all the same goddamn shit".

What the fuck is this shit? No. Girugämesh was starting to get good and then ShuU had to go compose this. What killed it for me was 0:37, which sounds corny and not jazzy or clubby or whatever the hell they were trying to go for. If they want to create what I think they wanted to make then the guitars needed to not be so heavy and crunchy. What results from this bastardized disco track is an amalgamation of fans dying from shame and obnoxious guitar and bass lines. I would poke myself in the eye before I would recommend you listen to this.

Domino starts off like it's going to be annoying as hell but it busts into a guitar line that's just the right volume. Not too hard and not too soft, it leads into some acoustic strums that we haven't heard all album. There's also some more instruments and effects thrown into the chorus here and it's a bit different from your usual girugämesh rock. The best part about Domino is that it doesn't sound like "girugämesh" in some parts and sounds like a different, better rock band interested in learning more than one way to strum a guitar and put things together. It's sheer difference from the last two tracks warrants a recommendation.

Kowareteiku Sekai was the one song that just made Girugämesh for me. It was also the song that made me do this review and even though you can't tell I started here. This song makes me cry for two reasons: one is that it's such a beautiful song and the fucktarded confuckery they put out on MUSIC and every release after does not compare to this and the second is because the message of the song is just so damn powerful. Unlike other Visual Kei artists that try to throw in jumbled English to sound cool, Satoshi took a shot of Monster or the equivalent Japanese badass drink, said "fuck that" and wrote a fucking meaningful song. I think that the message to this song is so damn important, I'm going to put it below.

A Breaking World

Because it's white, its said it wants to be white
Because it's white, something can be blended in
The water in a little bowl became clear
Little by little the colors faded away

Eventually humans corrupt
Humans can be discolored by other humans
This star they both live on together is discolored
They strangle themselves

How do you describe the time
when the trees coldly looked up at the building that towers above?

The earth is touched by a bloodied hand
Without kindness, flowers withered and died
And by that hand, which has no heart,
the future without sins is murdered

Eventually humans corrupt
Humans can be discolored by other humans
This star they both live on together is discolored
They strangle themselves

In this civilization what sort of life do you picture is the one we wanted?
In this selfish egotistical struggle
What was shed was not blood, but the tears of the planet
The Earth, born so many billions of years ago
The proportion of time we've been in existence is just a few seconds
We have not aided in the recovery of the planet
We have not lived our lives in order to help the earth
However, we alone have known an unblemished love

The End is near by, but you who have known love will be all right

+++

I came into Kowareteiku Sekai wanting to hate it because I hate all ballads. I hate all ballads I have heard in the Visual Kei world because they all follow the same formula and very few people can pull it off. Somewhere along the line they all fuck up: there is no passion in the vocals, the ballad is too long or too short, the message isn't important or they reach the climax too early and then have to wander around for the rest of the song trying to fill up time. Kowareteiku Sekai (<-it is FUCKING WRITTEN LIKE THIS GET IT RIGHT) does it all right and takes some appropriate risks even for girugämesh. There is some tribal drumming, some acoustic guitars, some strings and compared to the first, heavy half of the album it's mere existence is a risk. Sure, it follows the pattern for ballads which is slow build up to climactic finish and if you don't like those songs you won't like it here because it's no different, but if that doesn't bother you so much or at all then it is done very effectively here. Just imagine a hard band doing something you expect but wouldn't expect to be so damn good, like this. The best part is that it doesn't come off as a token offering - it feels like girugämesh actually did this song first and put their all into it. Sure, it's got some seconds of silence at the end of it but the first time I heard it I was in such fucking shock I sat there for two minutes and didn't move. It works here.

Ah, the days when girugämesh made music and not noise.

I can't come up with a proper ending and the next post will explain why. Has nothing to do with this band.

Recommended:

Shoujo A
Patchwork
Kowareteiku Sekai

Score: 59%

Review: Linkin Park - Meteora

Happy 100th review to me!

I really DO need to break the chain of NoGoD singles, and what better way to do that then to get some Linkin Park thrown into the mix. I first heard of Linkin Park back when I was an impressionable twelve year old. Separated from Dir en grey long enough to forget what they sounded like, listening to Linkin Park and not the same old R&B and rap that I was surrounded by suddenly made them seem "cool" and "mature". Part of the reason why I started this project was to trace my progression of musical taste from my adolescence into my adulthood and as such I need to review some of the music I listened to before I got on the Japanese Rock train. This is why Linkin Park is here.

01. Foreword
02. Don't Stay
03. Somewhere I Belong
04. Lying From You
05. Hit the Floor
06. Faint
07. Figure.09
08. Breaking the Habit
09. From The Inside
10. Nobody's Listening
11. Session
12. Numb

I'm going to tackle this in no specific order...

Fuck the Foreward. It's only 13 seconds long and it's a lame beat that is supposed to "speed up" into Don't Stay. The transition is clunky and Don't Stay works better as the opening track to this album. Now that I revisit my troubled 12 year old existence, when hormones ruled our minds and I saw things I shouldn't have, I realize how good Linkin Park is at attracting their core demographic. The song is about moving on from someone that's holding you down, and about how you should have realized it earlier, and how much you need to look out for yourself. It's the same shit that I read on my Facebook every day and the fact that these lyrics are in the same category makes most people want to vomit because it reeks of adolescence, inner turmoil, and how "we don't know what it is we want to be but we don't know what being IS yet". I am no exception but I have to admit that they did this pretty well. I could live without the lyrics and the guitar and bass portions are solid. There isn't anything complex here but simple can be effective. There's some hip-hop elements thrown in throughout and the switching from the mechanical drums to the actual ones are smooth. The rapping portions are bearable in this song but Bennington's screaming gets on my nerves hardcore. A listen and see.

Another song with vocals that annoy me to no end much like Don't Stay is Nobody's Listening. Unlike Don't Stay, this track isn't one of my favorites on the album. Rather, I tend to skip it totally because I find it repugnant First off, it tries to emulate this Asian, "temple of forbidden jutsu" vibe for approximately two seconds before the hip-hop elements jump in and Shinoda tries to sound like someone out of the Mi-Wang-Wai-Long Clan. Asian and rap elements don't go well together, and when you opt to take the stripped-down, hardcore route with your rapping I am immediately uninterested. Bennington's vocals also sound pretty dumb here. The lyrics go even farther to piss me the hell off, with it being another one of those "no one listened to me so I'm going to explode in anger" messes and unlike the last track I can't ignore these lyrics mostly because they start off so dumb. The guitars aren't even omnipresent in this one, just having that very nasty beat playing in the background over and over again. Guess what? No one is listening.

Session is a would-be-very-dumb-instrumental that discovers that running for a long period of time does not make you good. It switches up enough over it's 2:25 runtime to keep the listener interested until it decides to finish but it's not something I recommend to listen to over and over again. It's rather bland in some respects but I would have preferred this to be the opening or ending track instead of something shoved near the end of the album.

Faint is one the songs I'll actually concede and say "still sounds cool" even after my extended stay away from American rock in general. It passes where Nobody's Listening fails, and that's having a beat that isn't completely at odds with the guitars and vocals. Guitars and bass are solid and unnecessary rap elements are not sampled. The lyrics toe the line of "Beat me with the Emo Stick" but it has one clear focus and both rappers dive right into what they want to say instead of filling up a half a verse with random, unnecessary crap that rhymes badly. Even Bennington's vocals aren't ear-bleedingly bad and instead of coming off as a whiny boy who dropped his lollipop he actually sounds angry. Definitely some good shit to sample.

I have to do this one eventually. Breaking the Habit is one of the signature Linkin Park songs and for good reason: it actually sounds different than most of the droll I've heard this far. Mechanical drums, plucked guitars, no rapped portions, no downtuned, melancholic riffs and a mainly sung song that ends off on the right foot force me to recommend this song no matter how much I think it's overrated.

Figure.09 is another one of those songs I'll find myself listening to long after I drop this album somewhere, mostly because it mixes a cold, futuristic, techno vibe with guitar successfully. There's also a good deal of vocal experimentation going on, and there's a modicum of passion in Bennington's vocals until he explodes in anger later on in the song. A few of the screams are a little sloppy but it's nothing that ruins the song. Of course, the lyrics are about pain and turmoil and how the two of these vocalists can't separate themselves from what it is they hate. Spoken like true teenagers that are angry at everything around them, it's good at getting across it's point even if it gets cheesy near the end. Check this one out as well.

Easier to Run has a very annoying chorus that actually fits for this song, and the guitars don't run off ahead and ruin the tone. Bennington takes center stage and the rapping portions are delegated to accentuate and not steer the direction of the song. Finally, some fucking innovation. It's better than many of the other songs on this album because it doesn't cycle the same format of rap verse-screamed chorus-rapped verse-screamed chorus-apeshit aria-screamed chorus-emotional ending. Lyrics are still on the depressing, "I'm so helpless look at me wither and die" side of things but it's written from a different mindset so I can stomach it rather well. Something is starting to gnaw at me at this point, and my friend said it perfectly:

Jillie (7:23:49 PM): true, it's a lot more different than their other songs.

Jillie (7:24:10 PM): but then again

Jillie (7:24:31 PM): almost all of their songs sound the same, even the ones that are very different from the others...

Jillie (7:24:37 PM): if that made sense

That makes perfect sense, and it's going to reflect in every song after this:

Numb is one of those songs we've all heard on the radio at some time or another and I really fucking hate these lyrics. I think it stems from the perspective he wrote it in but I hate it when people try to validate themselves in the eyes of others instead of carving their own path and taking an actual risk in life. It's all about fitting in and trying to be accepted (when I actually found that being the polar opposite of everything and then accepting that is the way to be accepted even if it's not how you want it to be). The guitars are droning and give off the sense of loneliness that they want to envelop you in with this song. The beat in the background that leads into this song....hold up I have to say something that I find very annoying. I intentionally set this album on shuffle and the last four songs including this one have all followed the same exact format. It sounds nice but by this point I'm done with this recycled format.

Bennington and Shinoda finally learned how to share =D. Somewhere I Belong features them both in the verses with Bennington actually singing a chorus with some rough passion. However, it follows the same format and sounds too much like everything else on this album but lighter in tone. Lying From You features the stereotypical LP opening and verses and reminds me a fuckton of Faint in structure. The lyrics of this song also are reminiscent of Don't Stay whilst being contradictory to everything that came before. When they have to start recycling lyrics, you begin to realize that Linkin Park has one trick and they keep pulling it out over and over again. Both of these songs sound enjoyable but since I've essentially heard both of them already I'm not too pleased.

And last we have Hit The Floor. It manages to deviate from the usual format for a little bit before they fall back into the pattern they've carved for this album. Think Nobody's Listening for the lyrics. The entire delivery is the same but done better here (I'm especially fond of the background screaming in the chorus) so I like it a little. Recommended? Maybe.

One MAJOR flaw with this album is that it's the same. Everything's the same. The lyrics, the delivery, everything is the same right down to how they put all of the songs together. For one or two songs it's barely noticeable but when it's only one or two songs that deviate enough from the formula to make the song different it's not that good of an album. I got sick of this album halfway through because it didn't seem like it was going to save itself in the other half. Meteora is underwhelming at best and I don't see how so many Linkin Park fans can lament their change in Minutes to Midnight.

Meteora is listening to the same song 12 times in a row.

Recommended:

Faint
Figure.09
Hit the Floor
Breaking the Habit

Score: 53%