As I sit here watching part of the
Ascendead Master PV I'm thinking three things concurrently. One is how this music video would feature a guy I totally know is a dude but that looks like a girl and I can't stop staring at even though he's obviously a guy. The second is how I need to get some sleep because I have an important test the next day. The third, and probably most nagging, is the recurring thought that I've had ever since I got the announcement at the C.C. Lemon Hall that
Versailles was going major. I have a thing for indies bands I like going major, since they all seem to take a bite off the suck stick in some form.
D, a band who had a similar concept to
Versailles a few years ago, went major and the quality of their works took a nosedive.
Galneryus also met a similar fate, but that's because of a change of musicians, but alas their music also had gone down in quality somewhat. Hell, even the more attention
the GazettE gets causes their music to slowly become more and more stale and less inventive as times move on. I'd even hate to include my favorite metal outfit
Dir en grey in this because their
Marrow of a Bone album was a stripped down wall of noise that I really don't like to this day but can stand if I'm in the mood.
So as I count down the days to
Ascendead Master's release, one I've been holding with bated breath, I constantly wondered how much this song would change
Versailles style.
Versailles isn't the type of band that is really innovative: Kamijo, with all his experience in the music world with
Lareine and
New Sodmy, doesn't experiment with his voice. He's always been in his safe zone belting out notes that we've already heard and doesn't do anything that I can remotely consider risky. I've just recently learned Teru takes charge of most of
Versailles solos even though Hizaki is literally the face of
Versailles, and the other two members (Jasmine You and Yuki respectively) haven't gotten the required amount of attention in my head in order to consider a band balanced. Sure, Kamijo and Hizaki have egos the size of Gackt's combined, but would this affect the band's musical performance? Would the song recycle unoriginal riffs with overused neoclassical guitar seeps? Would Kamijo continue to use auto-tune? Would it sound like an
X-Japan song and take
Versailles out of their element, causing them to abandon what little innovation they've carved over the last two years in a chance to be commercially successful? Or would
Ascendead Master completely blow away all expectations that I held for it and restore some of the bite in
Versailles metal that has been sorely lacking since
Aristocrat's Symphony?
Would it even return to the epic masterpiece that was
The Revenant Choir?
Too many questions were swirling through my head as I sat for the live broadcast of Versailles music video
Ascendead Master. As impartial as I tried to be there's always going to be some bias and I'm always going to be influenced more by what other people say (usually the negative more so than the positive since they have to actually provide reasons for their dislike and they tend to be valid most of the time). I listened to the song once, twice, nay, I lost track to be completely honest with you all. I just needed to find something to be hooked onto.
Did I?
Ascendead Master - Regular Edition -1.
ASCENDEAD MASTER (Music: HIZAKI/Lyrics: KAMIJO)2. 月下香 (Music and Lyrics: HIZAKI)
3. DESCENDANT OF THE ROSE [SOUNDTRACK]
Ascendead Master - Limited Edition A -1.
ASCENDEAD MASTER (Music: HIZAKI/Lyrics: KAMIJO)2. HALLWAY [SOUNDTRACK] (Music: KAMIJO)
DVD: Part 1 of the Ascendead Master Movie
Ascendead Master - Limited Edition B -1.
ASCENDEAD MASTER (Music: HIZAKI/Lyrics: KAMIJO)2. PILGRIM [SOUNDTRACK] (Music: KAMIJO)
DVD: Part 2 of the Ascendead Master Movie
Ascendead Master - Limited Edition C -1.
ASCENDEAD MASTER (Music: HIZAKI/Lyrics: KAMIJO)2. COVENANT [SOUNDTRACK] (Music: KAMIJO)
DVD: Part 3 of the Ascendead Master Movie
Now to actually start talking about the single. To start off with the aesthetic portion of the video that they've aired on TV, my fear that Jasmine and Yuki (and to an extent Teru) won't get enough screen time. And face it, if they didn't get any now then they weren't going to get any at any time during
Versailles' career. In fact, they've gotten more screen time than ever before, and it's nice to see
Versailles slowly crawling towards a band effort rather than Kamijo and Hizaki leading the other three blindly.
The 15 minute short movie that they filmed for this single is atrocious and lulzworthy, just like I expected it to be. The acting was downright horrible, the voiceover was hilarious, and I felt like I was watching a Jackson Pollock painting about eternal life. In spite of all of that (and the fact that sans Kamijo is in the movie the most, with Yuki barely being in it at all IIRC) the short video is pretty funny to watch, especially because Versailles takes themselves way too seriously.
I also find it funny how they credit the entire band when I have a sneaking suspicion it was Kamijo who wrote the whole script.
I can't say the actual song is a sell-out by
Versailles. Rather, the song sounds just like everything else they've ever released, which really isn't a bad thing unless you were expecting something unrealistic to happen. Think it through and tell me at what point would it make sense for
Versailles to take a risk for their first ever major single release. As a song,
Ascendead Master rocks hard but some portions leave me wondering what the hell they were going for because it didn't really work out. One passage in particular is the part before Hizaki and Teru's solo. What was supposed to happen there? It sounds just like improvisation to me. Another part that caught my attention was the energy of the song later on before Kamijo goes higher. I felt that it was there that the band put their all into the song and it raised a notch in quality. When all is said and done,
Ascendead Master ends on a haunting piano note and leaves a good, familiar taste in your mouth.
Gekkakou is harder than the title track, and a lot more experimentation goes on in this track by what my ears hear. I was always of the mind that Teru composed most of
Versailles heavier tracks (e.g.: TO THE CHAOS INSIDE, SECOND FEAR -ANOTHER DESCENDANT-) but this song comes from Hizaki so it carries a different feel that I don't often hear in their music. In fact, it's downright dark in some parts and even the somewhat upbeat chorus doesn't take away from that too much. I even hear a part where Jasmine gets to show off, something he never gets to do often and Yuki shines the brightest with his drumming out of all of the band members. Kamijo's voice variates a little and there's a section with harsh vocals coming from everyone that almost made me wet my pants followed by Kamijo doing something else with his voice for 3.4 seconds. The primary reason why I think
Gekkakou is a B-side and not an A-side is that it doesn't carry the sense of epicness that all
Versailles A-sides do.
Gekkakou is too different in nature to compare to
Ascendead Master but it does make better listening for those that thought
Ascendead Master was too generic and needed something more original to hear. Maybe this will make the single worth purchasing to some and is quite a credit to Hizaki's compositional ability.
Remember
Silent Knight from the
Prince & Princess singles? Well, they got together and had an offspring aptly titled
Descendant of the Rose. It's a rather short piece, which is a shame because it's downright epic, moreso than the title track. I sense a bit of new flavor I haven't heard before. If it were longer by at least another half a minute it'd be a lovely piece of work to listen to since it's very experimental in
Versailles standards, but it's brief length is a shame and takes away from the song a little bit.
Because it took me so long to find the limited edition soundtracks, you can find my thoughts on them
here. Sorry to have to break it up like that. At this moment though, the Regular Edition of
Ascendead Master gets a 4 out of 5. The limited editions get 3.8 out of five.
