Review: Nega - Grave of the Sacrifice (Visual Grave Type)

I've actually been looking forward to this album for quite a while and I suppose I raised my expectations to the point where Nega could not actually satisfy me with this album. Then again, I expect a lot from this band so it should work out. It's also their first album proper, and looking at the tracklist I was both enamored and repulsed. Newcomers to Nega should enjoy this, but all those that have been following them for a while will cringe at all the re-recorded tracks that feature here (roughly half the album, excusing the bonus track which I will review later). Let's get this over with.

01. Hold a Funeral
02. the Grave
03. Soul cry
04. muddy cult
05. Baku - Kono Akumu Kurai Tama e-
06. Nameless alice
07. HATE HATE HATE
08. guilt trip
09. 17sai no Kodoku
10. lust[er]
11. reminiscence
12. in the shadow of the rain cloud

Hold a Funeral	Once again, it’s another SE opening. It starts out slow and ominous but its long runtime turns it dull. There’s moaning, static drums and some words muttered by Jin here and there. The ambient effects, which give it a nice feel, also make it repetitive. Had it been shortened, this would be a more diverse and transient piece.	3/10
the Grave	I just can’t get into the Grave too much. It starts out with a bang and there seems to be so much going on but twenty seconds in it loses steam and goes downhill from there. It’s heavy, psychotic parts aren’t convincing enough and the background chants don’t add much. It sounds like they’re trying to be hard and aren’t playing hard. Jin’s harsh vocals in this track could use some work as well but I know how much worse they can be, but compared with the lighter vocals in the chorus they’re atrocious. His vocal work in the chorus is listenable and actually pretty good, and said chorus comes in and out seamlessly. At the end of the day, the Grave remains faceless.	6/10
Soul cry	Tighter handling, a better balance between the classical and the heavy instruments, a more expressive solo, and a louder roaring aria around 3:17 makes this version of Soul cry superior to the one on the Rebirth Under the Chaos mini, although both are very good. Otherwise, everything from this review remains the same.	9/10
muddy cult	The opening passage is smoother than the makeshift version I ripped off YouTube and compared to my version this song is shortened by roughly one and a half minutes. The song is also re-recorded from the music video, although the difference is negligible at first glance. This however, is offset by the abrupt transition at 2:54 where the speaking portion from the music video was. It would have been better to just jump into a scream a la Obscure (Dir en grey) or to keep it like the portion from Hydra (Dir en grey), because that portion spaced the choruses out. The way it is though just doesn’t seem right (although I understand that’s how they do it in lives and they want to be consistent). Due to the loss of that part there, the two choruses seem too close together and that takes away from the song. It’s still brilliant with a sick music video I recommend you watch. You can read the original review of muddy cult here.	8/10
Baku -Kono Akumu Kurai Tama e-	Is this Nega’s version of Macabre? Let’s see: long title followed by one word name (Macabre vs. Baku anyone?), similar passages (admitted this one is within a listenable frame), and sections where the vocalist goes insane in the background over muttered vocals. Nevertheless, it isn’t as brilliant as Macabre but it’s still a good effort on its own. Much like its predecessor muddy cult, it’s got a disturbing air of elegance amidst horror-centric lyrics and bone-crushing instruments. There are parts of this song where everything feels like it lifts off into something purely epic and despite every twist and turn this song goes through it still remains in a listenable time frame of about four minutes. One of the best tracks they’ve put out in a while and I’d venture one of the best on this album.	10/10
Nameless alice	As a stand-alone single I could stomach Nameless alice. In the review here I said it was pretty decent for what it tried to do and gave it an 8/10. Admittedly, that was very generous of me. If you scroll down, you’ll see that I had the doubt of whether or not Nega could make this fit on the album. It doesn’t. As a jazzy piece coming from a horror-centric band, it feels alien for Nega to even attempt to record, much less sandwich somewhere on this album. I understand soft songs usually come after dark pieces to alleviate the mood but it doesn’t work here. Nameless Alice should have been left as a single. The score here drops because of the placement of this track and the fact that it was free to download before and so I couldn’t complain whether or not it sucked (but now that I have to pay for it, I can’t gloss over its mediocrity JaME style). And does anyone have the lyrics for this, because I swear the first words he says are “IN MY BATHROOM”.	6/10
HATE HATE HATE	Sounds like a terrible B-side and has some traces of the jazziness of the last track in the left ear. If it didn’t work in the jazzy soundscape of that song, it won’t work here when Nega’s attempting to be hardcore. The bridge is horrible and the chorus is repetitive (a cookie to whoever can figure out what the three repeated words are) and reminiscent of some patterns found in older tracks made by the GazettE. The abrupt ending puts the nail in the coffin of this song. I would skip this underwhelming pile of trash.	3/10
guilt trip	I was hoping guilt trip would make an appearance without the last minute or so. My wish didn’t exactly come true. Jin re-recorded the last minute of assrape vocals and they fit in better since they don’t fade out. With the vocals themselves, they actually send shivers down my spine this time. This just about sums up everything I have to say about the end so now let’s move to the beginning. It starts out better than the single version, with some simulated wind supporting the beginning strums. After it disappears, I don’t detect any radical changes up until the end but I don’t doubt I missed something. This song DOES border on nine minutes long, and perhaps that is the major drawback of the song. It has beautiful guitar passages, decent vocals at worst (minus the last bit of course) abrupt stops in the right places, soft acoustic strums, perfect drum patterns, but it’s all too long to enjoy.	8/10
17-sai no Kodoku	Objectively speaking, this song is actually done pretty well, except Jin can’t really handle this song in the vocal department and it doesn’t fit either with the album or the song name. The guitar passages are nice and the song is consistently driven and really only held back by Jin’s shaky vocals in parts. Subjectively speaking, this is not what I want to hear from Nega and it has no place in Nega’s discography. Any other band could have pulled this off but not Nega. I have no more words for this song. Skip it. (Score on the side stems from a mix of what it is and what I feel, which is why it’s uncharacteristically low for a song I acknowledged as good)	4/10
lust[er]	Other than a better balance between vocals and instruments, lust[er] doesn’t offer anything new than from back when I reviewed it on ill. As a straightforward headbanger it’s pretty decent but other than that it fails to do much for me.	7/10
reminiscence	I guess it hit Nega somewhere along the line that having this ten minute ballad somewhere after an eight minute ballad on an album that’s supposed to be deep and heavy isn’t a very bright idea. As a result, Nega decided to cut this track down by a whopping four minutes. It works in any case since all the superfluous but pretty instrumental parts are excluded and the ending was reworked to keep the perspective of an album in mind. Reminiscence sounds like a whole new song and even though it doesn’t quite fit here, the despair and want conveyed in the vocals combined with its long runtime mitigates that to an extent. Reminiscence is a “love it or leave it” piece of work, and I’m of the former opinion.	9/10
In the shadow of the rain cloud	A piano-dominated piece that ends the album on a light note. It flows with reminiscence quite well but on it’s own it’s rather average at best. Yes, it does tug on your heart strings. Yes, it does feature no annoying grunts. Yes, it is pretty. That’s why it gets a seven.	7/10

Can I say that I'm disappointed? Yes. The best tracks are the ones that were previously released (sans Baku) and overall the tone of the album is too light for Nega. I want to hear the hard, screamy Nega with crushing guitar riffs among the melodies but it feels like the last bit of the album had lust[er] sandwiched in so it didn't seem like everything past HATE HATE HATE was a ballad. With a title for an album like Grave of the Sacrifice, most of what Nega has given us is pretty damn deceptive and perhaps that is why I came away from this album unsatisfied.

So, do I recommend this album to anyone?

I'm pretty damn ambivalent on this one. Older fans of Nega are going to despise parts of this album heavily and lament at the lack of hard, heavy pieces while newer fans of Nega aren't going to get the right picture of what this band is. However, this album contains re-recordings of some of Nega's best songs and they've been done rather well. Personally, tracks three to five is the highlight of this album and I can go without everything else. If I based these reviews on how I feel and not on the objective portion of the album, Grave of the Sacrifice wouldn't reach 4/10 tops. But since I keep my bias out of it, it rises all the way up to a 7/10.

Recommended:

Soul cry
muddy cult
Baku -Kono Akumu Kurai Tama e-

Rating: 67%