Saishu

Shinya is mostly likely actually playing in the studio, but he’s triggering samples. Which is funny, because he doesn’t bother with triggers live where he needs them the most. On recordings, it sounds like Shinya is a heavy hitter, but live he’s anything but. The difference in how he sounds between studio and live ever since DSS is really jarring.

I like that Sho uses harsh vocals for the appropriate lyrics. I mean the “I want to flush your goddamn torn up tiny pieces down the toilet” part is the perfect line for the way he delivers it.

The beginning with the clean guitar tones is fine aside from Shinya’s MIDI sounding drums. Once the distorted guitars kick in its all downhill. It becomes an indistinguishable mess. Toshiya is barely there. His bass tone is fighting the guitars for the same frequency and ends up getting lost. No dynamics, it’s all just way too loud. Listened to Ningen and Utafumi today actually. They both sound even worse after a couple days of listening to CHEDOARA.

The Vulgar and WtD tracks benefitted the most from the remastering. They also used the superior original mixes for singles.

Gush is one of the worst tracks of the year.

No delivery date now. I’m guessing they weren’t anticipating much demand for this album and didn’t get enough stock to fufill orders.

Amazon Japan says it’s due to arrive tomorrow yet they haven’t shipped it yet.

DEG almost always gives nonsense for bonus material. If it’s not a song remixed with burps and farts then it’s Kyo’s studio tracks pasted over music not played by the band. At least Arche gave us And Zero and Tefu Tefu.

Been down on Decayed Crow from day one you can’t change my mind.

By the way, the live included with Rinkaku is the only place to get a version of Decayed Crow that’s worth a damn.

Yeah, all that stuff on the third disc still sounds the same. If they did anything they just made them louder.

Ningen will probably have a new mix. Whether or not it’s better is up in the air. My opinion is that only the first two discs for Vestige were remastered. The stuff on the third disc sounds untouched to me.

That screaming is exactly why Kyo fucked his shit up. I mean props for going up there every night and literally just screaming uncontrollably, but harsh vocalists learn proper techniques for a reason. Kyo learned the hard way.

I often wonder how much the band influences the final mix. Even when they work with one mixing engineer for several projects (Tue Madsen) the quality varies. And Tue Madsen was the one that jacked up the album mix of Hageshisa so badly. Overall the main problem is too much compression, which started with Unraveling pretty much. I think everything has sounded the same ever since 2013.

Wouldn’t it be something if it came to light that Kyo’s half-deaf ass had the final say in the album mixes? As for Vestige, I think the only songs that benefitted were the ones from Vulgar and WtD.

The vocal performance in Shigarami between the guitar solo and the second chorus is my favorite moment on the album (roughly 2:25-3:20). That shit is fucking majestic!

I never bought Skyrim even once. Also Kisaki is a fucking crook and doesn’t deserve anyone’s money.

Hiroshi could very well make a list of great VK drummers. Dude has got serious chops.

Are this typical Japanese readings for those kanji?

I’m more curious about what CHEDOARA means.

So after a few listens, this clearly isn’t some sort of VK savior, but it is a super solid album. For such a young band it’s a surprisingly good grasp on modern metal, which other veteran acts seem to struggle with. I like the way it sounds. It’s polished, but there’s still just enough of a raw and organic grit left behind to not make it sound sterile. There are moments where they do that stop-start glitch thing that makes it sound like I’m listening to a corrupted file, but it isn’t overdone. Hiroshi’s drums sound really powerful, which fixes the major issue I had with Issei era Dimlim songs: his drums sounded fake as hell. Sho is impressive, but seeing as how this is his first band I fear his voice isn’t trained enough to be so acrobatic. He could be the odd duck and is balancing technique and performance, I just hope he doesn’t shred his throat in a few short years. The singles are the strongest tracks on here, but that doesn’t mean the others are weak (other than the lame SEs). Things get chaotic, but there’s more purpose behind it since the change in composers; things generally don’t feel all over the place. The aggressive parts can be a bit samey across multiple tracks – Mad (K) and the beginning of Shigarami for example – but so far it isn’t bothering me. So, yeah. Solid album. I hyped myself up quite a bit over the last two months and that’s nobody’s fault but my own. Still, I’m happy with what I got.

So what exactly is the concept?

This band wasn’t anything special before Issei left because they were more or less Periphery fronted by a Kyo stan. And Issei’s drum tone was garbage. Hiroshi sounds like he’s actually back there playing a real drum kit.

Dimlim isn’t on iTunes, but fucking Deviloof is. UGH!

Well I still listen to a lot of the early stuff both bands did, I just sort of got tired of them both at certain points. With Deluhi it started with the Flashblack single, NoGod fell off after Kakera/Genjitsu.