It has been around 7 years since the king of visual solo artists has released an album. Granted, that album was basically a singles collection, but I digress. This would be enough to excite almost anyone, especially a hardcore fan of the man who worked with some of the most legendary visual artists.
Gackt is one to focus a lot on themes in his albums and over the course of his decade-plus long solo career he has created three albums with the moon as the theme and primary focus. Beginning with 'Crescent' and followed up with 'Moon', he brings us the final installment in this series, 'Last Moon.' A pretty stellar thematic series of albums and other work, including the film "Moon Child" with Hyde from L'Arc~en~Ciel and VAMPS!
The album is supposed to be set in ancient Japan and the music and related videos have presented that visual quite well. The lead single, having been released 9 years ago, was named 'Returner' and utilized some of the musical stylings from earlier songs such as 'Mind Forest' and definitely continued this theme perfectly. Other singles also brought out the traditional Japanese elements including hard-hitter "斬 ～Zan～", mid-tempo ballad "暁月夜 -Day Breakers-" (Akatsukizukuyo -Day Breakers-), and over-the-top dramatic masterpiece and album-closer "雪月花 -The end of silence-" (Setsugekka -The end of silence-). Even some of the new songs fit in with the elements of composition including "花も散ゆ" (Hanamo Chiyu), "傀儡が如く" (Kugutsu ga Gotoku), and "キミだけのボクでいるから" (Kimi Dake no Boku de Iru Koto), thus making the album largely cohesive and consistent.
The remaining songs, while either catchy and fun or dramatic and emotional, don't fit with the theme of ancient Japan. "P.S. I Love You" is romantic and displays incredible vocal prowess but is clearly based on the 2007 film of the same name. It's B-Side "Ride or Die" conjures up the images of modern motorcycles while randomly selected B-side "One More Kiss" deserves no place on this album. These songs both helped and hurt the album at the same time. For example, I'm not sure why a song like "舞哈Baby!!" (Wuha Baby) and "恋のFriday!!!" (Koi no Friday) were included in a concept album as they're clearly just pop-rock songs, but they did help the album from being too much of the same thing.
Otherwise, the album is phenomenal and one of the best albums I've heard this year. It proves that Gackt still has vocal ability like you wouldn't believe. I just truly hope this isn't his last musical effort.
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