kuyashii

I feel like it has been quite a lot of time already to dig up the thread about Jigoku but I just listened to the song for the first time and while I loved the MV, the song is disjointed af. Haven't heard the b-sides yet

While I feel like the comparision might not be 100% adequate, I feel like it's similar to what Kyo's vocals in DeG became recently: it was mindblowing to hear him doing 4 or 5 different vocal styles and spanning 2,5-3 octaves in every song he was singing at first, but not only it became stale to hear, his voice started declining to a point where he couldn't really do as well as he used to and as a result of both factors, every new song was becoming increasingly underwhelming to hear. The unfair part is that you can hardly say there was a decline in Fuki's voice to begin with (just likely her voice maturing like it happens with every human being), while Kyo is another story altogether. BTW, I just noticed that the part that begins and finishes the teaser sound a lot like a part of "Art of Life" by X Japan. Not accusing it to be plagiarism, maybe it was a homage, I know that Hirano is a big X fan and they have a song called "Jealousy" that is highly influenced by X in style and arrangement (as well as being a nod to X's "Silent Jealousy"

Those guys are hard-working uh? Change of Generation wasn't that long ago and IIRC they actually released an acoustic album and some remake of their touhou stuff after that? I really liked the japanese-folky song with the japanese name, it is a very interesting change of pace from the rest of their stuff. They do the overly bombastic symphonic power metal thing very well, but it just becomes pretty stale after a while, so it's interesting to hear them mixing those sounds with a more modern metal sinfluence. Not sure about the previews since those are probably choruses (which are usually the more power metally parts of their songs) but I still hope they include some other influences in their music. I won't lie but as much as Fuki is pretty much perfect vocally wise, once you heard one recent song by her, you've listened to them all. Haven't heard any recent vocal performance by her that truly stood out. Everything has the same big ass vibrato-laden notes in the same range and tbh her voice has been sounding a tad lower nowadays and her vibrato sometimes sounds a bit uncontrolled (as evidenced by the last track). I don't blame her for getting older, and you need to acknowledge she still performs ato an absurdly high stake degree, but the impact of hearing her vocal performances nowadays is considerably lower compared to something like Light Bringer's Resistance from 2010, for instance. I don't like the song much, but the track at 2:02 is interesting to hear from a vocal standpoint, her "j-poppy" voice is pretty cool for a change. Her low register and her operatic head voice could really be explored more IMO (oddly she used those voices much more during the pre-2010 Light Bringer albums when she still hadn't found her voice yet). Cool to hear Hirano's growls improving so much lately too.

Pretty subpar composition. Nothing wrong with the vocals or instrumentation but the composition is a mess.

Yeah I was expecting much worse. Well, the song has a lot going on and it's as such pretty hard to absorb in a few listens, but it's kinda cool. Of course if it wasn't by the heavy elements I wouldn't even give a listen to the band, and as such seeing them ditching the heavy elements is a bit underwhelming, but I always thought they were very good at writing poppy, memorable stuff (actually the first time I heard Chedoara it was exactly the softer parts that stood out the most to me) so I don't think everything is lost. I agree the song is a bit derivative (isn't all VK though) and I feel like they've really betting all slots in this mathy clean guitar kind of sound that has been absolutely blowing up lately (see Ichika Nito and all that) so it doesn't have that strong of a first impact as something like "Vanitas" or "Shigarami" (or even "Aharewata" for that matter, as much as I hate that song), but is definitely a grower. The production is good but I wish I could pick Sho's vocal harmonies on the chorus better. Haven't heard the itunes samples and I don't think I can either tbh so don't have anything to say about anything else. 2 SEs are absolutely unnecessary though

Sounds pretty good! Will keep on eye on them. I agree that Nero's vocals still have some room for improvement, specially when it comes to phrasing and english pronunciation.

IIRC he lost his voice

The composition is really hard to absorb in a single listen, but I'm kinda liking it. Positively surprised at the Dexcore dude's vocals! I feel like his cleans are rather subpar but his screams are really good. Absolutely gorgeous cover art indeed

That's a pretty good track! Kinda sounds like a modern take on Withering to Death era DeG with some of the "extreme" flourishes

The song gets a bit better after some listens, but I still feel like it's a tad longer than it needs to. I haven't seen the lyrics, but judging from what people are saying, it's kinda odd how the major key (?) music clashes against the subject matter of the song and the imagery displayed on the music video

My favorite album by them is Uroboros. Don't have anything else to say, it's just that good. It's a bit hard for me to choose their worst album since I really dislike both Kisou and TIW, but going by the circumstances each one of those were released, I think TIW stands out negatively more. Kisou is an album by a band that is still trying to find their sound and is expanding their sonic palette by trying new things, but while the ideas are good on paper, it often fails flat when it comes to executing them. Saying that, I think Kisou succeeds at what it tries: to be a weird, experimental and off-putting album, which the strange-sounding production definitely adds to the atmosphere of the record. The Insulated World, on the other hand, was released when the band already reached significant success and following, after a string of three records with very positive reception, and after the biggest interval between LP releases so it was a highly antecipated album. While Kisou at least has some originality, I feel like TIW is a rehash of ideas and formulas that already had some mixed reception at the time of their releases (see The Marrow of a Bone). The production is terrible and definitely doesn't add up to the album, the track order and pacing of the album is really problematic and the stand-out tracks are very by-the-numbers. Stuff from Kisou like "Jessica" or "Embryo" (and even though I don't like the studio version vocals, "24 Cyllinders" is an awesome composition) were legit stand-outs. I like "Ranunculus" a lot but I don't really think it has the power of their previous power ballads, and while the single tracks are fun to listen to, they are really underwhelming compared to the stuff that came before it. So yeah my complete list would be: Uroboros>Vulgar>DSS>Gauze>Arche>WtD>Marrow>Macabre>Kisou>TIW

Composition is pretty standard anime ED fare and I couldn't care less about it, but there are other things that bother me more in the song, namely the autotune and those really cheap VST strings.

It's kinda hard saying anything about the composition but I'm not really a fan of the vocalist tbh. If it had Sho from Dimlim on it instead, it would be perfect

Yeah of course the Tomurai debacle was very hard to swallow but to be honest I wouldn't be concerned yet. The "Vanitas" music video was posted on the 2nd of June, and Chedoara itself was out on the 8th of August, more than 2 months after it. We woulnd't see a "digest video" of the Chedoara songs until August 13, 5 days after the release of the album. I understand people have legitimate reasons to be feeling concerned but I don't think it's time to be freaking out yet. Have stuff to be continuously postponed without little explanation like Tomurai, then I'm going to be actually concerned. BTW, has any j-rock/vk band ever tried any crowdfunding campaign or subscription system or something like that? Maybe it could help them. I kinda doubt it considering the japanese music industry is so assbackwards lol

I'm loving this look tbh