Y U NO LIKE TERU .
'Cause Teru didn't play in this song as far as I know.
EXPLAIN YOSELF!
I've been waiting for a Philia review thread so that I could gather my thoughts and see if everyone else is feeling the same way that I am about this release. It seems that in some respects I'm pretty much alone on this one.
I will give Kamijo some points for finally being able to sing in that deeper register with full force. I liked his voice from before but the progression from Noble to Jubilee showed that he had improved and the progression from Jubilee to now shows further improvement. I have to take some of those points back though because he makes a few really bad calls here with his vocal lines. I'm particularly not a fan of Philia's chorus because Kamijo equates going higher in pitch with getting louder in volume. His semi-shouting singing doesn't work and I hope that is on their upcoming album. While I'm on that note, he hits a really raw note on Judicial Noir (around 3:29) that the producers should have corrected. It sounds 'ew' and not at all fitting. It was halfway between getting spit caught in his throat and sounding raw and anguished. It's not enough to make the song unenjoyable but it is of note.
I do equate Philia with being a continuation of Ascendead Master because I see them both as singles that played it safe and the single versions of the songs have vocal tics that annoy me (like Ascendead Master, where Kamijo's K's were emphasized to the point where it sounded slightly clipped and grainy every time he said "kakumei wo utsukushiku" during the chorus). In terms of structure, Philia is much more forgettable than the song I just referenced it with because the guitars and their intricate melodies do not stick out as much as they have on previous releases. It seems like they've taken more of an approach of balancing everything as much as they can as opposed to having the lead guitars, organs and vocals at the front of every track. The guitars are more fuzzed out and subdued, the drums mastered better, the symphonic elements pushed way to the back and the bass more prominent and with more challenging lines. I can't say it's a bad decision as much as one I'm not quite used to.
If I gave Philia (the song) a few more spins I'm sure I could grow to love it as a nice, safe Versailles song with a rather memorable ending. Judicial Noir ranks lower on my scale and along with select songs from NOBLE it's one of my least favorite Versailles tunes. That's not to say that it's an outright terrible song, because it isn't, but it's definitely what I would call "B-side material". On first listen, it sounded like a more aimless version of SUZERAIN. It starts with a path that it wants to take and a sound that it wants to define but around the chorus it starts losing steam and around three minutes as the solos come to a close it falls apart. The reversion to the chorus sounds like the composer didn't know how to progress and then returns to it to keep the momentum going, but the chorus itself doesn't exactly fit with the progression of the rest of the song. Once the chorus goes off into a completely different direction near the end, it trips up and becomes muddled. This song could have used two things: an extra minute and some crunch in the guitars. Versailles has tipped their hand before and shown us that they can deal with turning up the heavy but here the guitar lines, especially the intro, sound sparse as if there was some room that they needed to fill in. I would much rather see GLOWING BUTTERFLY or LIBIDO make an appearance on an upcoming album if they need tracks to fill it out.
Desert Apple is a great song for the sole purpose that it does a good job at breaking the "Versailles mold" of what all their songs are supposed to sound like. I wouldn't have expected something like this to come out of them and I would have sworn the first minute was lifted right out of a Moi dix Mois song if not for the fact that 0:23 and onward is too derivative of Mana's composition style. 1:05 onwards provides a nice contrast with the beginning and uses one of the oldest compositional tricks in the book but I would have much preferred that the entire song followed in the vein of the beginning. Desert Apple sounds like two different songs (beautifully) smashed together: one half full of synth Versailles hasn't touched before and the other half full of all the airy guitar wankery we love them for. For that alone I'd take off a few points but nothing else about the song irks me. I prefer this to Silent Knight because this is straightforward, whereas Silent Knight sounds like the group recorded band practice.
Overall, I say this single's slightly above average with Desert Apple leading the pack, then Philia, then Judicial Noir. I'm not into numbers but if I had to pick one I'd give it a 7, maybe an extra half just for Desert Apple. I prefer it to DESTINY but for upcoming releases they need to hire new people to master their tracks. The balancing of some instruments on this single are unforgivably off and for a band that considers itself a symphonic metal sextet, downplaying the symphonic part on all three songs is a questionable idea.
Unless they're trying to distance themselves from that because they view it as a limiting factor in Hizaki's compositional skills, in which case this shows that the metamorphosis of Versailles is incomplete and this is a snapshot of them in some ugly, larval stage that we don't want to see before they emerge as a GLOWING BUTTERFLY. (hurrhurr)
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