Guess this requires me listening to it all the way through, huh? I ended up bailing on by the forth track the only time I have tried listening to it so far.
Presenting The Top 25 Tracks of 2014 as voted by our Official Reviewers and staff members. Any Japanese song released in 2014 was eligible, although our primary focus was on J-rock.
25.
TAMTAM - "シューゲイズ"
24.
宇宙コンビニ (uchu conbini) - 光の加減で話した (Hikari no Kagen de Hanashita)
23.
シナリオアート (Scenarioart) - "アオイコドク" (Aoi Kodoku)
22.
DIR EN GREY - "懐春 (kaishun)"
21.
LLLL - "Oddness"
20.
BACK-ON - "セルリアン (cerulean)"
19.
101A - "Forbidden Sky"
18.
DIV - "漂流彼女 (hyouryuu kanojo)"
17.
PLASTICZOOMS - "Sleepwalker"
16.
ねごと (NEGOTO) - "黄昏のラプソディ (tasogare no rhapsody)"
15.
sow - "to growth, for growth"
14.
TK from 凛として時雨 (ling tosite sigure) - "unravel"
13.
DIR EN GREY - "輪郭 (rinkaku)"
12.
tayuta - "夢見た 蒼 (yumemita ao)"
11.
八十八ヶ所巡礼 (88kasyo junrei) - "攻撃的国民的音楽 (kougeki teki kokumin teki ongaku)"
Thanks everyone for the feedback! Ended up going with E for the cover....between Facebook and here, it was overwhelmingly the most picked. The backside was less clear with people picking things all across the board. Since Moo, the printer I am going with, allows for multiple card backsides I chose to go with both B and D as they matched the front side the most,
Artist: Jupiter
Album: THE HISTORY OF GENESIS
Score:
The Birth of Venus. The Death of Creativity.
Visual Kei is a world of its own; a patchwork scene that mixes and matches various established genres and reinterprets them under its own musical and aesthetic niches. The peculiarities found within the scene - which can range from vocal style, visuals, songwriting, marketing ploys, to general band ethics - are usually recognizable, but also fleeting at best. When you add in the fact that any given Visual Kei band can have an entirely different set of musical influences, this renders comparison to the "source" of those influences a fruitless task outside of music historicism. Visual Kei is best appreciated from within, with some kind of inside narrative. Something that explains how Visual Kei operates or the rationale behind a band's artistic choices. However, sometimes you'll come across a band that defies a narrative - for better or worse. Jupiter is one such band.
On their sophomore effort "THE HISTORY OF GENESIS", it's painfully apparent that they fall in between the cracks of being a successful metal band with Visual Kei aesthetics and a Visual Kei band that has effectively appropriated metal into their repertoire. Instead, they sound like a lukewarm imitation of both - neither delivering from a metal standpoint, nor fully embracing the artistic nooks of Visual Kei. Some of the most "thrashing" moments of the album, like opener "The Birth of Venus", single track "LAST MOMENT" and "ARCADIA", are marred by hackneyed power-metal songwriting and technical, yet emotionless instrumentation that fails to engage. It's as if guitarists HIZAKI and TERU are literally riffing in one ear and out the other. Even the harder hitting songs like "Darkness" and "絶望ラビリンス" lack punch and wouldn't warrant headbanging, much less a simple head nod.
But beyond the lackluster songwriting and sterile musicianship, THE HISTORY OF GENESIS suffers from a host of other issues, one of which is ZIN - Jupiter's vocalist. As a metal vocalist --power-metal in particular-- ZIN doesn't cut it. He lacks the soaring, dynamic range and the theatrical bravado necessary to be compelling. His harsher vocal attempts, as heard in tracks "SACRED ALTAR" and "Darkness", are weak and struggle to be heard amidst all of the drab riffage. Even by Visual Kei standards, ZIN's vocals are thoroughly uncharacteristic. There are no tortured quirks or endearing imperfections to add charm to his performance. So while ZIN isn't a remarkably good vocalist or an offensively bad one, he still occupies an awkward musical territory - one that simultaneously falls short of the expectations of metal and the appeal of Visual Kei.
The final nail in this album's coffin was hammered in by its wearisome length and seemingly asinine arrangement. Of course, metal albums are usually protracted affairs, but with 14 tracks and a duration 10 minutes shy of your average feature-film, there just isn't enough quality material here to justify sitting through it. Omitting a few tracks or trimming some of the fat would have done some good. Running at nearly 8 minutes, title track "The History of Genesis" is a progressive behemoth that feels like more of a chore than an immersive epic. Even with the track being placed near the end (it's the last track on the limited edition), it just feels like a tired recap of the entire album, as opposed to an actual climax. Instrumental guitar ballad "Church Candle", as dull as it is, would have served more effectively as an intro or an outro. Instead it's slapped right in the middle of the album and adds no sense of progression or logical flow. "Shining" is another unfortunate curveball in which Jupiter delves into an oshare kei-esque pop-punk number. Normally, a band's attempt to diversify their sound would be laudable, but in the the context of the album it comes off as half-baked filler.
Though for all of its weaknesses, THE HISTORY OF GENESIS isn't without some merit. One of the band's strongest showings was, ironically, the only song composed by ZIN - "Red Carnation". This track revels in everything Jupiter tried but failed to accomplish with the rest of the album. All of the symphonic and neo-classical elements are kicked into high gear, and ZIN even duets with a female vocalist, giving their music a much needed spark. "THE MOON", however, is the album's most standout track. It's a groovy, mid-tempo ballad where HIZAKI and TERU put the power chords and the chugging on hold to embrace smoother guitar tones. There's even an unexpected, but extremely welcome jazz breakdown. Unlike "Shining", this is an instance in which Jupiter tried something new without deviating from the tone of album or abandoning their core sound.
It's obvious that Jupiter has all of the tools to impress; they're just misusing them 80% of the time. If HIZAKI loosened his compositional stranglehold and allowed more new ideas to flow in and if ZIN were a bit more convincing, then Jupiter could become a force to be reckoned with. But as THE HISTORY OF GENESIS has shown, Jupiter is stuck in an uninspired artistic limbo devoid of a narrative. Whether your musical inclinations lie with metal or Visual Kei, this album is sure to leave you entirely apathetic.
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