Matenrou Opera - JUSTICE

[Zeus 7997]

Coming into Justice not having listened to anything Matenrou Opera related in almost eight months and last having heard Helios around it's release date. Stopped listening because while Helios looked like Matenrou was going in a really good direction, the B-sides were atrocious quasi-party metal attempts that had this band flopping for air like fish out of water. I also really tired of the whole "one million singles before an album" release cycle, so I figure I wouldn't spoil Justice by listening to all the singles before that album was released.

To my surprise, Justice only has Helios and ‎落とし穴の底はこんな世界 as singles. This is great, since almost all of the singles before Helios were pretty trash with the exception of GENESIS and Eternal Symphony, so it gives the the rest of the album the ability to shine.

Justice sees Matenrou trying to amp up the "epic" factor of their sound and go with material that lifts a massive amount of influence from the European metal scene. This is a good idea...on paper. On disc, it's overdone pretty badly. There's just way too much going on in some of these songs for any one layer to take charge and some tracks end up becoming a smorgasboard of every type of sound imaginable.

Whilst there are tracks I feel this album could have done without, part of this album show some promise. 21mg and AGE are almost devoid of the entire symphonic act and are all the better for it. This allowed the band to take a more gradual approach with the songs and the way elements build on one another and the song exponentially rises works much better than the tsunami of synths the rest of this album crumbles under the weight of. Hits that "epic" mark much better. The formula crafted with Helios - which is still one of the best tracks on here despite being almost a year old - is improved upon with アポトーシス and Just Be Myself hints that Matenrou Opera might be at their best when Sono isn't singing.

Now for the stuff they should have left off: The first two tracks are a hot mess and should just be disregarded. Imperial Riot catches Matenrou flopping about with some autotune and deserves to be skipped immediately. DESIGNER BABY is a bonus track for a reason and sounds like they tried to mix trance music with their symphonic leanings. Awful experiment - never attempt it again. Finally, the new version of Kizuna is less sparse than the original, but no less boring. Inflating it to six minutes doesn't help it's case either.

This could have been another ABYSS if they culled all the weak tracks. There's simply too much filler here to justify this being one of the best albums of the year but there's also too much promise here to call it one of the worst. Considering they took three years to put this together, this is disappointing. Very disappointing.

Take my 5 out of 10 and go back to square one Matenrou.

[ShanethVarosa 1209]

The full SV review can be found on my tumblr, but for those of you disinterested in so many words:

Justice: Nothing Special.

Nurashita: Interesting verses, generic chorus

Otoshiana: Brilliant

Helios: Almost as brilliant:

Imperial Riot: Fuck autotune

Mermaid: Great, less "epic"

21mg: An epic length track, but without that BS trying to hard MO feel

Age: See above, but minus the length

Just Be Myself: Amazing. Truly epic. Instrumental.

Apoptosis: A toned down Helios, very good.

New Cinema Paradise: Yawn

Kizuna: Asleep

Designer Baby: Crap.

Overall I think I gave it an 8/9 out of ten because reasons. I still have a huge soft spot for this band even though the last few tracks weren't worth the gum on the bottom of my shoe.

[Augie1995 325]

I got to say, this album absolutely surprised me and I am in love with it. There were many songs that hit the high spots for me, them being: Justice, Otoshiana, Nurashita, 21mg, AGE, Just Be Myself, and Designer Baby ( I think I am the only one who likes this song). The rest were either normal for me or I have yet to have my thoughts on it but they all sound great.

Nurashita has a strange yet creeping cool melody, 21mg sounds like dauntingly beautiful ballad, Just Be Myself has got to be the best instrumental song they have made so far and I love it, it just shows how Anzi doesn't just do scales the whole time and he ventures with the melodies. Designer Baby, no one seems to like this but I love it. It starts off with this edo-period kind of sound to it and then you get the synths and then a choir joining in. Sono sings absolutely amazing and that's my favorite thing about the song. I love this album and I hope for more from them like this.

[The Libertine 2]

I think it's quite good TBH. I mean they aren't the most diverse band out there, but they do what they do quite well. There's about 3-4 songs that are a bit fillery on this album, but overall nothing that offends my ears and the good songs are quite good! The first 1/2 is stronger as a whole too. 7/10

[Prophet 168]

Okay this album is pretty good IMO, i won't give song to song review, i'll be just here to say that these tracks hit a Jackpot in my ears:

1. Cinema Paradiso

2. Kizuna

3. Justice

4. Otoshiana no Soko wa Kon'na Sekai

5. Just Be Myself

The other tracks? they are not even in my Recycle Bin anymore.

[Dead;Stam;Alive 0]

Hm, just listened to it.

Justice: Its ok, not great 6/10

Nurashita: Its not bad, weird chorus. 6/10

Otoshiana: Amazing 9/10

Helios: Very good 8/10

Imperial Riot: I m liking it 7,5/10

Mermaid: Pretty good 7/10

Age: Very good 8/10

Just Be Myself: This is interesting. 7/10

Apoptosis: Ιs good. 7/10

New Cinema Paradise: Νot bad, far from great though. 6/10 * But i think it grows on me, so it might be 7/10 *

Kizuna: Boring for me, but might be good ballad. Skipped it after the first minute. 5/10

Designer Baby: Nothing special, kinda good feel music though. 5/10

Overall 7/10. I liked it s a whole.

[fitear1590 2414]

I haven't heard anything of Matenrou Opera since ABYSS, so the "old" singles were new for me.

Sadly, the already released Helios and 落とし穴の底はこんな世界 were some of the best tracks. Just Be Myself, AGE, アポトーシス (all three in a row!) were probably my other favorite tracks. As Zess said, AGE is a nice break from the usual "EPIC SYMPHONIC HOLY SHIT SO EPIC" sound. Just Be Myself was a great instrumental and although アポトーシス had a bit of an obvious Versailles feel (not a bad thing, though!), the guitar solo was fantasticals. Justice, 21mg, and ニューシネマパラダイス just missed the mark, being tarnished by either terrible Ayame synth or awful Sono vocals. The rest of the album was forgettable/bad, imo.

To substantiate the Ayame/ Sono claims... This has been something I've felt for a while with this band. I find myself rarely complaining about the guitarist, the bassist or the drummer so much. It always comes back to Ayame. Tbh, I don't know how much he actually plays himself, and how much is just the studio arrangement, but man does this band overuse the "hah" choir thing. And cheap synthy strings. The fact that the album opens up with midi-sounding keyboards in Justice is already a bad sign. Maybe I'm just bitter since "風の鳥" by the first keyboardist is one of my favorite MO songs... I think Ayame's probably the weakest member of the band. His keyboards hardly bring anything special to their sound and they'd probably just be better off with a second guitarist (since they could add extra synths and stuff in the studio arrangement anyway, to maintain their "symphonic" quality).

Sono is very frustrating to me. I want to like his voice! He has a lot of technical talent, but I feel like he doesn't know how to use it. I never complained about it really until the release of "murder scope," where his voice just irritated me for some reason. Ever since, he's been totally hit-or-miss. First of all, he sometimes affects his voice in a really grating way. Take the last 45 seconds of Justice, for instance, with all that "Hoooooooooooo-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!" stuff. Then, in 21mg, all of the repeated lines "wasurenai de! wasurenai de! x1000" and then "YEAAAAAAHHHHHH. Ohhhhh YEAAAAHHHHHHH". In the chorus of ニューシネマパラダイス, Sono takes the infamous VK vibrato to ridiculous, extremely unpleasant new heights, where it sounds like he's gargling or gulping, or something. I guess it's just personal taste, but all of these parts of the songs put an instant cringe on my face. (Just wrap a big "imo" around these 2 rant paragraphs, haha)

So, I'd probably give the album a 5.5 or so, out of 10. Some definitely good and great songs. Surrounded by lots of bad synth, some unfortunate vocal parts and other bad overall songs.