NEGA - VANITAS

[Zeus 7997]

Truth be told, I haven't listened to a full release by NEGA since GRAVE OF THE SACRIFICE. I decided to pass when they started up their PERESTROIKA side-project and when they reformed as NEGA I never bothered picking up any of their new releases. So, for someone who has been out of the loop for two, perhaps two and a half years, I only have one question to ask?

What happened to NEGA?

Let me start with their best track - 虚しき「生」の寓意≒「死」の真意 - and tell you why the rest of the album falters in comparison. Yuu's bass pedal isn't constantly clipping into my eardrum and into the territory of the other musicians, the transitions don't boil down to a backwards whooshing sound to cover up a sudden volume drop and stylistic shift, breakdowns with synth freakouts are completely absent and Jin's harsh vocals are used tastefully. Most importantly, most of the song flows with purpose and reason. There are points where the song gets a little long in the tooth and some of the quieter sections need more meat to them, but that's all I can complain about.

Similar good tracks include 糜爛故に, 躊躇うことなく「　」を傷付けた指先は、途惑うことなく穢れた「　」を飾る, HINDSIGHT and WILL. 糜爛故に gets the award for being the only heavy track on this album that doesn't dirty its toes too badly with disjointed song sections or a breakdown from left field, and the progression starting from three minutes pans out very well. It's very reminiscent of 貘～此ノ悪夢喰ライ賜へ～ from their previous album. 躊躇うことなく「　」を傷付けた指先は、途惑うことなく穢れた「　」を飾る and WILL are two slower songs, although 躊躇うことなく「　」を傷付けた指先は、途惑うことなく穢れた「　」を飾る is pretty heavy in comparison to WILL, which sounds like NEGA decided to channel some Sphire-Croid. The former song experiments with polyphony, features a decent chorus and even fires off a nice solo and the latter is one of the only guitar-centric NEGA ballads I can stomach. HINDSIGHT reminds me a lot of their piano-heavy style on GRAVE OF THE SACRIFICE, except matured a wee bit. All of these are good tracks and I can say that I enjoyed listening to them in some capacity.

I cannot say that about the rest of this album.

Intros and outros will be intros and outros and as far as they go NEGA have had far worse than VANITAS VANITATUM and OMNIA VANITAS (ex. death warrant, idiot beauty, Hold a funeral, Psyren, etc.). OMNIA VANITAS even returns to a bit of the atmosphere that I thought NEGA was still able to muster at their command. That illusion was shattered completely by PURGATORY, FABLE IN THE COLD BED and GOODBYE HUMAN. Three tracks in a row that I could hardly distinguish from one another save harsh vocals from Jin that only seem to have gotten more grating with time. The riffs are interchangeable, the first two sound like two different songs spliced together with choruses repeated much too often. GOODBYE HUMAN channels some of Nameless alice without any of the pretense of thinking that they're actually making "jazz". The attempt at heavy metal swing doesn't work. Also, I feel the need to comment that shoving a lot of piano and ominous sounds into the background does not make a breakdown more interesting. It just makes it unlistenable, and resorting to this tactic multiple times over the course of the album lessens the novelty of the idea.

V-ROCK IS DEAD is supposed to be a parody song...about what I'm not too sure. The really tacky synth and the autotune are at odds with the rest of this album stylistically (although I'll give NEGA the benefit of the doubt and say it fits thematically). This really should not have been here. Another song I'll lump in the parody section would be 2012. The synth is once again, at odds with everything else going on. I would even go so far and say that without the synth, this would have been an alright song that contrasted with WILL very well. But it doesn't and I cannot.

DELUGE is terrible and I need not explain why. REASONANCE is DELUGE on steroids. Both are easily the low points of the album. Two extremely terrible deathcore styled songs that shouldn't have left the factory. I can't even believe DELUGE was a single.

And with that, I've hit every track in some fashion. I now should move onto the members that make up NEGA. San and Ray's playing were actually pretty good on this album and for that I cannot fault them (I've said enough about the composition above). The fact that Ray's bass isn't as obnoxious as it used to be is a plus as well. Yuu and Jin are where my problems lie specifically. In Yuu's case, his insistence on tuning the bass pedal on his drumkit to 4kHz is aggravating. The fact that it's not consistent across the entire album is twice as aggravating. They kept it on FABLE IN THE COLD BED but toned it down in DELUGE and got it perfectly on 虚しき「生」の寓意≒「死」の真意? I see no reason why it should be like this? The bass pedal should be a nice thump, not the sound of two quarters clicking together.

And Jin...a lot of my problems with him could have been rectified with smarter production choices. Jin needs to be in the background more, like Hazuki was on SHADOWS. He is painfully loud (I actually had to take a break because my ears hurt around 2012) and he hasn't gotten better with time. Even the UNNNG noise from guilt trip is easier to listen to than his new version of harsh vocals - instead, we get the more piercing, much more annoying WAAAAA voice. I also find that he's hit a brick wall as far as progression on the clean vocals. I can tell that there's a decent voice in there but after eight years and countless releases we still get vocals that sound like he has pneumonia? This is not right.

Given more time and more original ideas, VANITAS could have been good. The good tracks highlight that. The rest of this album is a woolen bag of "no", and for that I am disappointed.

NEGA's VANITAS gets a 4.5/10, and I think even that is on the generous side.

[relentless 254]

1. VANITAS VANITATUM -- Opens up with a Dir en grey-lite intro, then chugging of guitars. 1/10

2. PURGATORY -- As bad as SUICIDE by 12012, but at least SUICIDE has a little more variation. I should

also note that the production is blatantly bad on this track too...1/10

3. FABLE IN THE COLD BED -- More bad production. I remember hearing this song and thinking it was cool all the way up to

the first verse...and then it gets bland and predictable. CLEARLY Nega at their finest...2/10

4. GOODBYE HUMAN -- Oh hey My Devil On The Bed rip-off! There's even a VERMIN rip-off bass solo?! I can't believe this

shit is 4+ minutes! 0/10 (for lack of creativity)

5. biran yue'ni -- The usual chugging riff that's been identical to the rest of the album so far. There's a march-break

in the latter half of the album that almost sounds cool, but then it turns into bullshit blast beats and bad guitar work.

Are they even trying? 1/10

6. V-ROCK IS DEAD -- Who said this was a joke track? I was waiting for the joke but the punchline never came...this is

a genuinely bad song and I highly doubt this was a joke in the first place. Quit it with the excuses. 1/10

7. Tamerau kotonaku blank wo Kizutsuketa Yubisaki wa -- These guys seriously need to stop writing the same song over and

over again. This song highlights why Jin is referred to as "Vomiter" and not "Vocalist" on their website. Jin is not a

good vocalist and his lack of range proves that. 1/10

8. Manashiki Sei no Guui almost equals Shi no Imi -- 12 minutes long? Seriously? The guitars are at an all-time low here,

because this track has soo many moments where it sounds like a novice guitar player is playing random notes. And then

follow that up with the CHUG CHUG, CHUG CHUG, CHUG CHUG, PINCH HARMONICCCCCCCCCCCCC, CHUG CHUG, that has been going on

THE ENTIRE ALBUM. This track lacks cohesion, direction, and a legitimate hook to make it worth sitting through 12

minutes of garbage. 0/10

9. WILL -- The track feels like it goes nowhere. At least there's a ballad on here? If it wasn't for Jin's shitty vocals

and attempts to being like Kyo, this might have been a cool track. Oh and also, shitty solo played on one string. 2/10

10. 2012 -- Your average J-rock track with that beautiful poppy chorus. There's even synths to top this track off! 1/10

11. DELUGE -- CHUG CHUG PINCH HARMONIC, CHUG CHUG PINCH HARMONIC, this song resonates bad. 2/10

12. HINDSIGHT -- takes a minute to go anywhere, but even then we're treated to the same chugging with an underlying lead

section that definitely feels out of place. This track was defintely too long, by several minutes. 0/10

13. OMNIA VANITAS -- boring piano outro that was totally not needed, but at the very least...thank god it didn't end on

HINDSIGHT. 1/10

Conclusion: This isn't just a bad album, this is a TERRIBLE album. This highlights all the reasons why VK isn't taken

seriously. I went in expecting to enjoy this album at the very least, and damn was I wrong! In fact, this album is WORSE

than 12012's new album. Honestly.

[Candy Holic? 1]

I would give it maybe a 6.5/10...you are definitely right about the bass pedal clicking though >.> I love Yuu and his drumming to death,but the clicking...urghh I thought this album was pretty good though...nothing special...nothing bad...just NEGA

[Saaam-chan 50]

Sometimes I think its a sport here to kick ass NEGA and Dir en grey XD ~

I gave it a listen arround 3 times now.... the album was waaaaay to expensive ~

but I kinda enjoyed it ~

Candy is right its... nega... and if you expected something else... then I am sorry for you guys ^^

I would also give it a 6-6.5 ~

[Jigsaw9 6783]

I listened to this album a few times now, so let's see what do we have here~

VANITAS VANITATUM: I was surprised how good this was for an intro, especially how it transitions into a sort of mini-song. Nice one!

PURGATORY: I'm usually not too picky when it comes to Jin's vocals but his screaming here is kinda annoying, lol. The song itself is nothing special, especially after such a promising intro. Reminds me of the Grave from their first album (but that one was actually quite good).

FABLE IN THE COLD BED: When I first heard this song as NEGA's comeback after their year-long hiatus I was blown away, fantastic stuff. I still love it just as much, and it fits very nicely with the mood of the album. That creepy high-pitched chanting part is so awesome, as is the colorful synth-backing, among other things.

GOODBYE HUMAN: Easily one of my new favorite NEGA songs. It has that infectuous rollicking beat done to death by a few dozen bands already, but it still works. The chorus is really catchy with Ray's shouts, and the random samples are a nice touch too. It has a nice guitar solo too. A cool song to blast loudly and dance like a retard, lol.

Biran yueni: Kinda resembles Baku~kono akumu kurai tamae~ from their first album in its atmosphere. Just like that one, this didn't really grab me as anything special (more like annoying at certain parts), but it has some interesting bits. Sadly, these instances are not enough to save the song.

V-ROCK IS DEAD: A weird kind of sound but with the usual pessimistic NEGA attitude. I like how it becomes more and more dense as the verses go along (with their amusing lyrics xD). The chorus is pretty nice - would love to hear more Ray shouts though. Not bad actually! After my initial shock to the sound I became quite fond of this tune, it's a nice addition to the album's theme and sound.

Tamerau kotonaku......: This song could have been a lot better if they tightened it up a bit and got rid of 2 minutes. This way it has its cool parts spread out over almost 6 minutes (some riffs here, a solo there, nice pianos) but it becomes stale and boring quickly, once again the bland parts overbearing the interesting ones, like in track 05.

Munashiki 「ki」 no guui ≒ 「shi」 no shini: Clearly the centerpiece of the album. A gorgeous long track that builds from being slowly melodic to fast and furious, adorned with some nice little bits and pieces, like Ray's bass solo, or Yuu's little corner of going crazy on the piano and drums - pretty eerie. The whole song has such a nice atmosphere too, it really represents the overall mood of the album. I'm glad that they were able to pull off such a long song and made it so nice in the process.

WILL: the first real ballad on the album, and it's actually not bad. I'm totally not a ballad person and this is obviously not the best ballad in the universe (far from it, lol) but it's kinda nice and listenable. The main guitar part (with the piano and bass hints) is so simple but so pretty, I guess that was what initially drew me in. Kinda average but good to listen to.

2012: An instant favorite of mine. I love it when NEGA forget about their overt gloomy-depressive side and come up with stuff like this: a catchy VK pop-rock song (kinda reminiscent of 17sai no kodoku). The synths are a nice touch too, they add to the catchiness. A nice touching song.

DELUGE: whoah, total change of style, haha. I was already fond of this track before, still lovin' it. A nice overly aggressive NEGA song, half of what I love them for, so I can't complain. Not much else to say here.

HINDSIGHT: ugh, this track is still so boring as hell and doesn't go anywhere. If I could rearrange the album I'd get rid of this, substitute it with the 12-minute long song, and put REASONANCE in place of that one to track 08, lol. Would be much better that way IMO. Well I don't really have anything to say about this song, it's crap. xD

OMNIA VANITAS: ooh~ an outro with piano and random whispering, i.e. nothing we haven't heard before.

REASONANCE: of course NEGA tried to be cool kidz and put the hidden song onto track 69, surprise surprise. The song itself is pretty kickass however. It's a fast & mean - the style they're known for, I guess. It's good when they're doing it good, and here it works. Also has an obligatory hilarious-VK-lyrics moment in the form of the lines "I felt murderous / Like a dildo" ...now if that's not classy, I don't know what is, haha.

Overall I pretty much like this album. It's a nice continuation and improvement on their first full-length effort with more complex and thought-out songs. Of course I have to note that handful of dull (or downright irritating) tracks too. It's kinda like if the 1st album had an almost equal level of "pretty good", while this one has more contrasted swings between "whoah cool" and "ugh boooring". Dunno which one is better yet, but I sure do enjoy this one. My score would be a 7.5/10. A good follow-up to their first full-length.

[Augie1995 325]

Now I could write a full review, but you'd just be reading the same thing that Jigsaw above me wrote. Except that unlike Jigsaw, I absolutely love HINDSIGHT, PURGATORY was a really cool song to listen to and I love the breakdown, and OMNIA VANITAS wasn't as great as VANITAS VANITATUM as an SE but it was good nonetheless. I give the album an 8.5/10

P.S. I thought I was going to be the first person to give NEGA's album a good review

[Pretsy 1343]

edit

[The Libertine 2]

wow.. if people who could stand NEGA in the past don't like this album... it must really be extremely bad!

[sai 868]

I tried this album with no expectations whatsoever. I've never been overly fond of NEGA, the main reason being Jin's vocals. All in all, I have the advantage I can get used to more unique or annoying voices rather quickly if I like the rest of the music, but with NEGA's it has been damn near impossible. I'll just warn you beforehand, this will not be a very positive review.

The first problem with VANITAS is that the quality of it hasn't been divided properly. The more decent tracks follow eachother in the middle of the album, while all other bad tracks are at the beginning and the end. If they would've split them it might have sounded a bit less worse and obvious what tracks they actually tried on. Tracks like DELUGE and PURGATORY are absolutely horrendous with their BRAAAHBRAHHBRAHHH, PERESTROIKA-like breakdowns and that awful CLICKCLICKCLICK, though Yuu really toned down his bass drums for this album it seems. That's at least one positive thing.

Another problem with VANITAS is that it's just not very clear what they wanted to do here. Their concept for this album was the "VANITAS world view" (and seriously if someone dares to bring up DIR EN GREY with their VANITAS world view I will shoot you in the face), but if one would make an album of a "world view", wouldn't that mean that they would try different things and different styles? For an album that shows a "world view" there isn't much of diversity here. The PV track was perhaps the closest they got to expressing their concept (with different sections in a song, but that's also rather obvious when you're making a long song. No one's waiting for a 12-minute chugfest), the rest just falls flat. You have three categories here: the BRAAHBRAAHBRAAAHH songs (such as PURGATORY, DELUGE and REASONANCE), the more melodic songs with some BRAAAAHBRAAAH sections (the 12-minute one, the one that followed before that and FABLE IN THE COLD BED and 2012) and the "what the fuck were they doing" category (GOODBYE HUMAN, 2012, V-ROCK IS DEAD). What remains is WILL, which could've been a decent ballad if only Jin didn't sound as if he's choking on a tennis ball.

GOODBYE HUMAN is that attempt at metal-swing, which has gone horribly wrong. There are only few bands who can pull off this jazzy VK thing without sounding like complete retards, but it's not that bad that I'd put this in line with Lycaon's EROS. 2012 I expected to be the MOST APOCALYPTIC THING EVER BRAAAH but it was just kind of a standard pop song which once again COULD'VE been good if Jin actually bothered taking singing lessons. But then again, I do not know what the budget is that Kisaki has reserved for them.

The only song that stood out for me was the 12-minute song, it had some interesting parts and I didn't find it as boring as the rest of the people, but I'm quite a sucker for long songs anyway. This is definitely not very good, so I'd rate this a 4.5/10, and then I'm really being generous. It's bad, but not yet in line with 12012's self titled, that still holds the title of worst album of 2012 for me. Seriously, you'd have to fuck out really badly if you want to equal 12012's album.

[finnthesubhuman 26]

I'm not going to review track-by-track, because I think so very few people here are even trying to do that (one line summarisation followed with a IDUNLIKEIT/10? Seriously?). It must be uncool to review properly. New generation, do-it-as-fucking-quickly-as-possible.

Instead, I'm just going to say that this album grew on me, just a tiny bit. The improvements are definitely in the guitar and drumwork, but that's not saying much: San is getting staler and staler, and Yuu's triggers are still obnoxious (though my god that awfully loud, reverbed snare is gone! THIS MAKES THEM SO MUCH MORE LISTE--

And then there's Jin.

--GODDAMMIT).

The Peretroika WEEOOH noises actually make this album stand out a bit more from the rest of Nega's bland-to-blander catalogue from 2008 onwards; unlike Perestroika, I actually care, now that the drums don't give me an instant migraine. The intro (despite ripping off parts of Dir en grey's DSS intro) is the best they've done for a while, which doesn't say much since it's only a mood-etting piece and doesn't require much attention.

Now the negatives: Jin's YAAAAH noise is a billion times more painful than his UUUUUUNGHs. The guitar mix is muddy. The breakdowns are generic. The 12 minute ballad point is hard to get past (though it stands much better by itself). Jin is off-key even more than usual. There is no atmosphere for the majority; when there is, it's only because of the synths. The tracklist acts like it's shouting at me. If Nega's intention was to give me a migraine as quickly as possible, they've succeeded.

I still love their back catalogue, so I gave it a try. I even bought it. It only JUST passes. If they get any worse, I'm going to have to give up. I can't afford the painkillers; not after importing the bloody CD for 50 bucks. Their last album had melody and keyboards all the way through; it had ambience; it had atmosphere. Granted the musicianship is mildly better, but the creativity has been plunging downwards. The 12 minute song is a step in the right direction, but it's too big a step (this album would have been recieved in a significantly more negative manner, I think, if it wasn't here). Just take that much care composing the rest and you could have a tight CD.

(Granted, it's still pretty impressive considering they probably wrote and recorded this AFTER announcing the tracklisting.)

My personal score is 5/10 (again, not a giant achievement--their first releases would get over 7).

[one-eyed waiter 28]

For the record, I did not have any expectations whatsoever for VANITAS. With the Dir en grey-screaming title, the two lackluster singles (even though the main riff of FABLE IN THE COLD BED was enjoyable a little while) and a "new sound" that was absolutely bland, NEGA couldn't set a much lower new standard for themselves. Now, I do enjoy their early work (pretty much all of their first three mini-albums), but I have come to the conclusion that things have steadily been going downhill for them since about 2008. PERESTROIKA was a nice detour with some fresh songs and pretty interesting synth-laced breakdowns when it didn't sound so much like Withering to death.-era Dir en grey. Since their "rebirth", I've felt that all of their songs now have to feature the "new" elements to their sound, the synth or the vocoder, for better or worse (in the vast majority of cases, for the worse).

Now, VANITAS is pretty big concept-wise and draws up some potentially interesting ideas. However, all of NEGA's attempts at being serious fall short of these ambitious goals and turn out to be no more than horrid musical amalgamations, more often than not featuring entire sections of various songs from Dir en grey's two latest albums. The lead track, 虚しき「生」の寓意≒「死」の真意, shows this ambition - with a pretty much meaningless first 5½ minutes or so featuring the obligatory sleazy chorus and the UROBOROS-style breakdown, it grows into something with an actual atmosphere during the drum/bass solo, only to go haywire ("guys we can experiment with our sound guys we are serious now for real") with the pseudo-classic piano duelling Yuu's frenetic drumming which then turns into a generic "build-up" part... The rest is nothing to write home about and after the 10 minute mark or so, it is simply meaningless to continue listening to the track because the chorus and the heavy part appear in the exact same way and progression they did the first time around. The track comes "full circle" and we're left with what we started - nothing.

The rest of the tracklist isn't that redeeming either. I honestly half expected hearing 狂骨の鳴り in VANITAS VANITATUM and as such wasn't surprised, but that track actually worked as an intro and (albeit barely) managed to build up a kind of ambience - only to have it shattered with the next track. PURGATORY, while having a disgustingly "metalcore" intro, actually has a somewhat pleasant, redeeming main riff as well as a chorus that doesn't make me want to barf, unlike the following track, FABLE IN THE COLD BED. On PURGATORY, I can actually stand Jin's horrible screaming and the song itself isn't long enough to make me too bored with the repetitiveness. Following the seriously irritating FABLE IN THE COLD, which by the way shatters what was left of the ominous atmosphere of the intro, is the obligatory ~jazzy~ track of the album, GOODBYE HUMAN. There is absolutely nothing in this track, save for the somewhat entertaining guitar solo, worth mentioning. 糜爛故に hangs on one riff that becomes boring in about 10 seconds. It is the only purely heavy song on this album and it has absolutely no sense of progression whatsoever.

As for V-ROCK IS DEAD, I really don't see what the commotion is all about. In my opinion, it being the only track with a maxed out PERESTROIKA factor in their sound, the song is for me far more interesting to listen to than, say, 糜爛故に, WILL or DELUGE. Whether it is a parody song or not is to me completely irrelevant as I can actually listen to this. Next up is 躊躇うことなく「　」を傷付けた指先は、途惑うことなく穢れた「　」を飾る, no doubt excluded from their DELUGE single to score some edginess and ~true musicality~ points for the band. This is NEGA songwriting at its dullest, as this makes no impact on me at all.

Following the 12 minute song made purely for the band to have a 12 minute song is WILL, a song that actually manages to be somewhat nice. That is, up until the curiously out-of-place chorus which turns the sleaziness up to its highest level on this record. The rest is your typical, boring ballad with ~epic~ guitar soloing. 2012, albeit possessing an interesting synth line and a listenable main riff, sounds like something that would fit more in REALies' discography, not NEGA's. DELUGE is insanely boring metalcore with no redeemable qualities. HINDSIGHT, one of the few okay tracks of this album, has now been provided with a generic rain SFX/piano intro. I'm not a fan of the chorus but the rest of the song sounds strangely listenable, considering the rest of this album. OMNIA VANITAS isn't even worth typing about, as it is the usual piano and whispering "mood setter".

If I weren't nauseatingly tired of the musical elements used and re-used ad infinitum in NEGA's recent songwriting (the typical breakdowns, the whispering over heavy parts, use of vocoder, use of synth and/or piano breakdowns, excessive use of synth strings, etc.) already, I definitely am now.

[Rosà 37]

I don't know why I haven't posted my opinion about Vanitas yet. To be honest, it's not the NEGA I knew from Grave Of The Sacrifice or earlier. It's the too-much-PERESTROIKA'ed NEGA, which I hate right now. Jin had some ideas, but after a hiatus... Idk, maybe they should've never play again as NEGA? But anyway, my personal opinion about band will keep for now here, let's do a small review of Vanitas.

Vanitas Vanitatum - piano, piano, more piano, something chaotic. Tried to do climate but not THAT way! Feeled nothing while listening. Some synth, whispers. Only kind of mess. Moreover, incompatible end of song with drums, guitars and vocals. What for? Doesn't fit, simply. 0/6, cos if it was a clear SE, will be no note for it.

Purgatory – nice intro, brutal for NEGA. The first minute was kind of good, like the previous NEGA. In general the rest of song irritates me. Blend of PERESTROIKA sound and repetitive… chorus? Can I so say? Bland, it’s really bad idea for them to mix so such a soft and harder stuff in that way. 1/6, or 1.5/6

Fable In The Cold Bed – melodic intro… Soo soft to vomit… Really heavy part for guitars and drums. And then something close to Purgatory. Screams are veery nice! Then, again, bland PERESTROIKA. How it can be to make from a really good song with some positive potential kind of shit? Anyway, nice try to return. 1/6

Goodbye Human – catchy try in chorus? Nothing memorable at all! Didn’t even noticed when it came to the end. 0/6.

Biran Yue’ni – the first song I kind of like. Reminds me a lot older NEGA songs. What I really like in this song it’s chorus. Verses are soft and bland. A really like the screaming at the end. This chaos make me feel happy, really! Tamdadadamdam, tamdadadamdam… xD Solid one. But there’s huge lack of something. 3.5/6.

V-Rock Is Dead – good joke, NEGA, good joke. Totally out of style. Still the same beat… And heavy part, what makes… Only worse for this song. Skipped after half of the song. 0/6.

Tamerau Kotonaku Blank Wo Kizutsuketa Yubisaki wa – not that bad. Typical NEGA song. Nothing special. Jin’s vocals are really good here. But the music. I kinda feel: “Yea, I’ve heard it before… somewhere”. USE NO SYNTH, PLEASE! 2.5/6

Manashiki Sei No Guui Almost Equals Shi No Imi – could be nice if it was more organized. They didn’t have any concept for this song. And, seriously? To sit 12 minutes to hear everything? Would be better to do 2 tracks for 3 or 4 minutes. And get out these PERESTROIKA shitty moments again…! The second one I kinda like. But too long for me. 4/6.

Will – listened to it several times and found NOTHING to comment here. Definitely not my music taste. 1/6.

2012 – no ideas for title? Hahaha xD too much synth here again. So remeind me PERESTROIKA. Bad chose for the album. It fits more HeartZ or PainZ, not NEGA album! 0/6.

Deluge – next try to big return to NEGA’s sound. Again, really nice intro I like. To be honest it’s solid song. What I really like most… Not vocals, but the idea of song. This mix is for them listenable. Very heavy parts come into softer, typical for NEGA. Yeah! 5/6.

Hindsight – bored with it. Nothing more to add. Another song without any idea. 0/6.

Omnia Vanitas – one listenable SE, clear piano, make sense here. It’s kind of soft , but no note for SE.

Resonance – why the hell they didn’t make album in this kind of sound! It’s really nice song, almost masterpiece! It’s the NEGA I’ve expected after their return! 6/6!

Overall: around 1.7/6. That’s sad, what happened to NEGA after brake. Three or four songs, which I choose as listenable… Terrible. So let’s make a deal NEGA. Kick your asses and make something better or get back to PERESTROIKA. It’s not the way you should go along. Amen.

[Thedane 176]

Not too fond with reviewing stuff, but i thought this actually needed a review by someone who, sit tight, actually likes NEGA. Haven't read much positive things of this album. So let's spice it with some positive feedback.

Vanitas Vanitatum - I'm not a se guy, i rarely pay attention to them, i know they're there for a reason, and to set the sort of "mood" but they rarely works for me. 2/10

Purgatory – Amazing. The NEGA i know and love, each member contributing into making this song a living harmonic beast, if that makes sense. Many have problems with Jin's vocals, which is fine, he is extreme after all. Yet he doesn't describe himself as a vocalist, but a vomiter, he vomits his feelings, which is what i find in NEGA's songs, a pile of emotions, hitting me all at once, creating a temporary reality, NEGA. Might have gone a bit too far here, but if there were any doubts, i liked the song. 8/10

Fable In The Cold Bed – Nothing to say about this song, really, it's masterpiece of a comeback song! 9/10

Goodbye Human – Bit odd i must add, but catchy with some pretty solid bass Ray (at least i think so) 7/10

Biran Yue’ni – Aww god, this is earcandy. I love a smoooooth intro, which then "vomits" emotions and feelings all over me. 10/10

V-Rock Is Dead – There's so much into this song. Not only are everything about NEGA gently massaged into it, it also take every aspect of a poor.. generic piece of *hit song, which a lot of bands recently produce like there's no tomorrow, and kills them. This is NEGA vs the generic world that is reality, NEGA is owning big time. 9,5/10

Tamerau Kotonaku Blank Wo Kizutsuketa Yubisaki wa – Smooth intro, which then kicks into a gentle headbanging part, which then turns back to the smoothness. Then it's mixed together, creating an odd feeling, shall i relax? headbang? Provoking attitude from NEGA at its best. A half ballad with a lovely heavy touch. Great! 7/10

Manashiki Sei No Guui Almost Equals Shi No Imi – This is... a decent attempt. The only song i just don't know if i like or not, not quite a ballad, but at times boring enough to be so. 6/10

Will – Quite okay ballad, at least the best of the 2 on the album. Not quite much of an impact like Reminiscence was back in the days, but i'm certain they'll be able to make something of equal epic proportions! 7/10

2012 – Good song that "opens you up" and makes your mind ready for the next song. 8/10 for successful mind manipulation

Deluge – Da bomb! God i love this song. It's so brutal and heavy it's erotic! In order to avoid a creepy love story, here's 10/10, next song!

Hindsight – This is a sad song, both the way it sounds, and the fact that it's on the album. Something is just meant to be live dist. never to see the light of a proper release. God this was boring. 2/10

Omnia Vanitas – SE... next! 1/10

Resonance – Well i had expected another boring dull hindsight... didn't expect an awesome kickass heavy piece of proper NEGA! I like my NEGA chilled, served like this! 10/10 bonus for making a proper finishing impact.

Overall: This album shows their amazing talent as a band, and i hope there's more albums to come from NEGA, i wont lie and say i knew this was going to be great. I had my doubts, but they're looong gone now.

NEGA, thank you for giving birth to this nightmare of epic value. VANITAS = 7,5/10