Vior gloire - Gloomy and wakeful night

[Jigsaw9 6783]

I decided to make a thread, since this album is awesome~ Here are my thoughts on the individual songs (without the "prologue" tracks, cuz they're so short anyway).

Kanashimi no chi ni saku hana: beautiful opening track, starts out rather subdued with some acoustic guitars, then expands into more dramatic and epic territories. I love how well-crafted and pretty this song is.

DEATH PARADE: a faster-paced track with some great guitar and bass melodies. Shall's vocals are really soaring too, he has some great moments. This one really reminds me of some lighter old-school visual kei, nice~

Inspire: already know this one, still a good song.

Kurui hateta genjitsu ni mita sekai: this song is awesome, it has everything: beautiful (at times kinda cheesy) synths, random falsetto bits, dramatic atmosphere and driving rhythms, and a great closure.

Lilias Sophie to yuuutsu: this kinda sounds like if a newer-style VK band tried to play a LUNA SEA song dripped in a goo of synths, while channeling some millennium-era indies-VK. Great stuff.

DEAD the CREATOR: interesting, this song is like a mixture of Vior's usual elegant melodies and a more 'trashy' typical indies-VK style - clunky rhythm guitars, repetitive synth blaring with a disco-beat. A curious and contrastive track, not bad.

despair: fast-paced track with a cool-sounding (but kinda obvious xD) main guitar part, and a nice continuation of that theme on subtle synths - nice move! Really catchy soaring chorus too; great song.

Iro no nai sekai: okay, this probably takes the cake for 'most random & awesome song' on here. xD Begins with agitated chuggy guitars, proceeds to mellow out, then random epicness, mellow part, WTF jazzy bit?? oh hey. Amazing. 8D

Kimi ga inai heya: the only truly ballad-like track, it's a nice mix of pleasant sounds - synths/piano, acoustic and mellow electric guitars. It has a warm nostalgic feel strengthened by Shall's beautiful vocals.

Locus: a sweet and up-beat closing track, with nice piano and a fast melodic chorus. Sounds very optimistic. Lovin' the guitar solo and the subsequent 'tinkley' synths, and how it all builds back up. Great ending for a great album.

I liked the first single of these guys, but still, I'm really really surprised and impressed that they could deliver such a beautiful and well-crafted full album, especially since they only formed a bit less than 1.5 years ago. The songs are great and packed full with memorable bits, and the production suits their style well too - it's not top-notch of course but perfectly good for a band of this caliber. I hope that they will continue making amazing music even after UNDER CODE's demise, and that they will gain more fans - they would really deserve it! (though seeing the trend with newer bands, this seems sadly unlikely)

Giving this album an 8.5/10, excellent stuff!

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

I'll write a full review eventually, but this has to be one of the best albums released on UCP.

The only song I didn't like was 'Iro no Nai Sekai' (hey gais that trans*lates into 'colorless warudo!!'), even though I love obnoxious genre mashes. For some reason, I thought that in this particular case it was a train wreck that I couldn't love...and I do love a lot of train wreck songs (like E'm~grief~'s 'Dokuhaku no sora'). The synth parts in it were cool, but I absolutely hate fake jazz more than I already dislike real jazz.

From only a few listens, my favorite songs are 'Kanashimi no chi ni saku hana,' 'Death Parade,' and 'Kurui hateta genjitsu ni mita sekai.' I also love how melodramatic all of the Japanese song titles are.

In short, 110,000,000 x better than Suzaku and Cu[be]'s albums. You know why? Because they took a year to release it without 2100033424328192051 singles. Sure, it had 4 instrumentals, but only 2 re-releases (one of which was rarezzz). None of this 1~3.5 new songs crap from Vior Gloire.

[Mei 276]

i still have to listen to it a bit more to say i REALLY love it.

i was expecting more crazy songs like inspire and agitator tbh.

anyway, im not saying this album is bad, and i agree it's one of the few master pieces ucp has put out.

shall's vocals r so fawking outstanding!

but as i said b4 i need more listens.

for now, it's a 7.

[saishuu 3220]

I'll write a proper review later, but I checked this CD out after the nice reviews and it has got to be my favorite release to come out from UCP since Vidoll's V.I.D. Best and most memorable moment of the entire album so far is the 01:22 - 01:53 section in DEAD the CREATOR. It's just ughhh, everything works so nicely and it has a huge nostalgic/old-VK vibe. Love it.

[Paraph 826]

I have to revive this old thread to say they were one of the most underrated bands of their time. This album is crazy good.
 

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by Paraph

[yomii 834]

i miss them so much♡

 

btw what rena is doing now? it's obvious from his twitter he keeps playing bass but i don't know what band he's in or is he participating in random projects or whatever

[Jigsaw9 6783]

32 minutes ago, yomii said:

btw what rena is doing now? it's obvious from his twitter he keeps playing bass but i don't know what band he's in or is he participating in random projects or whatever

After THE BLACK SWAN disbanded in May he has only done random session appearances, if I understand it correctly. However, he recently tweeted that he'll do lots of music stuff in 2019, so who knows, maybe he'll start/join a full-time band again.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Jigsaw9