I.T.G - Instigate the Grief

[Zeus 7997]

Artist: I.T.G. Album: Instigate the Grief Score: I have 99 problems and it's all this album.

Apparently, Zaku left all his talent with RedruM and acquired his musicians from the discount bin outside the office that was once Dear Dolce. It's the only reason I have for why it sounds like everyone in this band is so awful at their "profession". Any hope that you may have had that this band would be decent should have been assassinated with those YouTube previews that were black metal demo quality at best. The album sounds exactly like those previews and it really makes me wonder what they invested their money into. Then, I look at the outfits and realize that they look really snazzy and then all my questions are answered. Then, I get this dreadful feeling crawling up my spine to inform my brain that I'm in for a really bad trip. I still wasn't ready. This took my expectations of how terrible visual kei can be, encased it in concrete, and threw it off the side of a fishing boat into the ocean.

Instigate the Grief is the result of when a band thinks they can cash in on the visual kei craze while doing no work at all. Zaku and co. must have seriously sat down together after the recording for this album was finished and banked on the fact that all ten of their fans and those baka gaijins on Monochrome Heaven would buy enough copies for them to cover the 500yen down payment for the studio time in someone's garage complex. This is exploitation at it's finest, being a cookie-cutter collage of visual kei's creative drippings with some attempts at an industrial rock and gothic atmosphere that fails completely due to issues that should have been rectified before this album was pressed to disc.

For starters, the recording quality of this album is abysmal. The attempt at the D.I.D. sound fails miserably. Any studio additions are there to give the illusion that there's depth to the music. There is not. The band literally took anything they could and placed it on top of their music without regard for balance or space in the mix. Some samples they used are at such a high frequency they can cause deafness! It only gets worse. Zaku is the biggest culprit and is responsible for sinking this ship. He manages to both sound dreadful on every track and get worse as the album goes on. Any time Zaku comes onto the microphone to do harsh vocals it either sounds like he's gargling peanut butter or everything devolves into noise. Every single vocal effect in ProTools was applied to his voice before they transcoded the master tracks to and from 96kbps four times for that authentic-kei feel. I envision that afterwards, they all sat around, stroked their cocks, and nodded in agreement, "Yes, yes, this is exactly how we want to represent ourselves!". Is every member in this band deaf?

This is the antithesis of musicianship. They stapled together as many visual kei cliches as they could find. Track names are so edgy I can shave my face with them. Songs jump between "aggressive" verses and poppy choruses, as if the formula hasn't already been beaten to death. Even the breakdowns lack any type of moshable rhythm and just sound lame and lifeless. I can even point to sections of songs where they just didn't try, like BABY ON THE DEATH VALLEY where Zaku repeats the title in Engrish before they free form shit all over your eardrums for a minute straight. Then there's also numbers that would make Black Gene for the Next Scene blush at the reckless abandon of synth in tracks like DIGITIZED FAMILY.

There are no redeeming qualities to Instigate the Grief. Every track ranges from terrible to torturous. Questionable decisions in both composition and production make you wonder if anyone listened to the music after it was recorded. For example, the drums in No Answer are panned almost entirely to the left and right for no reason, leaving a gigantic gap in the sound stage that's unaccounted for. It takes a track that had one or two ideas and makes it just as vapid as everything else on display. If you want another example, the drums in BABY ON THE DEATH VALLEY get a mention for being the single worst drums I have ever heard recorded in my life. Bedroom doujin bands with prerecorded drum loops sound more professional than this. And no, once again I am not kidding. Guitars are weak and have no life, and it seems like the distortion on the guitar placed in the mix and not out of the amp, making things sound even more terrible. Bassist? What bassist? I can't hear any bass underneath all that low end distortion and typewriter drum pedals.

This album is an example of why piracy is good. If I had purchased this album, I would have asked for my money back. If you bought this album I really feel bad for you. I deleted this album immediately after I finished the last track. You couldn't get me to buy this if the government paid for my trip to the otolaryngologist. I'd much rather play frisbee with this CD than ever listen to it again. I was fundamentally changed as a visual kei fan by the end of this album, after discovering that there are bands who think they can insult my intelligence with such awful music.

You will never catch me say this again any time soon, but this band deserves to disband. Now.

[Jigsaw9 6783]

Nice review, haha. I can't verify everything said here because I just had to turn off the album after track-4, couldn't take it any longer. Seems like it was the right choice to do.

 

0/10 would bang with a hand grenade tied to a baseball bat

[acbpn 434]

music = 5/10

emotion = 5/10

quality = 0.5/10

 

that's all.

[237Q 154]

With due respect, I need to jump in and make a remark on the review.

ITG are not and they do not consider or even try to be anything like visual kei. They even state this on their homepage: STYLE : HARD ROCK / SCREAMO / EMO

 

Personally, I love the industrial thing they tried to do. The recording quality could be better, though.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

SCREAMO / EMO

 

SCREAMO / EMO

 

SCREAMO / EMO

 

S̢̥̱̘̼͓̯̤̹͒̓̕ ̡̲̤̓́͊ͤ͗͠C̺̳͎̮͖͉̠͕ͥ͘ ̵̟̻͍̣͕̩̹̹̲̀̐̈̅͐͐ͨͯR̰͕͔̆̓͌͞ͅ ̞͔̫̎̈́ͩÊ̙͍͙̲̗̔͢ ̢̩̝͕̝̤̣̭̄̓͘A̖͚͈͙̘̥ͭ̀ͭͬ͂̄͠͡ ͍̖͎̪͛M͍̙̦̬͔̯̐͐̓̓̄ͯ̒͂͟͡͠ ̵̵̭̩͍͙͎ͩ̄͡Ọ̵̥̤ͥ͗̒͟͢ ̤͔̞͕̙̩̫̠̓͐͑͒ͅ/̷̢ͭͭͧ̀ͯ҉̘̝͈̞̰̺ ̶͍̱̦̳͇̋ͬ̈̓̽͋̒ͮE̸͓̺̩̘̮͚͐̈̐̀ͅ ͓͙͙͉͑̌ͫ̔̃͌́M̵̡͙̙̹̰͚ͥͤͯͪ ̝̹̓ͧ̂ͭ̒͝Ỏ̱̫̹̫͍̤̱̼̄̋͘ͅ

 

 

 

This just keeps getting worse. That's a weak attempt at trying to pretend they're not visual-kei while simultaneously trying to sell this crap to the same fan base. Isn't the mishmash of metal-core with synth-pop called pico-core or something? I thought there was a special name for bands like Newbreed or My Eggplant Died Yesterday.

[237Q 154]

tbh they act completely different from a visual kei band. yes, some of the promotional elements are still there - like comment videos and such - but even by their homepage you can see that they're not really visual. The homepage looks more like, eg combichrist or eskimo callboy, compared to, let's say, mejibray or jackman homepages. They're as visual as SiM are, promotion-wise. Hell, they don't even have a vkdb page, Zaku's history just links to the website.

I'm not completely sure what you mean by pico-core (does that even exist??) but by even mentioning synth-pop in this context it's obvious you didn't even hear the previews, mind the full album. Even though I would characterize them as a combination of industrial and trancecore, my guess is they made a thematic album and are just having more unreleased, more screamo/emo stuff in plan.

[Senedjem 510]

stop trying to justify this awful half-assed non-music u idiot lunatic


You have to be a very special kind of deluded to look at a band that looks VK, sounds VK and is made up entirely of VK musicians and say 'Lol they're not vk tho'

[237Q 154]

either get better arguments or better manners, senedjem