Featured Review #24: Vermillion-D Alice Syndrome - 「鴉/IX」

[Zeus 7997]

Artist: Vermillion-D Alice Syndrome Album: 鴉/IX Score: Surprisingly lackluster, despite all the effort put into it.

Setsuna is one ambitious guy for sure.

He started in his basement playing unremarkable trance music themed after Dante's Inferno until he was enraptured by the allure of the guitar, and has been inching towards metal since 2008. Every release from the now defunct 黒夜葬 got darker, heavier, and more melodic as Setsuna improved his metal sensibilities and dropped his trance ones. He achieved his greatest wish in finding a vocalist, and in one motion cut some ties with the doujin scene by forming VDAS. Despite the fact that they cover no themes from any franchise, there were still pictures of anime girls on the covers of their last three releases and they faithfully showed up at all the events to sell their merchandise.

In a way, 鴉/IX represents a total split from the scene it was birthed from. All doujin imagery has been eliminated from this album in an effort to appear as a serious metal band. Unfortunately for them, there are too many problems with 鴉/IX to consider their transition complete. Without the guiding light of ZUN, the duo have forgotten what made their music so interesting in the first place.

Let's start from the beginning: there is too much going on within each song. On one hand, this is the best production and mastering job that VDAS has ever had. On the other hand, there are enough riffs for three albums shoved into one. It's great when artists hold nothing back and can engross the listener entirely in their style, but 鴉/IX is suffocating. The result is a disaster. Each song feels like an album on it's own; with the exception of closer "And Then There Was None", every song goes on for over eight minutes. There are some cool moments in each, but it's inevitably ruined by another, more questionable inclusion. In comparison to previous works by these two, both together and separately, they expressed more with less musical brushstrokes. This sounds like they tried too hard to be progressive and failed. It's difficult to highlight a standout track because they all have the same problems. It's been a while since I wanted to shut off an album because I felt like I heard everything by track four.

This is how a band can fail by doing too much. Setsuna has always been guilty of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, but this is the first time where it hurts more than it helps. By incorporating more deathcore, more symphonic and gothic elements, more solos, and more operatic vocals, Setsuna and RIB have challenged themselves to be something greater. But neither know how to balance their aggressive moments with their more tranquil moments, and 鴉/IX quickly loses all sense of dynamics. Most tracks start from an ominous, foreboding intro and explode into a flurry of deathcore and pop choruses. Since each track has so much content, the first three tracks provide so much listening material that the last four tracks don't have enough individuality to distinguish themselves.

VDAS could have condensed 鴉/IX into a more listenable experience by shaving a few minutes off of each track. The largest offender here is the penultimate track "零ノ柩", which also happens to be the longest track clocking in at an almost insufferable thirteen minutes. Roughly half of it is spent listening to RIB's whiny, nasally falsetto, which does nothing to make the time pass faster. It's a shame too, because when he isn't straining himself RIB's style bears more than a passing resemblance to the visual kei scene. This could be a draw to many metal fans here who don't mind less than stellar vocals. If you're anything like me and prefer impeccable vocal performances, this is simply going to annoy you on multiple levels.

The more one pushes against musical boundaries, the more those boundaries push back. Vermillion-D Alice Syndrome was eager to push themselves, but they were not able to keep their creative influences balanced properly. As a result, their sophomore effort is a complete mess. It shows some promise, but overall I feel their concept was executed better on previous releases. I would recommend this to only the hardcore metal lovers that don't mind nasal cleans betwixt their growling. Everyone else can safely skip this album.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Going to throw in my tl;dr input on this album, since god knows we need to be less verbose than Setsuna was:

 

+:

 

-Musicianship has definitely increased since his earlier works. A lot of different influences are present here, as well as an effort to really try to be more than just blast beats and screaming with some harpsichord smeared on top

 

-Most of the songs are encapsulated in their own mood-setting intros so it doesn't feel like this all bleeds together

 

-:

 

-Too much of point one. I'm going to make a Drag Race reference here and compare this album to Jade Jolie during episodes 1~4: whenever she came out on stage, most of her criticism she recieved was that she had a vision in mind, but instead of sticking to it she kept tacking on accessories until she probably didn't have anything left in her closet. There's a distinct line between being complex and being serendipitous spaghetti.

 

-Very rarely do I have the attention span for songs longer than 8 minutes. If I do, they have to have a lot of things going on that make me want to both listen to the whole thing and remember what happened throughout the whole song. None of the tracks on this album provide me with the will power to keep on plowing through. As I said in chat when I was first listening to this album, each track in and of themselves felt like I was listening to an entire album because of how much was crammed into them.

 

-The wannabe-kyo struggle is too real. Comparatively, I have a much higher tolerance for bullshit vocals than Zess does. But there are points in this album where it goes from "ehh...he kinda missed that high note!" to "why the fuck is this whole section this high?" I get that people liked DSS for whatever reason and that it's the cool new thing to do, but at least know what your limitations are as a performer before attempting to do them. RIB has proven to be ignorant of his limitations on many occasions on this album alone.

 

-I don't even know if I made it to tracks 6 and 7 lololol . I probably did, but they came on an hour after I started trying this album and by that point I was a bit VDAS'd out.

 

All in all, it is safe to say that this album was disappointing. The album before this was great, and they still are my favorite touhou group, but this is the album I'm going to pretend did not happen. I think Zess' review provided a fantastic overview of what this album has to offer, and I shall condense into one word: "suffocating."