εpsilon

Normally, I generally give a listen to at least a few tracks off of an album if I've never heard of the band before. I almost never buy an album on the basis of the album cover and then listen to it. So far, this album is the only exception.

I stumbled upon this album at a "Used" section of a record store in my home city - and the cover art was what drew me in. The woman on the cover looked like something from either a Japanese Sci-Fi anime (I.E., Neon Genesis Evangelion, Witchblade, Gurren Lagann) or a JRPG. I bought it, thinking it was going to be a Asian Rammstein clone (which wouldn't have been a bad thing if it had actually been the case, since I enjoy listening to Rammstein). I was half right - the band is Japanese. The band's sound, on the other hand, is light years away from the type of music that Rammstein plays.

This is obviously a melodeath album...with trance leanings. But instead of the end product sounding like a dubstep butchery of Children of Bodom, you get a result that sounds like what would happen if Daft Punk collaborated with the Steelbath Suicide-era Soilwork - and got a female J-Rock singer to participate. A female J-Rock singer with an awesome voice.

The riffs are actually really unique - I would come up with a comparison here, but I can't think of a single guitarist whose riffs sound close to this (that isn't a member of this band). I didn't notice the drumming at first, but after a couple listens, I was able to make it out - and it's really impressive. I don't have anything to say about the bass, so I'm not going to talk about it.

The vocals are the second best part of this album. They manage to blend harsh vocals with clean female vocals - in fact, they blend them so well that I honestly thought that the band had a single, female singer who handled both clean and harsh vocals the first time I listened to this. I was shocked when I learned that not only does the band have 2 vocalists, but the harsh vocalist is male and is also the bassist (disclaimer: I'm friends with him on Facebook, but I friended him AFTER I bought and listened to this album).

If the vocals are the second best part of this album, then what part is the best? The lyrics. There are some anime that I think should have songs written about them. I think that there should be an anime based on the lyrics of this album - or at the very least, someone should make a bunch of AMVs for the songs on this album. The fact that none of the members speak English as their first language makes it even more impressive that the song lyrics are awesome.