Tales of Almanac

One could surmise that this album's conceptual theme involves the exciting escapades of an annual calendar comprising statistics and important dates of a given year, but a more logical explanation as to its title most likely concerns some funky "Engrish" with the hopes of conveying a general sense of adventure. As a flowery power metal effort, Tales Of Almanac does flirt around with some adventurous musical ideas, but it's also constrained by factors involving production, certain familiar melodies and song constructs. As a final product, all these elements combine to form this unusual slurry of propulsive metal and deliriously happy Japanese pop. I suppose it can't be too surprising coming from a band named Light Bringer, but it's quirky nevertheless.

The thing about a lot of your generic J-pop, particularly regarding output released back in the nineties, is that guitars were often present and distorted enough to add a bit of punch to the speedy dance rhythms, bouncy keyboards and the enthusiastic warbling by the vocalist. Often you could also find some short yet effective shredding guitar solos tacked on after the second chorus, so a more furious and metal-enhanced version of this type of music isn't such a stretch of the imagination. Light Bringer, though, coalesces their influences in ways that actually do come across as more offbeat than what you would normally hear from, say, some 'visual kei' band going for that next level of heaviness.

If you remove all embellishments except for the riffs, it's mostly anthemic power metal with progressive tendencies, which is especially apparent on tracks such as "White Locked Night", practically resembling a homage to Dream Theater. It boasts difficult time signatures and a long instrumental break in which every performer gets ample time for some classy showboating.

This little mean cupcake, though, has a shitload of candy coated frosting that smears the metal aspects of the record with layers of cuteness and pop influences. The main culprit in disarming its heaviness is the production, in that the album is mixed akin to a Japanese pop release. The high-pitched vocals of Fuki, toeing the line between irritating and adorable, are front and center, dominating the mix whenever she's unleashing her vibrato wails. The guitars, though heavily distorted, come across as rather neutered, lacking any sort of edge or bite, and having to make do with competing against the chintzy keyboard wizardry for recognition. The drums really suffer though, lacking almost any low end and saddled with a weak snare sound. As a result, this is one of those metal albums toddlers might enjoy, as it's reasonably warm and fuzzy, although the singer's voice may cause the family dog's head to explode.

The other key factor in trying to classify this release is the abundance of familiar, catchy and acutely Japanese pop vocal melodies gracing a decent portion of these songs. They're very uplifting, happy and occasionally sound cribbed right out of some J-popper like Rina Aiuchi or Hitomi's songbook. She also seems to reuse these melodies across more than a few tunes in this album, resulting in some later tracks suffering due to redundancy.

At the same time, I do enjoy how energetic the band sounds once I get past the production issues. They are all good musicians, and the solos, such as the snazzy guitar leads in "Rain" or the bass showcase in "White Locked Night" is noteworthy, and the keyboardist pulls off a fine instrumental piano piece near the album's conclusion. Songs like the opener and "Upstream Children", though bouncy as hell, are still fast and possess reasonably tight instrumentation except for maybe a couple of slight drumming gaffs that actually add a bit of organic appeal. There's also "We're All in This Together", which could be a new national anthem for Japan with its "lift your head up high" message. Silly shit, but entertaining enough. Besides, most national anthems are really just silly sloganeering over corny chest-baring melodies anyhow.

Light Bringer wears their name on their sleeves. Hell, the sleeve cover alone obviously lets sub-basement dwellers and panda-heads know that this ain't their scene whatsoever. I can't believe there isn't some christian band plugging away in various church halls bearing the same name, but this Light Bringer isn't about preachin' how God is their co-pilot. The aura is definitely unobtrusively positive though, and goofy fun as well, conjuring up the image of Sailor Moon with a flying V. A couple of numbers such as "Frothy Summer Manatsu no yoru no yume" veer far into the J-pop realm, but if you can put up with anime theme songs, those particular ditties shouldn't kill you. Self produced, the production hurts the album's impact significantly, but as a debut, they have the chops and ideas. They just need more 'power' to their power metal.