General Information
Album Title: Thousand Enemies
Artist: Girls Dead Monster (Singer: LiSA)
Catalog Number: KSLA-0052
Release Date: May 12, 2010
General Thoughts
The Crow Song Album and marina’s singing has proven to be mediocre because something was missing from the vocals… expression! As a result, the vocals sounded so dull and flat that it lessened the playing of these songs. If I were Jun Maeda, I would be crying in my sleep because the vocals ruined my music composition. With the new singer for Yui-nyan, do you expect a fangirl of Girls Dead Monster to sound better than the predecessor? I have to say that the vocals in this album sounds marginally better than the previous, but it is not perfect.
Thousand Enemies
If we compare the instrumentals from Crow Song and Thousand Enemies, there are some obvious differences. Crow Song had more energy, but not so good vocals. In Thousand Enemies, we have better vocals, but lacks that energy shown in Crow Song. So, there is a tradeoff here: more energy but not so good vocals or good vocals but lack of energy. Pick your poison! Also, I found something wacky with the vocals midway of the song (around 3 minutes in) in the following:
Mayotta toki ni ha kokoro no chizu wo atashi ni misete hoshii
Sore nara yukisaki sugu wakaru kara
Jibun ja wakaranai dake
Something doesn’t sound right with these lines. It seems that LiSA’s vocals for those phases went out of tune or something… Overall, it is a good sounding song, but not nearly as rememberable as Crow Song, despite the not so good vocals.
Rain Song
Rain Song sounds like a JPop Rock song. Comparison to Alchemy, this song seems to be more polished since we don’t have stuff like vocals going out of range. Like with Listen!!, they seem to play it safe after the big disaster they have with the vocals on the first single. Not perfect, but a good listen.
Highest Life
I can’t say that the albums aren’t consistent as it follows the pattern from the last single. Highest Life is a ballad but unlike My Song, this song is not an acrostic. Highest Life is a good song, but has flaws. In some instances, LiSA seems to go out of range for a few seconds, but not like marina, which seems to get the worse of the out of range vocals.
Overall, LiSA’s vocals seem to be a big improvement over marina’s mediocre vocals, but that is saying too much about the album. Comparing the instrumentals to Crow Song, the former had a lot more energy and excitement, but if we had better vocals, it would have given a better result. That excitement was simply not present in Thousand Enemies, but in return, we had better sounding vocals for the most part.
Lastly, I don’t get this… Why assign dedicated singers to these insert songs instead of using the voice actors? I’m guessing they want a professional to do it, but come on… you have to give them a chance!
Verdict
7.7/10, Good ¶
I’m kind of torn over this since the first thing that I noticed is that none of these singers are really all that good. Professionals? Well, they are… sort of…. Their roots are in the Japanese indie music scene which can produce some good talent, except neither LiSA nor marina are it. LiSA is better though, but then again, the bar marina sets is so low that nearly anyone can surpass her.
.-= zzeroparticle´s last blog ..Sora no Woto Original Soundtrack – Review =-.
Not any worse, but I’m pretty sure that Yui-nyan’s voice actress, Eri Kitamura is capable of singing. It just blows my mind on why they would use singers from the indie music scene that don’t have nearly as good talent we want to hear.
The indie scene? Really? Seriously? *raises eyebrows*
My gripe with commercial entities is that they always try and ruin the scenes I’m trying to enter (in this case, Japanese indie music scene). Trying to pass off music as “indie” and “previously unknown” smacks of “milking the cash cow” for all its worth. Then again, the general audience aren’t going to bother with something this subtle, considering that they’re more interested in other things (like how to portray the girls in a hentai doujin etc.).
Indeed, I was curious enough to listen the two releases under the “Girls Dead Monster” moniker. Production-wise, the guitars and drums are toned down in certain parts of the song to so-called “showcase” the girls’ vocals. In my opinion, they have exposed the singers’ flaws, and as someone fairly familiar with the indie music scene, they can be grating on the ears up to a point.
My curiosity satiated, I do believe that Girls Dead Monster fills up a musical niche: the style of music is somewhat along the lines of punk-rock, and once you put in girls (who doesn’t like girls on guitars — except K-On! of course —), you can put a credible image of a girl band which are cookie-cutter, dime-a-dozen and generic, but at least they sound better than other pop girl bands without a musical instrument (to give a bad example, AKB48).