My Rating: 62/100 Best song: Karma
And let's start with the fact that I don't quite understand how the album concept and its name are connected? No, I know Japanese - I have heard many familiar words in lyrics. But I still don't understand. Is the word “Monster” just a beautiful word inserted in the “title” for a psychological effect or something more? The album does not give a clear answer to this question.
Album structure looks like this: something like hard-n-heavy with a pop drum pattern and sections on clean (1 track), true hard-n-heavy (2 track), something in between blues-rock and hard-n-heavy with “walking” bass line (3 track), something very rhythmic (4 track), something very melodic (5 track), something like hard-n-heavy with a blast beat (6 track), song with a very familiar riff (7 track) and a very powerful last track (8 track). As for the structure of the album, then everything looks interesting and you want to listen to it. I especially liked the idea of inserting a powerful song at the end - this way the album leaves a pleasant aftertaste.
However, with the implementation shades is not so simple. It seems that there was originally some kind of lyric under which the instrumental was later made. Moreover, it was made by some very compromise way, because of which some of the charm was lost. Only in track 6, this feeling disappears. I heard something similar in Rami (past vocalist of Aldious) in her newest (at this moment) solo album: it gave the impression of epic ideas about vocal and instrumental parts, but when faced with reality, the ideas were cut and pasted as it came out. In this album, you can hear something similar, although this composer does not act so radically. However, I tend to see this as a negative color, since with good compositional work there are no such sensations. Also noteworthy are very familiar riffs - the feeling of déjà vu torments the listener for three tracks.
Now, about vocalist. The vocalist is good. Voice is very good - the talent is felt through the headphones. Also of note is a rather large variety of vocal parts.
Instrumental parts - there is nothing special to write here. Perhaps one of few albums in which I am not particularly ready to talk about instrumentalists. You can discuss the relative diversity for a long time, but here it's difficult to find something interesting. The only thing that can be distinguished is a guitarist who performs both “something bluesy” and hard riffs. Bassist also wants to highlight - he has a very diverse parts. Drummer is cool too. The only awkward moment - I don't like pop patterns in the first track.
I was not surprised when I learned that this album is the first serious work of this artist. Because here the composer acts within patterns that have already been heard many times. Yes, this album gives the listener exactly what they want to hear, but it does not contain anything special. Well, album is good and there is hope for future progress.
