Licensed by CMX originally, then Viz Media (omnibus edition).
By day, Kusakabe Maron is an ordinary high-school girl with more than her share of problems. But by night, she is Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne, the reincarnation of Jeanne d'Arc, also known as Joan of Arc. Her mission: to hunt down demon-possessed paintings and exorcise the evil spirits! Too bad accomplishing this mission puts her into conflict with the authorities, who view her as a mysterious stranger vandalizing works of art. With only the help of angel-in-training Finn, she must survive high school during the day and battle evil by night!
This album is just disappointing, honestly. I was legitimately excited when I saw I got some Finnish prog rock- rock is my genre! And then I looked it up, saw it was a concept album with a whole story attached, c'mon! And then; then! I start up the first song, listen to its weird intro and the opening sick-ass riff and I'm hype.
An hour and the rest of the album later… eehhhh. I don't know if it's just me, but for a lot of music, and especially certain areas of rock, I love the instrumental bits, the riffs, the licks, all that, but the moment someone starts singing the song immediately takes a nosedive for the boring. This album has that, to a degree, but the real problem is the storytelling. Nearly every single song has a cool riff or musically interesting instrumental bits but then half or more of it's duration is dedicated to this dude just singing me some part of the story in Finnish. The vocal line isn't interesting. The instruments are doing nothing. He's just talk-singing about his novel in album form for half of it. It's a real shame because I can tell the band is genuinely talented too, there are parts where the vocalist sings surprisingly fast or impressively low, there's really good instrumental stuff in there, and some parts where both actually harmonize into something cool, but it's never sustained long enough to really have an impact. It doesn't help that this album is very erratic and changes the vibes mid-song a lot; not a flaw on its own but it just exacerbates this issue.
Maybe if I understood what he was saying, it'd be better, but I have my doubts. I've heard really effective storytelling through an album before ('PLINE' by Vesuve and especially 'The Uncanny Valley' by Perturbator are some examples that come to my mind) but neither of them involve this long-winded epic-poetry style of storytelling. I just don't feel like it plays to the strengths of the format.
Other thoughts: There is a bit in the latter half of track 4, 'Vallan Hamut,' which is the most prominent exception to the above problem. It seems to harken back to CMX's apparent punk roots and is pretty fun, though it does stick out a lot. The first 1:15 of 'Quanta' is good as well; I enjoy the transition from the post-rock-y first minute to the more grunge-esque bit.
Also, apparently this album is supposed to be seamless, like it's all one song; that's bullshit. At best they've cut off the previous song early and tacked what they cut off onto the next song (or the reverse) so the sudden transition from one song to the next doesn't sync up with Spotify. If you were listening to this physically it'd be impossible to tell they were supposed to transition seamlessly.
Finally, I think the riff from the beginning of the album coming back occasionally is cute. It's a good one, too; I see why they picked it to be the main motif of the album.
In today’s shop update we have some miscellaneous manga titles
these and over 200 more will be posted in the upcoming week! as some of you may know I run a small mail order online shop of over 10,000 small press & alternative comics (No Marvel or DC here!) it isn't up quite yet but I wanted to start sharing some of the stock updates with you all as I am still shipping all over the US & Canada (orders over $100 get free shipping) so, if you'd like a list of what we have (we update the list every week) just ask and I can e-mail it to you
Top 10 cổ phiếu tăng/giảm mạnh nhất tuần: Sở hữu cổ phiếu tăng hơn gấp đôi trong tuần đầy biến động
Bài viết mới nhất: Top 10 cổ phiếu tăng/giảm mạnh nhất tuần: Sở hữu cổ phiếu tăng hơn gấp đôi trong tuần đầy biến động
(ĐTCK) Thị trường mang tuần giao dịch đầy biến động liên quan tới nhóm FLC, cũng như thông tin kỷ luật những lãnh đạo của ngành chứng khoán, nhiều cổ phiếu lao dốc mạnh, nhưng vẫn mang cổ phiếu tăng dựng đứng với mức tăng hơn gấp 2 lần. Kết thúc tuần giao dịch, VN-Index tăng …