Claim~
OH LOL I DON'T EVEN NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS TO GIVE MY IMPRESSION. This is one of my favourite albums, thanks for giving me an excuse to listen to it AGAIN lmao. I'll do a better writeup afterwards mebbe
The Haul
Strange Chest x34
Eliminate x1
Nature Rune x1
Impression
Alright so as stated this album's been near the top of my favourites for about 10 years now. It was one of my first introductions to narrative/concept albums, but before that to 'storytelling albums' and 'storytelling through music'; ie, where there's concrete visions and actions being depicted sheerly through the music itself. It's overshadowed a bit by how explicit the narrative is and the fact the characters are often literally describing what they're doing, but it's the vocal inflections and instruments doing the heavy work of depicting the scene -- and they do an EXCRUCIATINGLY good job of it.
Like, kind of an outrageously good job of it, because there isn't a point in this album where I'm not getting a vivid image of what the character looks like, how they're moving, the setting, etc sheerly through the music and vocals. For that alone it's an obscenely good album that's kind of hard to put down the same way it's hard to put down a novel, because it basically is just a novel. The singers on this thing all knock it out of the park depicting their characters and the ones I know are also great musicians in their own right, who pretty obviously brought their strengths onto this thing in a way that mixed really well (looking mostly at Casey of The Dear Hunter and Aaron of mewithoutYou)
So with that being said the story is what this is all centred around/hinges on, because all the composition is in service to depicting that story, and the story...
It's kind of frustratingly good. It's cheesy, it's outrageously hokey at points and there's some pretty rough-around-the-edges lyrics or lines that are hard not to cringe at ('I'm THE SPIDER..... CRAWL INSIDE HER....' is still really awful to the point I'm not sure if I actually just love it for how awkward it is, and 'I can't do this/ BUT YOU MUUUuUUuuUUuUST PRINCEEEeEeeEESSS' is also still really funny lol) but it's counterbalanced by way more moments where it just gets everything right. The majesty of Ahrima and the lamps, the sneaky spiteful malevolence of the spider manipulating him, Toba's righteous fury, all of The Exit, the scuzziness of the Doctor, Pallis' condescending dark strictness, etc it's all extremely on point. So for every awkward beat there's at least two really superb ones, and there's still turns of phrase from this thing that have wormed their way into my head that keep emerging when I'm writing, so the lyrical imagery also sticks.
And the plot, you know, it looks simple. It kind of is really simple. Maybe the better word is straightforward. There's no tricks or flashy hooks, it's a conventional well-written story, mostly because it's so darn sweet and earnest in that convention. And the more you look at it the more it's like, wow, there's some pretty big stuff it's dealing with here actually, you know the good and evil and love as the meaning of life theological junk, that sticks like a glue beneath the hokey archetypes that gives it this persistent relevance. It's impressive it fit into what, an hour?, with as much lowkey complexity as it has. There isn't a missing or superfluous story beat on this thing, I don't think there's any point you could take out.
For that it's one of those albums that I think has been way more influential than people know or really realise. It's certainly been influential on my stuff honestly more than it has a right to but that's the breaks when something's just kind of good -_-
Really fun singalong album too.
Next: Masayoshi Takanaka - The Rainbow Goblins Youtube |
Spotify
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