”Passion and enthusiasm, walking on a thin thread”
This is a line from the fifth song, “Whiteout” on the new release by these highly influential Japanese musicians, 32 years after they emerged on the Metal-related underground scene. In my opinion, they manage to describe their music with this one-liner. It is like a program statement for their musical career and where they are now. And because of this, you never leave an album or a concert with the band untouched. The musicians capture the audience’s emotions and yearning, leaving some with a lump in their throats or a tear in their eye.
About two years ago the band released the remarkable EP Seimei and as I wrote back then I hoped it was a sign for a new release in a couple of years. And my wish for an amazing release came through. This new release is a victory for a band that has existed for so long. It is experience, surging, swelling, and full of the emotions we have come to know from the band that started as a Thrash/Hardcore band and has over the years transformed into one of the most influential bands on the Post-scene. It is fascinating that the East has come up with bands like envy, Mono, and Crows in the Rain to conquer the world with their take on Post-style music, ranging from Post-Hardcore to Post-Metal and everything in between. Few bands can make your chest swell like these bands.
On stage the band gives us it all. It is not only vocalist Tetsuya Fukagawa formidable presence on stage with his emotional conveyance of the lyrics that encaptures everyone. It is the way he is surrounded by soaring, cascading, and surging musical forces, by the guitars, bass, drums, and Fukagawa´s ever-present synths that embrace you during a musical journey few musicians are able to convey. On this album, as they have stated in the press release, they have composed songs they can play live. We who live near a place they will swing by to perform are in for something specials as these new songs are as magical as the songs on their previous albums, once in 2020 described by VoS head honcho Thorsten in 100 words like this like this. I should probably have done the same and fully covered what this album is about.
Eunoia opens with the somber “Piecemeal” with strumming guitars and a flow of dark synths and the vocalist reciting the lyrics as the music spreads to surround his voice: ”Stamping tinged handprints on the memory of childhood days / All cycles return to the beginning without a trace” (note: all lyrics are originally in Japanese, our English versions were given to us on request). The song ends in a burst that is the prelude to the surging opening of ”Imagination and Creation”. The guitars, bass, and synths swell in a common melodic theme and the musical fervor starts. It is mind-blowing how they capture your emotions immediately and keep you close to their burning yearnings throughout the album.
In this song, as in others, you get all the nuances of the vocalist’s skills so well inserted into the wall of sound the band conveys; it ranges from emotive reciting, hurried spoken words, dreamy singing, and hoarse screaming and singing. The music and the vocals are impressively fine-tuned to each other as the song cascades along its shifts and turns. It is underpinned, or rather led, by some powerful and yet sensitive drumming that in itself is a cascading crescendo. I must admit, had I not seen this band and drummer in a live performance, I would have thought that they had done some special effects on the drums and that it was not humanly possible to perform like this. But yes, this is something he can perform live, using the whole drum kit and sprinkling the music with the cymbals - driving the music forward with exasperating speed and diversity. You almost forget that there are swelling distorted guitars and haunting vocals: ”A flawless mechanism, hands clasped tight / Setting off quietly with a sound, looking back / I imagine a world without me / Breathing today in a world where you exist“
”The Night and the Void” sees the bass lay a strong foundation as the Tetsuya begins reciting the lines ”Waiting for tomorrow morning, listening to your voice / Swaying between reality and dreams” that suits the slow pace and atmosphere of the music surrounding him. There is a part within the song where they lure you into the belief of a crescendo that is not coming. It feels unfinished. But then the music tightens and is lifted with some captivating themes and a fast rhythm section alongside energetic recitals and there is the release with dense riffs, hoarse vocals and wonderful high-pitched guitars.
The fourth song has an imaginative title, ”Beyond the Raindrops”, with lyrics like “Finding raindrops piercing my skin / I gather over here, and even lies depend on single word / From, here we go again, from here / What should we shout?”. The music flows forward in a never-ending crescendo underlined by dreamy vocals with subtle shifts, forming a melody supported by enormous guitars. This song is so beautifully composed and performed that it will leave the audience breathless when performed live. And also when listened to on your headphones.
On ”Whiteout” it seems like the band wants to contradict the prolonged melodies and crescendos from the previous songs. The music opens with swirling guitars, stumbling drums, and hard-hitting bass. The song is fast, distorted, hurried, rumbling, and stumbling forward at a delightful, fast pace, closing into something like Post-Hardcore before an abrupt halt after the song´s lyrics end with “The unit of the two, grasping the light, double vision / Prayers embarrassingly sincere”.
There are three more songs, the discordant short ”Lingering Light” that fuses into ”Lingering Echoes” that takes the lead from the previous song and goes headstrong into a fast rendition to underpin the lyrics. The sonics gather and build a long crescendo surrounding the reciting echoing vocals, it seems going faster and faster driven by drums creating their crescendo lifting the guitars to new heights.
The albums close with ”January’s Dusk” which has a subtle opening with strumming guitar-work AND melancholic picking - the melody like a dance tune, it is light footed. When the drums and the bass kick in, it reinforces the impression of a light dance tune, with a line underlining this: ”Jump like you’re dancing, dance like you’re flying”. There is a sense of joyful carelessness to the music. Then there is the surge, the crescendos, echoing and tremolo guitars, low-end bass licks - a sweeping flow of music spread around the vocals and synths. It ends with a swell of yearning emotions and the words ”Teach me useless meanings / Everything will be okay if you strongly desire / The vestiges shimmer in the January sunset / A meaningless story being carved away”.
