Last week something happened to me. An innocuous GAF
thread caught my attention.Included in this thread was a single link and an image of a group of asian women in costumes. Going in I figured this was likely some sort of joke video. I've seen my fair share of silly ass japanese music videos so I blindly clicked.
Pretty quickly I knew something was off here. You have the group of asian women in cliched attire, but there's a full band set. Drums, guitar, bass, keyboard. In addition, the tone isn't right. Everything seems to be played as a joke so far, the clothes, the way the lead singer is talking, the sound effects, the audience. Then the camera cuts to a completely different set with a completely different look and feel. Then the lead singer picks up the mic.
It's at this moment I'm completely taken aback. The first 10 seconds of the song reveal the true nature of what's going on here. This is
Power Metal.
It's not traditional Power Metal, by any means. There's clearly many aspects of J-Pop mixed in but for the most part, this is Power Metal. And it's not half bad.
The journey begins there. Over the last week I've listened to pretty much nothing but this bands album. The band is called
DOLL$BOXX. My last.fm page, which tracks music I listen to from my car, shows 87 listens in the last 7 days. At first I had a hard time listening to this band. You see I' fairly narrow minded in my musical taste. For the most part really don't like many other genres, but I will admit purposefully will not listen to something if I feel it isn't the kind of music I generally would listen to. It took a lot of willpower to get over that and just listen to this. After a week I've grown to really
really enjoy this album. It's got good melodies, it's mad catchy, the lead singer is impressive, the drummer chick is really talented (she does backing vocals). There's talent all around in this band. I originally was not sure if I liked it for the novelty or the gimmick. I figured I would get bored after a few days. But that didn't happen, instead I grew to appreciate it more and I thing I genuinely like it.
One thing that I was surprised is that the track that got me into the band ended up not even being my favorite track on the album. These are:
Now let's take a moment. I've done a bit of research on this band. I've found that it's a "supergroup" of sorts. The drummer, bassist, guitarist, and keyboardist are all from another band called
Gacharic Spin. The lead singer is from a band called
Light Bringer.
Light Bringer appears to be a more traditional POWER METAL band.
I've listened to two albums from them, Midnight Circus and Scenes from Infinity. Both are pretty good as well. The singer manages to pull off a lot of impressive soaring vocals. The melodies aren't as catchy but there's plenty of driving double bass and the guitar work is just as wanky as you expect.
Gacharic Spin is a bit different. They appear to only have one full album, Delicious. They look to be a more modern rock band with a lot of J-POP influences.
Listening to their album, there's definitely tracks on it that I straight up don't like. These tracks typically devolve into annoying pop bullshit with synth beats, or electronic stuff... I can't explain it tbh. The good stuff are the ones that sway more closer to the rock side of things. You got a focus on the actual instruments and the singer. I was surprised because the drummer, Hana, is the lead singer and she pulls of some impressive vocals. In some aspects I prefer her to the singer that leads DOLL$BOXX/Light Bringer.
When you look at both of these bands separately and then look at the band created when they combine, you can clearly see what elements they pulled from both. You have the general tone and emphasis on power vocals and the
Metal influence from Light Bringer. From Gacharic Spin you have the strong melodies and catchy lyrics. Together they make a fairly strong combination.
So there you have it. This has been my week. I'm not sure where I'll go from here. I'm not sure if I'll get into any other bands. I don't even know how to properly find more bands
like these. It's the specific ingredients that I'm enjoying and I don't think I would enjoy anything else.
If you have any recommendations please by all means.
Thanks for reading if you did.