YJM's of Japan

Japan has huge amount of guitarist many of them playing in cover bands. Some of them are awesome players and some of them making great covers and  makes original music that could be their idols own music. YJM is the guitar hero today. He is still big name in Japans since I have heard that there is dedicated rock bar for only to him. ^_^.

There are many YJM styli or neoclassical guitarist in Japan. On really good is Takayoshi Ohmura who I have already introduced here. But first to link today is a great fun guitarist I met at Mixi. Angchan plays sometimes live at ustream and also many videos on youtube. He also plays in YJM cover band Seventh Sign.

This is one of my favourite YJM covered by Angchan




And another artist introduced today is Katsu Ohta better known as a guitarist of Ark Storm. This is original music but its more YJM than YJM himself IMO

BSC@ A-KON

BSC topic is perfect for today when they left the soil of Japan to fly to USA A-KON 2011. They released few days ago a new song from their new album at myspace. But as I though someone had already uploaded it into youtube.

Marchen Station

Following Mixi 'Ashiato' brought me to the band Marchen Station. Its pure xa-metal 'kusa metaru'. Singer Leo Figaro is very good and maybe due to that he is also involved in some other bands/projects. Songs are pure xa-metal so you get what you expect. Excellent high speed guitar playing and orchestrations and melodic choruses.

Darkness Rose EP review

I heard about Darkness  Rose after the founding member Erica choose follow her own path from the band Sincerity Green. After getting the band going on they gave now released a debut EP. And I'm thankful that Erica was kind to send me a one so doing a review is the least I can do for them.

Darkness rose is five piece band from Tokyo playing symphonic gothic metal with some Finnish taste in it. I thought they uses support drummer in l their gigs but it was old information. They have got a drummer recently. For more inormation check their official site: www.darknessrose.com and listen to their music!

And the review itself.

EP starts with intro which raises the atmosphere to the first full song. At this part its clear that the sound quality is good. Balance between the instruments is mixed well and I like the way of using synths during the all songs.

Songs have dynamics in different parts. It is a sign of good songwriting and arrangement skills. So I'm sure that Darkness Rose members have quite much experience from the other bands before making this recording.

Female singing is done well and really well if compared to many bands in Japan.  Because there are some really bad ones even on the official recordings where even autotune/melodyne doesn't save the performance. But coming back to the topic  It would be nice to hear some male vocals on the next recording, may be in some choruses. It would bring the band to the next level. But that is only my wish and not a negative comment.

Highlight of the EP  fro me is the 4th track 'Dying Days' which begins with really cool melody continuing into the verse that has nice rythmic riffing. Rest of the song is as good so its very enjoyable. 

EP ends with a dramatic song which gives a promise that we'll here more about this band later. I think fans of Within Temptation and similar female fronted bands would spin this release quite often in their mp3 players. And I have to mention that Darkness Rose doesn't sound like WT but it tells that I'm not an expert in this genre.


EP:
Darkness Rose- s/t

Song list:
01. intro
02. The Prison Wall
03. Army Brain
04. Dying Day
05. Nobody Warms

Thank you for reading my first EP/CD review ever. It'd be cool to get some comment if you want to get more of this kind of posts or any other comments about this blog. I'd like to kno if you would like to see just new pv's or e-mail interviews or just this same thing I've been doing halfly motivated?

Error

This is Osaka based core band playing happy music. Just another band showing high quality of the metal scene in Japan.


More info from their official site: www.errorsite.jp



And if you haven't yet heard about BSC's next album'ε psilon' its release day is 15th June 2011 and here is the small version of the album artwork.

Jui & Diabolos Radio

Jui plays hard rock and is really cool guy and rocking hard in the indie scene.

I don't know how long he has involved in the Jrock scene but I saw him playing live first time  in 1993! But he is like a senpai for me since I know him personally. Even its ages we have met face to face.




This is his older music, really happy song that makes me alwasy smile.

My Music Life

404NOT FOUND has released a new single.  Sounds quite mainstream me but because the quality is top notch its only a good thing. Good happy song to the spring!