“Obstacle Progress” – 2:51
“Meisai” (迷彩) – 5:03
“Mad-Roid” – 3:48
“Confusion” – 3:23
“Under the Chaos” – 4:11
“Children of Despair” – 3:48
“Silent Eve” (サイレントイヴ) – 4:50
“Psycho Culture” (サイコカルチャー) – 4:08
“Grudge of Sorrow” – 4:08
“M.F.P(Malicious Female Pigs)” – 3:34
“Mousou hi Gyaku Seiheiki” (妄想被虐性癖) – 4:16
“A Holy Terrors” – 4:01
“Empty Room” – 4:23
“Barking the Enemy” – 3:29
“Sayonara no Hate” (サヨナラの果て) – 5:41
It’s official. After a month of listening to their work, I have fallen in love with this band. Maybe it’s the similarity to Dir en grey (I’m a huge fanboy) that they exhibit (clearly heard in the Ice Romancer single) or the style of heavy metal that they play. I don’t know, but they’ve just been on repeat on my iPod for months. I just keep scrolling back to THIS PARTICULAR ALBUM, and I haven’t even noticed it until now. Oh, and before I continue, this is a compilation album, so it’s a great way to get to know the style of this band, which is, er, heavy.
There are a few tracks that I MUST acknowledge. Obstacle Progress has to be one of my favorite heavy metal openers of all time. People say it sounds just like ‘Kodoku ni Shisu, Yueni Kodoku’ (Diru) but it’s only because the bass is tuned the same. I just listened to the two of them and although I see similarities, it isn’t as blatant of a copy as Enishi (Giru) and Kodou (Diru). Anyway, the song starts out slow, ends slow with the same bass carrying it along, and is hard all through the middle. It’s worth a listen.
I already covered Meisai but I’ll do it again. If the guitars were awesome but stale, the lyrics would be stale but awesome. It’s nothing new that we haven’t heard before, but it’s still emotional and from the heart. Generic =/= bad in my book. Generic can equal bad, but generic is just generic. This song is…generic but a good kind of generic. It’s not the mass-produced boy band pop rock depressing kind of music nor is it the bathroom metal trash of a lot of American metal. It’s somewhere in the middle and doesn’t associate itself with either.
I’ve also covered MAD-ROID (boy do I have my work cut out for me =P) but I’ll cap it again. Putting the lame title to the side, MAD-ROID actually sounds pretty cool. Starting with a scream of epic vibrato proportions and having some of the sexiest singing in the chorus that I’ve heard from Sadie, this song is definitely worth a listen. Stop reading this and go listen.
under the chaos is another track that’s hard and strong, but deserves a listen. It seemed a little all over the place for me at the beginning but Mao’s spastic vocals and emotion kept me through until I could sense the greatness in the song. This was the latest song I got into so I guess I would jot it down here for a quick mention.
GRUDGE OF SORROW is a great track to headbang to. The bass is strong but once again it falls into the Meisai trap. Somehow, it manages to claw it’s way out of genericness with that little riff and asserts itself as a badass song. I can’t tell you much more because the growling and the singing are pretty similar to CHILDREN OF DESPAIR, which is also another great song to headbang to. The former is only slightly lighter but it doesn’t let up on the action. It starts out with some fast guitar strumming and bass in the background before Mao roars and the song kicks into high gear. He does a little bark and call thing in DESPAIR that caught my attention, which is a common thing in rock but the way he uses his voice creeps me out and is awesome at the same time. Both songs are similar in their own ways but kick a ton of ass. Sadie can pull the same formula out of their ass twice and make it work, and that’s just friggin cool.
The one song that got me into them in the first place was M.F.P. This song is just SEXY. The falsetto, the growling, the little interlude with the guitars, the classic way Mao ends his singing with the growling, the step up technique they use to end the song. This is where I began and I remain happy that I did. Try it out. There’s more singing on this track than on some of the other, harder tracks, so this is a better place to begin than say, under the chaos.
M.F.P.
The last tracks I’ll mention are a holy terrors and Empty Room. a holy terrors is a tricky beast because it doesn’t know whether it wants to be hard or soft. The beginning starts off hard but then it goes all soft on you. The hard parts have some of the most bizarre and interesting vocals on this CD, and it’s what makes this song stand out for me. Empty Room dragged me in with that guitar riff at the beginning. I SWORE that I heard it somewhere before and that I loved it the first time, and I loved it in this song. That riff just made it for me, and the rest of the song doesn’t fall into obscurity. This song is also similar to M.F.P. in that it has lighter vocals but it can still manage to stay hard. The lighter parts are accompanied by some acoustic, and I’m a sucker for acoustic in all the right places. The bass solo at the middle with the little drum part is also just sexy. Aki needs more credit guys, and in a song that doesn’t suck like Sexual Affection.
Empty Room
This album also has a few bummers. Silent Eve and Psycho Culture fail to keep my attention, and confusion is aptly titled. Mousou hi Gyaku Seiheiki is also too repititive by even this band’s standards and could have used more work. It just feels shoved onto the album without any refinement.
All in all, -Undead13 + 2- is a solid album and is anyone who is interested in Heavy Metal should check this out.
Rating: 
P.S.: I’m running on empty fumes after two days of no sleep and a sprained leg, so I’m pffft at this moment. I just had to write about this album though so forgive me for a rather lackluster review. I’ll make it up when I get some z’s.
~ 世愁歌
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