Album Review: SADS - The Rose God Gave Me

Since we had an artist spotlight on the punk band The Stalin this week, courtesy of R.Y.O, I thought I'd do a review of one of my absolute favorite albums today. Though Sads are technically classified as visual kei, and Kiyoharu is one of the pioneers of the now-iconic 90s Nagoya-kei sound, most people who have heard this album thought it was pure punk from around 1985... Mind, these were some of the vets of the punk scene, not a musically oblivious 8th grader. The Rose God Gave Me is an artistic triumph, and brilliantly put together. From the CD cover to each page, to the themes of the tracks, Sads aim to tell a story with each album, but still to leave you wondering, what story was it that you heard.

ALBUM REVIEW - MAXIMUM THE HORMONE - TSUME,TSUME,TSUME/F (Single)

Maximum the Hormone, no idea what it means, but it sounds amazing and that's all that matters. MTH mix rock, metal, pop, punk and hip hop and....even a little reggae into a perfect storm of very heavy and very catchy songs. MTH consist of Maximum the Ryo on clean vocals i.e. singing and guitar, Nao on drums and backing vocals, Daisuke sings, screams and raps and Ue-Chan plays bass and sings backing vocals as well. They're most famous outside of Japan for their songs being used in the Death Note anime.

ALBUM REVIEW - Taika - Ganmen Chakuchi (CD & DVD)

When most people think of beatbox they think of one of those huge boombox's from the 90's that people would carry around, not the growing art of vocal percussion. Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. Vocal percussion in some way has been around since at least 2,000 years ago with Bol in India and Kouji in China. Anyway enough of the history lesson, let's get back to the matter at hand.