COCYTUS

After long days clinging to my kitchen window looking for the postman to deliver Hora's new CD COCYTUS it finally arrived last night!

I got home late but made sure to listen to it before going to bed, eventhough it was 2am, so I figuered I should post something about it here too (since I'm not in Japan anymore to post about fun stuff like gigs...)

My happiness over receiving the new CD was soon to turn into disapointment when I noticed mine was cracked, again. So far I've got 3 cracked cases from Hora and to be honest i'm starting to wonder if he sometimes get cracked cases because usually sending 1 cd in a padded envelope works just fine, without damages on the case.

The 100 first to  preorder COCYTUS received a photo, and I'm pretty sure the photo is from Schwarz Stein's oneman in November! I really liked the picture because it was a close up, but would've been nice if Hora would've faced the camera.

COCYTUS consists of 10 new songs (see setlist at the bottom), and overall I think Hora's gone back to his old sound a bit. Since TYRANT, or even as early as on WISDOM, Hora's given us a more brutal and darker sound, but COCYTUS has more similarities with his older CD's.

I haven't had the time to listen to the full album more than 2 times, mostly because I usually want to repet my favorite tracks for a couple of hours until I feel satisfied enough to go through the rest again, but the 2 tracks to catch my ears are FROST and BABEL.

Hora announced earlier that this cd would contain deathvocals so I was hoping for several songs, unfortunately not. BABEL is the only song but also one with a darker sound. The intro sounds a lot to me like IGNITION, which also is an all time Hora favorite for me, so no complains. There's parts before the lyrics which made me think of MODULATE GOD ~DEFORMED~ aswell. Both IGNITION and MODULATE GOD in the same song, recipe for success.

The song FROST is just awesome, the song keeps developing as you listen which I think is really cool since a lot of Hora's songs, or this kind of music in general, can seem a bit repetative. Sometimes I feel like the repetative ones must've been made when Hora's been in a Schwarz Stein mode because they seem like they're made to fit lyrics.

Like I said though, I can clearly hear as if Hora used parts from older songs and developed those ideas and made them into new pieces on COCYTUS. The titletrack as an example reminds me a lot of Magnificent from domiNATE.

I miss the darker sound a bit, but I just love FROST and BABEL so much that I can't really care so much about that. I'm pretty sure the rest of the songs will grow on me when I have the time to give them a chance (FROST and BABEL is so awesome I can't stop listening to them).

Make sure to buy this cd, if you like Hora you need to support his work! (and he do ship everywhere)
I'm really happy Hora hasn't forgotten about his solowork just because they revived Schwarz Stein, and I hope for more cd's in the future (soon).

Let there be light~ 

CHAMBER OF FEAR

FROST

BABEL

COCYTUS

PRAY TO GOD -DOOM-

MY VENDETTA

UNDERWATER

WITHOUT WORDS

WINTER BLOOD

PRAY TO GOD -HEIR-

Velvet Eden at Ikebukuro CHOP

Last night was my final Velvet Eden gig!
I was cursing over how hard it was to find Chop last time, and was sort of happy when I got home thinking now I don't have to worry about that again... so of course I had to go back once more.

It went a bit faster this time, BUT I did get lost, again.

There were 5 bands playing, Rapunzel (female vocalist and male bassist with fairytale inspired lyrics to the regular kind of visual kei rock), Howling (regular rock band with members looking slightly visual kei, seemed to be older than average and their fans were too, I've never heard of them though), Benisemi (angura kei band, some songs were kind of interesting so I'm gonna check them out later), Kalavinka (barely saw anything of them since I left Chop) and of course Velvet Eden!

I was looking forward to seeing the new costumes and I've also heard that they played Sad Mask at their last gig in Osaka, so I assumed they'd play it here aswell. But no, the setlist was almost identical to the previous gigs I've been to, except that they played No15 this evening.

I stood on Dada's part of the stage, and since it was my last night I tried to focus and remember as much as possible (Velvet Eden and Dada plays a big part of my life, so this live was very important for me).
As soon as the live started I noticed Dada's fingers weren't doing that well, to be honest they were kind of broken. The middle finger on his left hand was almost completly off. Don't worry, I'm not talking about his actual fingers, but his claws. He mentioned it in his MC, and I think it happened during their last gig in Osaka in December.

One big thing was that Dada announced that their working on a new cd! I don't remember where, but I think I saw that the one man they'll have in May will be the release for their 3rd DVD, and now we have a cd to look forward to aswell. I'm really glad things are going so well for them.

The song which has impressed me the most is Toxic Queen, and I've been able to hear it all 3 times I've seen Velvet Eden live which has been completly awesome. But all good things come to an end.

Setlist
Intro

One Caress
Luzifer
Toxic Queen
MC
No15
Confession of mask

The bathroom at CHOP (just because I didn't have nything else to share this time...