殯――死へ耽る想いは戮辱すら喰らい、彼方の生を愛する為に命を讃える――。 Review

Band	Imperial Circus Dead Decadence
Album	殯――死へ耽る想いは戮辱すら喰らい、彼方の生を愛する為に命を讃える――。
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	June 1, 2022
Genres	Symphonic Power Metal, Melodic Death Metal
Labels	Radtone Music
Length	1:12:05
Ranked	#32 for 2022 , #2,053 all-time

Reviewer :  Cosmicism         Rating :  90 / 100

I feel a little guilty not giving this one a perfect or 95/100 because it's so apparent that tons & tons of hard work goes into making this style of music. However, I enjoy it just a tiny bet less than my perfect 100s for this year, like Blut aus Nord, Starer, and Andromida. That'll be my justification.

Stylistically, this is heavy heavy heavy, and they make a point of weaving the symphonic element into the song as a whole, but then sometimes as a break from the metal, so there's no getting in a rut with this songwriting. There's that special something about singing in Japanese that gives this album that Japanese sound you might be familiar with. The singers are all amazing too; they use their native language creatively, and they're clearly well trained vocal pros. If you're having misgivings because you're familiar with the sounds of totally commercial and cringeworthy Japanese music, don't have any misgivings about this album. It's full of passion, energy, and being genuine. It's not underground, though. Check out the music video for track 4. It's obvious their label is investing a lot in them.

One more note. Even starting with the album title, it's obvious these guys are into using Japanese in a very ancient, classic, literary way with terminology unknown to native speakers and sentence formation in a high fancy register. Not only do these guys practice their brains out to achieve this kind of sound, they're probably hitting the books. All in all, super impressive.