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Fear, And Loathing In Las Vegas

All That We Have Now

Written by: PP on 05/12/2012 23:23:02

Leave it to the Japanese to show how it's done.

Forget all your preconceptions about 'neoncore', synths, autotune, and trance elements supplementing borderline idiotic breakdowns. Forget about one chord horrorfests with nonsensical or non-existing bridges in between the catchy choruses. Forget everything you've learned to hate from Attack Attack!, Abandon All Ships, Design The Skyline, etc.

With Fear, And Loathing In Las Vegas, I present you the only other good nintendocore band to have ever existed whose name isn't HORSE The Band. On sophomore album "All That We Have Now", the Japanese sextet seamlessly fuse together post-hardcore, trance, metalcore, and 8 bit melodies in wildly innovative and ridiculously original hybrid songs that haven't just been drenched in catchy melody, they are pretty much drowning in it all the way through. And it's all done in a tongue-in-cheek manner instead of the stupid ultra-seriousness of 'crabcore' bands like Attack Attack!

Take "Crossover", for instance. It features one of the most audaciously down-tuned and slowed down breakdowns you'll ever hear smack down in the middle of a song, especially when compared to the otherwise frantic tempo of the song and its overall instrumental prowess, groovy guitars, et cetera. It's a very transparent joke-on-purpose, and that's why it works here and doesn't work on similar releases by bands like Abandon All Ships.

You can't help but smile when you hear the shameless vocoder and autotune that characterizes every single clean vocal passage on the record. The band is very up front about using it, and don't try to use production tricks to hide it, instead utilizing it as a fantastic texture alongside the 8 bit melodies and trancecore sections that fly by in ecstatic moods. There's an overload on pretty much everything on the record, whether it's the synths, the high-pitched screaming, the lower end growls, the humongous breakdowns (which are used sparingly, though, I might add), and the crazy electronics that sound like they're directly out of the original Nintendo games. There's a song on here that made me think that I was playing Mega Man again for a while.

Did I mention there's an overload on speed as well? Every song is pedal to the floor dance punk style, which helps boost the record's high-on-life/fun times attitude to ridiculous heights. Even electronically modified pig squeals aren't about to break this party down, that's for sure, and that's because there's just so much variety in terms of the synths on this record.

I'll guarantee you this: you won't have heard synths this catchy since HORSE The Band. Or a band so deeply vested in the electronic post-hardcore genre that they avoid sounding pretentious and fake almost as a natural consequence of their sheer enthusiasm and happy-go-lucky approach to the genre. This isn't some stupid metalcore breakdown bullshit, guys, this is like Anime through a metal filter.

Download: Acceleration, Crossover, In The End The Choice Is All Yours
For the fans of: HORSE The Band, Blessed By A Broken Heart, I Set My Friends On Fire, Karate High School, :)
Listen: Facebook

Release date 08.08.2012
Self-Released