MERGING MOON
Kamikakushi
(self-financed)
56:35min

This one is an interesting release even though it might maybe just appeal to a small part of our readers. Music from the land of the rising sun is often quite extraordinary and doesn’t follow the usual stereotypes we are used to be familiar with. MERGING MOON has its headquarters in Tokyo and made its first steps in 2010. Already one year after the enitity was brought to life the band came up with their debut called "Inauguration Of The Black Sun" which was able to built up a solid fanbase for them. "Kamikakushi" is now available since May 2013 and marks a huge step forward for these Nippon Metalheads. This eleven tracker can’t be categorized to a certain style as MERGING MOON delivers their own unique dynamic brand of extreme Metal on this album. They manage to merge different elements from modern melodic Death Metal (the emphasis), a little bit Thrash, Metalcore, J-Rock (?? – Frank) and Gothic  / Electonic sounds to a very interesting alloy. What sounds quite confusing in the beginning unfolds its real beauty after a few spins. Their tunes are brutal and gentle, heavy and soft, sophistiacted and simple, chaotic and structured at the same time. The heavy twin guitars create a wall of riffs, interrupted by magnificent lead guitar parts. The drumming is powerful with interesting fills while the omnipresent keyboards create differents atmospheres and moods (may it be orchestral, classic-styled or even strange). The vocal performance follows the path of the songwriting which means that it comes up with a lot of variety as well. The range goes form deep grunts to a grim voice, from an aggressive to a clear style of singing up to an enchanting female voice – all done by front woman U (Yu Umehara) except for some support from Tatsuya with some choruses / backing vocals. Everything is blend together in a perfect manner by young and talented musicians. The presentation of the album is very professional and comes up with an excellent sound, good artwork and lyrics about Japanese culture and society related topics. Open-minded Metalheads who enjoy and dare to break new grounds and are always in search for interesting, unorthodox stuff should check this squad out. MERGING MOON deserved it for sure. www.mergingmoon.com

Michael Oelschlegel

Michael Oelschlegel

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