Idols

My Favorite Albums of 2018: Idol edition

I made three posts of my favorite albums of 2018 at the end of the year. I said I might do one more. This is that one more. I joined Alternative Idols Facebook group and found few interesting bands from there. Some of those bands released good albums year 2018. First I though I add music from them to this year’s list mentioning their 2018 album I liked. But then I found group which hasn’t released anything on 2019. So it made more sense to have this post.

In this context Idol means Japanese idol culture where someone creates group of teen girls to perform music and dance to it. Sometimes results are just what you expect. But because this is Japan and band doesn’t make the music results can be interesting. Group could be based on weird idea which somehow works. Like Necronomidol which performs Lovecraft themed songs.

Necronomidol: Voidhymn

I had Necronomidol in original list and I wrote how they were best thing at the moment. I thought I never see them live. But then they came to Oulu earlier this week where I saw them. They didn’t play this song there which was bit odd since it is their latest music video. They played songs from their latest ep Scions of the Blasted Heat. That ep could be on this year’s list if they release music videos from. Their Oulu show was amazing. Venue was packed which I didn’t expect and audience liked what they saw.

Broken by the Scream: An Alien’s Portrait

This is first of the new findings. Broken by the Scream is good example what Idol group can be when done correctly. It mixes death metal with pop music staying more on death metal side. It could be good I don’t understand the words. Death metal parts could only style but it works when I don’t know what they sing about and they go full to death metal. Those parts could be on normal death metal song. I like how they mix two styles of death metal vocals.

Maison Book Girl: yume

This is the one non-metal group of the list. For someone new to idol culture most idol groups tend to melt together. Music is so generic and music videos look similar. Maison Book Girl doesn’t have that problem. Everything they do sounds and looks like Maison Book Girl. I almost like to say they are Radiohead of idol groups. Both give similar vibes. Yume has weird sound experiments in between songs. I had originally different video for this but changed it one which is now here because it shows better experimental nature of Maison Book Girl.

YukueshirezuTsurezure: exFallen

I could say almost same of YukueshirezuTsurezure as I said Broke by the Scream. YukueshirezuTsurezure is more sophicated than Broken by the Scream and less death metal like. Their other songs are closer to Broken by the Scream than this. YukueshirezuTsurezure use screaming parts more creatively for the needs of the song. Like in this one where screams are limited to one part. exFallen is YukueshirezuTsurezure’s second album. First one is good too but in exFallen everything falls in correct place.

There will be more Japanese music in favorite albums of 2019 list. I wanted to put these here so I don’t have to figure out way to include these groups because they released really good albums 2018.