Makes sense yea he dont wanna let down the fans. We can only hope he recovers
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Great point, think they’d make a shit ton of money fully reuniting as despa and having other members share vocal duties or moving around the vocal parts that hizumi cant sing. That said if he cant sing like 80% of what he used to then its prob useless lol
Others band members cannot sing or scream. Karyu always been doing lipsyncing backing vocal in D’espairsray and Angelo. Maybe they inject 30 % of the live voice he really put out. It’s for the show.
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It’s not a direct criticism or response to the point that you brought up, but I’ve been on an early D’espairsRay binge lately and for the first time I’m realizing just how much risky shit he did back in the early days. If you were to ask about who were the early VK banshee howlers, you’d have to throw him in the mix.
Every single HEIL here for starters
The transition out of the chorus is Hizumi
Almost all the harsh vocals. Also undecided if 2:17 in particular is a harmonic or Hizumi squealing, especially since it doesn’t pop up the first time
This bit I started the vid at
The final roar
There’s probably more but there’s enough here to rest my case.
I don’t have the time to source the interview now, but it went over (in detail) how Hizumi first came to understand his condition. Paraphrasing here (possibly incorrectly), but he caught an illness and forced himself to sing through it thinking that it would pass but it left lasting damage. I believe it was partially paralyzed vocal cords, but I could be wrong so sources are welcome! This time period coincided with the MIRROR tour. He said he was in denial about this, fell into depression, and didn’t disclose the issue to his band mates right away. Eventually he resolved to keep going and at some point told the others. My quick proof is this snippet of their live schedule in 2007/2008, which while incomplete shows they went on a near complete five month pause, playing only four shows before May 2008.
May 2008 was the release of their single BRILLIANT, the noticeable shift in direction, and I also remember it being branded as a “comeback”. Didn’t quite get it at the time but now it makes sense. This is a noticeably unusual pause for them because they were known for being a band that played a lot of lives. There are years where they play a venue at least once a month. This pause was the longest one up to that point. They had to have played almost 100 shows by then because some may not be recorded. How many lives did he do risky shit? How much damage was accumulated before the illness did the rest?
Banshee squealers be warned, that shit comes at a price.
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their easier money is in enka solo projects, my dear.
if they saw any reason in continuing with the legacy sound they’d hire an extra member, a percussionist or something, and came back as +d’epressive rays+ under different management, or whatever - the interest in reuniting does not seem to be there.
The funniest thing they did was swapping instruments, more bands should to this
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I wonder how much of these old songs they had on their setlists at the time? Theres not much live footage of these old songs from their DVDs (except tatoeba). I think even some of the screechers from coilset were prob enough to do it.
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It was an interview in rock and read around 2011 but wasnt in mirror his voice started to deteriorate, but during the recording of redeemer. If you watch spiral staircase you’ll see he was in good conditions, we also have that show in yokohama blitz from december 2007 and taste of chaos in 2008 and he sounded really good, first time we could see his voice was not the same was in 2009 dvd closer to ideal.
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I guess one of the best screams in VK came at a cost.
I think you sum up well