excuse me… do u know that RYO did everything on VIRGE… so basically without RYO virge wasnt nothing! So Ryo has his own identity, regardless of which band he was in, even in this new band.
I don’t dislike the song, and i’m certainly happy to see all these guys and their music returning, but i hope the songwriting changes significantlyyyy, the mixing too.
Ashmaze was a tight-knit and closely paired set of harmonic and compositional choices imho that depend on their vocalist’s voice and how he uses it to be great.
His voice was smooth, thin, restrained, and made smaller melodic movements. The rototoms were a fantastic foil for this more muted (by vkei standards…) voice bc they injected huge obvious melodies into the drums as the vocalist took a more rhythmic role. The guitars were a fresh mix i’ve not heard used much before of single-coil jangle + gallop delay with obvious digital effects in post. It’s a lot going on rhythmically and harmonically, but is helped by the restraint and simplicity of their vocalist’s choices in singing style & melody writing.
By comparison, Ryo’s voice is saccharine, maybe one of the most so in the scene lately. He’s big, showy, dramatic - large cadences of wide movement. His voice is front and center almost always, and he takes over so much of the character of the song that people just above said “it just sounds like Virge”, and i totally get why. The rototoms, i love to hear them in Nirvana but here it’s just a bit much, or maybe not enough space was opened for them in the mix. Toms would have worked fine…
And i don’t exactly get to hear as much of the guitars as i’d want, or not with the specificity that i’d want.
To be super clear, i love Ashmaze and Virge both a lot - these two were near the top of “bands who represent modern vkei done well” for me! I don’t wanna criticize the concept of this mashup - but i think every new song with a new pairing of musicians can use a bit of experimentation to find their footing.
And after having explained to friends so many times by now what it is about Ashmaze and Virge that stands out to me (and i want to imitate in my own projects…) i feel decently equipped to toss out my thoughts on how this sound is interacting w/ the member change
Anyway Ashmaze vocalist, i forget your name but please find another band
Whether or not it’s full of ex-Virge instrumentalists
Souma forming another new band with the rest of Virge would be quite funny. At least we would have 2 disbandments and two 2 new band and wouldn’t loose anything.
Anyway I feel bad for him. His band broke up with him because they fell in love with a new vocalist