X-Japan

Pseudo-progressive Japanese hair metal band that was originally known as "X" in their homeland, but changed their name to avoid confusion with another band that I can't recall the name of. :)

"Art of Life"

  1. "Art of Life" (29:00)

This monster of a song was sent to me on CDR from an X-Japan fanatic, unfortunately the song was ripped from mp3 and had a few annoying artifacts, so I had to hunt down an official copy from eBay (took about six months, this sucker's pretty damn rare.) As always, I'm a sucker for super-long songs, but this one is especially brilliant! The first half is all fast metal with a galloping, Iron Maiden-like beat; the second half is one massive piano solo, with the keys pounded away in dissonant, atonal chords. (Methinks the keyboard player fancies himself an oriental Keith Emerson? Nah, that's not even a fair comparison...) Great song, worth hunting down if you're into massively long songs like me.

"X-Japan" (2CDR compilation; mp3 source)

    disc one:
  1. "Rusty Nail" (5:28)
  2. "Scars" (5:05)
  3. "20th Century Boy"--live (2:53)
  4. "Eyes of Venus" (6:48)
  5. "Genkai Horetsu" (4:42)
  6. "Drain" (3:28)
  7. "Good Bye" (3:57)
  8. "Moonlight Sonata"--instrumental (2:37)
  9. "Orgasm" (2:47)
  10. "Phantom of Guilt" (5:18)
  11. "Pink Spider" (3:43)
  12. "Longing" (4:57)
    disc two:
  1. "I'll Kill You" (3:26)
  2. "Easy Fight Rambling" (4:42)
  3. "Love Replica"--instrumental (4:34)
  4. "Blue Blood" (5:03)
  5. "Rose of Pain" (11:48)
  6. "Vanishing Love" (6:03)
  7. "Alive" (8:25)
  8. "Crucify My Love" (4:36)
  9. "White Poem" (3:18)
  10. "Sadistic Desire" (6:02)
  11. "Hana" (4:39)
  12. "Dahlia" (7:57)

This CDR collection was sent to me by the same guy who turned me on to Art of Life, above. Quite a vast spectrum of music, mostly fast-paced J-rock but also running the gamut from industrial, punk, grunge, new wave, and even a Ringo Starr impersonation in "Good Bye" (I was surprised, in fact, to find out that all these songs were by the same band!) At the far end of the spectrum is "White Poem", a moody, trance-like, keyboard-driven tune which is easily my favorite on the collection -- "Love Replica" is also reminiscent of early Scorpions, a paganisitic instrumental with samples of female voices speaking French (I remember the Scorps doing a song exactly like that, though I forget which one it is at the moment...) The nearly 12-minute "Rose of Pain" is another highlight.

The downside...and it's a major one...is that most of these songs were culled from mp3 sources, and thus the whole collection is filled with massive distortion, artifacts, dropouts, and at least one song ("Moonlight Sonata", which I think is mis-titled) that gets cut off in the middle. A few songs on disc one, in particular, are virtually unlistenable! What's the deal, are my standards simply too high? (Ha, like nobody's figured that out yet...) Oh well, I guess this music is certainly worth tracking down on official CDs -- God only knows where to find them, however.

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