Review Summary: In which Nightmare display the oh so clear difference between experimentation and "look at me! I'm cool now! Buy me!" SCUMS is the sound of a band exchanging fame with artistic identity.
It’s painful to watch a band sell out; when a band stops making music because they enjoy it and start making it to sell a product. You can probably argue that Nightmare have done it in the past with their somewhat prolific involvement with the anime industry. But, at least then they sounded like they actually put some blood, sweat and tears into what they did. Even though those particular songs were commissioned for TV, they still sounded like Nightmare when they played those songs.
What Nightmare did with their self-titled album, and what they have continued with SCUMS, is not this same thing. The music that Nightmare have done here sounds forced, gimmicky and market ready. While I disagree completely that making intentionally accessible music is a bad thing, there is an art to it. Take for example what Mastodon did with Once More ‘Round the Sun or what Damon Albarn does with Gorillaz. Both of these bands, though completely unrelated, intentionally take on a commercial sound for their respective releases. However these particular projects are also honest to the artists, in that they don’t feel like the artists have had to sacrifice anything to achieve the sound that they have made, especially in the case of Gorillaz which is an experiment with this particular branch of music, to see how you can make it better. With that in mind, what Nightmare have done cannot have this argument used in its defence. SCUMS is the sound of a band that has surrendered and given in to the rapidly over-saturating Visual-Kei scene and bending to the trend of electronic-infused metal, a tried and tested formula that is pretty much guaranteed to sell.
With SCUMS, Nightmare actually have, for the most part, made their newly acquired electronic fetish work in a way that they didn’t with its predecessor… to an extent. The reason for this is that this time round, Nightmare have used the electronics as an actual component in the songs rather than as a toxic, sugary coating to give the songs retail value. The problem with SCUMS is that this is only true for a couple of the songs. The band makes this apparent very early on with “ASSaulter.” While the songs main fault is its groan-worthy chorus, the song also contains an absolutely abysmal attempt at dubstep during the guitar solo, completely putting the listener off of the whole album before it’s even started. To be frank, there’s really only four songs on the entire album that make the electronics work. To some extent, the band pull it off with “riddle,” a song that definitely would not work without its electronics. But then there’s moments like the almost painful “ERRORs” where the electronics just sit there where there might as well have been a second bass guitar, because it achieves nothing more than being a background nuisance. The background nuisance effect is the problem for nearly every song on the album.
There are only three songs on the entire album that effectively combine nightmare’s sound with the electronics, the most successful being “Owaru Sekai no Hajimari wa Kinari” and “Droid.” “Owaru Sekai no Hajimari wa Kinari” actually comes across as a well-executed dance track. Its biggest success being that the electronics actually make the song and therefore have a Raison d’etre which cannot be said for the majority of Nightmare’s latest material. “Droid’s” strength is that it uses the electronics as a concept, the song being written from the perspective of, well, a droid. The electronics on this track add to the songs robotic atmosphere with clanking ambience at the beginning of the song as well as Yomi’s vocals being filtered to sound like more like a robot. “Droid” also incorporates the tricky rhythm changes that Nightmare used to play with during their heyday as well as different sections where Nightmare express, very faintly, a little bit of progression. This kind of progression is also present on the song “Ame to Yoru ni Ochite,” the albums ballad. Not to the extent that they tried in the past but still enough to save the album from being completely absent of interesting moments. But then of course there is the one song where they absolutely nailed it, the one song on the entire album where the band sound like their old selves, even if just for 4 and a half brief minutes: “Deus ex Machina.” The song is very reminiscent of the song ~lulu~ from the bands big break the WORLD Ruler, in fact it could almost serve as a second part to it the two tracks are so similar. Even though the song is rather familiar territory, it’s somewhat of a blessing that the band managed to include something with so much depth in amongst what is such a poor album.
But those couple of moments in those couple of tracks are about where it ends. The rest of the album is so inoffensive that it’s actually… well, it’s offensive. It hardly sounds like it’s the same band that did those couple of songs in the middle of nowhere. Nightmare still manage to fail to fully marry their eclectic style with the electronics. The problem at fault mostly being that the band seem to assume that the electronics will make the songs sound cool no matter what and have neglected to actually give writing a decent song a go. It seems like the band thought that fans would be content with what comes across as barely half an effort. SCUMS basically comes across as an umbrella album for pretty much every mainstream rock group in the Japanese music scene at present. If you have listened to anything from any other mainstream J-rock release from the past couple of years, say, The GazettE or Girugamesh, the album seriously gets to the point where you think “Who is this by again? Oh, Nightmare that’s right.” It should come as a pretty good warning when the best way of describing what 80% of the album sounds like is by saying, “it sounds like everyone else.”
SCUMS is the toxic scent of a band that has sacrificed their identity. It struggles to come together coherently and its strongest moments are far and from anything that a band like Nightmare are capable of producing. Hell, they even went and basically said “we’re a different band now, we didn’t make Livid or Anima and we certainly never broke big with the WORLD Ruler in 2006,” by releasing a self-titled album proceeding SCUMS that has exactly the same problems that they would worsen with SCUMS. This album doesn’t attempt to do anything other than sell itself and it has certainly succeeded in selling Nightmare’s unique identity as musicians. With SCUMS, Nightmare have basically told the music world to stop taking them seriously and just buy their product. If you like music and especially if you like the band, it’s for the best if you don’t ever listen to this album.
