Review Summary: fail.
From around the 1990s to the early 2000s, there was a non-stoppable phenomenon that dominated the radio and even album sales - that phenomenon was the genre of nu-metal. Basically pop and hip-hop made to sound like metal, the genre was a favorite among adolescents who thought listening to the music would make them cool. It was the perfect combination of extremely accessible melodies with just enough crunch in the guitars so that they felt like rebels. The genre would eventually fade into nothingness as people began losing interest and album sales plummeted. For those bands who originally played nu-metal, they would either have to move on and get with the times, or they would continue without change, hoping their fanbase was still intact.
Although jumping off nu-metal’s boat worked for a quite a few nu-metal bands, HeavensDust should have stayed on the boat – at least it kept them afloat. You see, HeavensDust was a nu-metal band from day one, and with every released album, they improved. Influenced by their Japanese culture and heritage, their combination of ridiculous aggression, accessible melodies, and Japanese Classical Music was unheard of, and blended excellently. By abandoning ship, though, it is akin to an author deciding that the book he slaved over for his entire life is actually quite terrible. The band is indeed turning over to a new page in their existence, but the page is completely blank, and it’s going to take more than a few clumsy sentences to fill it. Although there were many roads the band could have taken, they chose the wrong one.
At the very least, HeavensDust’s effort in attempting to do something which was bound to fail is commendable. You can tell the band is trying, for the band has never meshed as perfectly as this. Even the recording quality of the album is their best ever, with slick and radiant production unlike any of their other albums; their past albums had awful production anyway, so the change is extremely noticeable. It would be expected for the band to succeed in this album considering how tight the band is now, but like clumsily tied shoe laces, they just fell apart.
To actually describe how the band sounds now is a difficult task for they have changed completely. Imagine the same band, but instead of crushing guitars, they employ them lightly for the sake of ambiance and subtle melody. Although this seems promising, the end result is a conclusively, dreadful bore. HeavensDust has always been a nu-metal band, and with this in mind you can easily see how every single song is structured in that way. Even the lead singer’s screams are still in use even though they sound awful. The male lead singer, who has always been a dismal singer, sings and screams in all songs even when inappropriate and unnecessary. The album would have been better off as an instrumental, ambient album. It’s not fast enough to be a rock album, it’s not atmospheric enough to be an ambient album, so what is it? Whatever it is, it isn’t good. The only saving factor is the folksy Japanese instruments, but that's about it.
