Review Summary: The good, the bad, and the ugly of Sonohara.
Sonohara appeared on my radar with the release of her self-titled album in 2024. Admittedly, I was not too big of a fan, for reasons like very rough vocal performances, not too much happening in the instrumental section and the material being about as diverse as the shrew genus (figure out). But the sound was undeniably energetic and, most importantly, passionate, so the potential was definitely there. Now, on the new album
Fade, the electro-rock-turned-metalcore act evolved into something truly formidable: sharper, more focused and, if not captivating, then at least interesting to dissect.
Fade, to be completely fair, doesn’t have all that much in common with its predecessor bar Sarah’s characteristic, emo vocal spewings. Whereas
Sonohara came off as a homogenous slab of fast-paced, quirky post hardcore, the follow-up comes off as a somewhat less homogenous slab of djenty metalcore that trades the energy for a punishing weight. The instrumentals are actually very repetitive, but work mostly fine due to said heaviness as well as the desolately clean production and sheer power of catchiness - something the vocals share as well. Sarah is a very monotonous singer (and the occasional high or low note sadly does not impress), but she has her middle range under decent control and several of her melodic choices are genuine earworms. Look no further than the singles, "In Silence" and "The Worst of Me": two packages of extremely fun riffs and choruses that I catch replaying in my head more often than I’d have suspected.
At the same time, the improvement in the harsh vocals department is terrific. From something best described as unimposing grunts of the previous album, Sarah went on to emit outright terrifying shrieks interspersed with a multitude of quite well-executed growls. I have to say, the results are wonderful.
There are even a few stylistic tweaks at play. "Get Swifty", for instance, is extremely slow and heavy per the album’s standards, ending up as a particularly hard-hitting track, while "Terrified" left me flabbergasted with how much radio potential it has. I swear, the only way I could describe that song from the melodic perspective is a pop hit incarnated as an underground piece of djentcore.
Despite me having some gripes with this outing, there’s enough quality here to warrant a favourable score, and with Sarah very clearly stepping up her game as an artist, there’s more than enough reason to await her future musical endeavours. Parts of
Fade are nothing exciting, others are either surprising or cool and at least one song ("In Silence") is plain excellent - so, it is certainly worth a go.
