Devil Summoner Kuzunoha Raidou
ARTIST
Shoji Meguro
GENRE
Rock and Jazz
LOWDOWN
Hungry for more human souls, Shoji sets out with his newest work, Devil Summoner.
RATING
B-
The Devil is real. And his name is Shoji. Mr. Meguro really reminds me of a band. At least a one man band.
He has a EP, Maken X, which no one has heard of. His first major album would be Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, which has a totaly diffrent sound than the rest of his works. It sounds fresh and really creative. Then he goes and does a bit of a more mainstream sound and puts all forms of energy he has in him to make a double album, released over a period of a few months, that's Digital Devil Saga episodes 1 and 2.
Digital Devil Saga had to take a lot out of him. And the soundtrack to Devil Summoner shows that.
??Devil Summoner sounds like Digital Devil Saga volume 1. It doesnt go back to the death/black/whatever metal of Nocturne, and doesn't dive head first into the hole known as techno. Instead it's a bit more jazzy and spicy.
The first track, the title theme, sounds it came straight from a "Capcom vs. ----" game. It's pretty much how most of this album will sound like. Which sort of hurts it. It gets annoying after awhile.
The next major song, track 03 "Lazy Detective Agency", is a laid back jazz song with saxaphones and the works. Then finaly comes the first of many fight themes, "Formidable Foe" which has some really intresting guitar work with some synthasizer which can really mess with you. It's something that could be put in the first DDS.
Then it goes back into jazz mode for the most part with a few exceptions like "Tokyo Metropolis", a bit of a menecing rock song.
Finaly, what I'm assuming is the pre-boss tune, appears. "Breaking through the Wall". Not as good as old ones, but it does have some weird bass???. Weird weird bass... then you're punched in the face by the boss song, "A Old Foe" which I swear has tunes of refrences to old fight songs in it (the drums and rythme guitar sometimes do the normal fight song opening, theres also a guitar riff which could be from the "Satanic Boss Battle" from Nocturne). It's pretty much what this album needed, a good solid face plant for you.
Sadly it goes back to it's slow, boring, jazz and piano tune mode till "The Fated Showdown" appears which sounds a lot like "Brahman" from DDS2 guitar riff wise.
And finaly, the final boss theme appears, "SHOCK! The Final Battle" which you can tell from opening it's going to be awesome. Once again, it reminds me though of "Brahman" in one of the guitar riffs., which might just be me, but it's something very noticable.
Overall, it's a good album. The fight themes alone make it worthy a buy. And not all the jazz/piano songs are that bad, it's just most of this album is cluttered with boring ones... Oh well. Another good effort by Shoji, but it's obviously he was drained from DDS1n2 for this album. Hopefully he's ready for the next one...
GO HOME. THIEF. DROP DEAD.