[Review]ONE OK ROCK - Niche Syndrome

^dat box art ;)

Right, Niche Syndrome. Fourth(?) studio album by the j-rock band ONE OK ROCK. 2010 needed this release. Best album I've heard in ages. On with the review...

Track One, Introduction. Which, uh, is an introduction track full of ambient noise. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but all the best albums have an intro track, so we'll let it live.

Track Two - Never let this go
"WE HAVE TO CARRY ON" shouts the happy little frontman Taka. Superb little riffs going on in the background, great intro. Fairly good English pronounciation throughout the verse, and on the whole a catchy indie rock feel driving this song through its 4:17 duration. Wonderful stuff.

Track three, kanzen kankaku dreamer. This was the single that got me into ONE OK ROCK and it still sounds as fantastic as ever. And if you thought they couldnt get any better than this, just wait til you hear the rest of the songs that are ahead of you.

Track four, Konzatsu Communication. An emotional opening quickly falls away into another uniquely ONE OK ROCK style rock song. Very good.

5: Yes I am, the most emotional song thus far on the album. Slightly cheesy, but brilliant nonetheless. SAAAAAAAAY MMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY NAAAAAAAAME and so on.

Track Six, Shake it down. Not brilliant, but certainly decent. Sounds like most of the other songs on here, but whereas with Tool it makes the album awful, here, the formula OOR have makes me more than happy to listen to these songs.

Track Seven: Liar. Utterly fantastic. You *need* this song. Like, really need it. Chorus will make your life complete

Track Eight: Jibun Rock... its really good. Huge change of pace from Liar back into fast relentless rock with a great little bass noise at the start. Love it. This and Liar make the album for me.
(...this album....O_O )

Wherever you are is an easy listening love ballad-y type thing. Not a fantastic song but very inspiring, and its good to see OOR stepping out of their comfort zone.

Riot!! is needlessly noisy in the beginning, but it soon settles down and becomes almost Paramore in its musical ways. Group vocals and shouting are the order of things here.

Adult Suits and Mikansei Koukyoukyoku win so much, before settling down into the final track, Nobody's Home a beautiful end to a beautiful album with English lyrics that actually make sense and really good instrumentation all round. The chorus will ring in your ears long after you've pressed stop SPOILER: (which you shouldn't, because there is a bonus track...hence why this track is nine minutes long. Its rather cool)

The end. Good album. As I said at the start, 2010 needed this release, and well....thats all there is to it. Truly awesome, and shows a marked improvement from their older stuff.
A