Released: 22.05.20 / Label: FlyingDog
Apparently I’ve been living under a rock, because this track is the first place I’ve ever heard about millennium parade.
millennium parade is a creative collective led by of Daiki Tsuneta of King Gnu fame. And I’ll be honest, it feels a little wrong including it in these reviews because it barely counts as an indie project. His (well deserved) success and fame give this project access to many more resources than 99% of the other artists I review. But seeing as FlyingDog is only a subsidiary of Victor and they do rep artists that are more the indie scene speed, and because I really want to talk about this song, we’re giving this track a pass.
Looking at millennium parade’s YouTube content it’s clear they’ve been making waves with their ultra creative work. I love it all, and I’m excited to dive in to some more of that content now that I know it exists. If, like me, this is the first you’re hearing of the collective, do yourself a favor and check out some of their work here.
This is a dark and haunting song that pulls all the right emotional strings and leaves an impression. This collective is focused on the music and video working together to produce intricate multimedia works, as such the composition is cinematic and very focused on creating atmosphere. They pull that off really well here, with a vast array of sounds and effects giving depth and detail throughout the track. The production value is through the roof, and it shows. Everything sounds amazing and every idea is fully developed. Which is to be expected after the countless quality control meetings I’m sure they had. I can’t imagine the budget on this thing…
Sadly the track’s lyrics, by artist ermhoi, don’t hold up so well under scrutiny. There are some great one-liners that really pop as an opening theme, but if you read through the whole song the words just make no sense. It’s kind of disappointing but extremely common in the world of anime opening themes. The mindset is ‘If it sounds good who cares what it means.’ Well, at least it sounds good.
Speaking of sounding good, the musicians on the track all sound great. There are some very skilled players in the collective including a few members of King Gnu (for obvious reasons), but also some great keyboardists and string players. Check here if you want to search names.
The only other thing I think worth mentioning is how much I hate this cover. Totally my subjective opinion, but it just looks awful. I know they had it set up with a bunch of cool merch they were selling, so it probably works there, but as a digital release cover it’s annoying to look at. Objectively, it also has nothing to do with this song, so I feel like they could have made something better.
Stream or download the track
