Artist: Noir Fleurir
Album: For Ten Years After
Musicians: Teru (vocals), Karen (guitar), Kengo (bass/vocals), Soushi (drums)
Composer/Lyricist:
Release Date: 23 Feb 2001

For Ten Years After - Noir Fleurir
Tracklisting

01. Century Style a Go-Go
02. Twenty-one Century
03. Boden
04. Earth Song
05. At Sky
06. Respectful Obsession
07. Shiawase o Kowashitai
08. New Romantic
09. I Love Misha
10. For Ten Years After

*Bold titles - recommended listening.

OVERVIEW

Noir Fleurir is a visual kei band that briefly produced music from 1999 to 2001. Their early style was an unique Spanish-influenced visual kei sound. However, with For Ten Years After, their music took a radical shift and became more industrial. I haven’t yet heard their earlier albums, but judging from this one, this shift was a gross error.

For Ten Years After is marred by faulty production and uninspired composition. Half of the vocals consist of Shatner-like talking. The other half are out of tune or just buried under all the other instruments. The rare times when you can hear the vocals, the melody line is repetitive and boring; in fact, it’s almost worthy of being buried. Some of the songs on here do have some interesting guitar lines, but the majority of songs do not. The synthesizer and various effects are overused to the point of being annoying rather than interesting highlights for emphasis. Even the songs that might be classified as decent are balanced in a strange way that leaves the most uninteresting parts the loudest and everything else sounding like it comes from underwater. For Ten Years After is not the worst album I’ve ever heard, but it does rank quite high on the list.

THE GOOD

At Sky
I’ll be honest. This song is only the best of this album due to the low quality of the rest of the songs, so I suppose having it in the Good section is not really saying much. But it does have a number of elements that at least let me rate it as a decent song. Every interesting part in this song is buried under the drums, sounding like it’s coming at you from the end of a very long tunnel. The vocals are weak and cannot overcome any of the issues that plague “At Sky.” But the song has promise in the interesting guitar work and the guitar solo halfway through. Better production would probably nudge this song up into a true “Good” rather than just the pick of a bad lot.

THE BAD

Boden
I’ve been struggling to try to review this album for almost a year now. “Boden” almost made me throw it back on the shelf for another year. This is probably the worst song I’ve heard since my ears were assaulted by Sanhedolin. This has no singing whatsoever, merely words spoken over and over again ad nauseaum. There was growling talking, falsetto talking, whiny talking, and some kind of uninspired background music somewhere smothered underneath the chatter. “Boden” is 3:37, which is 3:37 too long. The only good thing I can say about it is that after making it through the “Boden” gauntlet, I could actually tolerate the other songs on this album. I was relieved just to hear a melody again, even one buried and distorted by bad mixing.

Respectful Obsession
“Respectful Obsession” features the prominent overuse of synthesizer effects. It was probably meant to add some interesting element to the music, but it was more like an annoying fly buzzing past your ear. The melody in this song is fair, but very, very repetitive, as though the “respectful obsession” in the title refers to an obsession with one musical phrase. Too bad what Noir Fleurir is “respectful” of is not their hapless audience. Overall, this song was just irritating.

Shiawase o Kowashitai
“Shiawase o Kowashitai” starts off with a jungle beat, which was refreshing for about ten seconds. When the same beat was repeated for a minute, I almost called it quits. Then the guitar came in with an interesting musical idea, and I almost placed this song in the Good section. But then the vocals came in, and its fate was sealed. The melody is just so boring and uninspired that not even interesting guitars can save the song. The balance just doesn’t help, because once again the vocals are buried under everything else. Even the back-up singers get more focus than the main singer. It is a shame, because the guitar line really was promising.

I Love Misha
“I Love Misha” is just plagued with problems, the major one of which is that the vocals are whiny and thin. For a good portion of the song, the title is repeated over and over and over, and that is what suffices as lyrics. When I heard this song, I actually debated whether or not Noir Fleurir is one of those parody bands that sings in a humorous way to make fun of other bad bands. “I Love Misha” just sounds like someone’s idea of a joke.

For Ten Years After
This title track has some of the worst vocals of this album. The vocalist’s voice sags out of tune way too frequently and wavers all over the place. The background instrumentals are just uninteresting and uninspiring. As the closer on this album, “For Ten Years After” just left a bad taste in my mouth, and drove me to trash For Ten Years After that much faster.

The Rating: 2

Reviewed by: dheu