Review Summary: Oh, how sometimes the best things turn up in unexpected places.
There’s a certain unavoidable stigma that arises when dealing with a ‘fictional’ band.
Often created by a company to either support a growing trend, or capitalize on a popular brand, fictional artists or bands don’t tend to have a massively positive reputation, if any at all. Those who
do find themselves in a certain spotlight, such as the
League of Legends metal group, Pentakill, or Japanese worldwide phenomena, Hatsune Miku, will undoubtedly find themselves either scoffed at by most, or surrounded by a fanbase so suffocatingly nauseous it’s incredibly hard not to just hate them out of pure spite. Of course, the undeniable obvious fact that seems to be often completely overlooked, is actually rather simple; despite its origin, music is still music.
Zhiend, stylised as ‘ZHIEND’, is the fictional five-piece post-rock band created by Jun Maeda, for the purposes of appearing in the anime,
Charlotte. Behind the scenes, the group consists of vocalist Marina Nakamura (known professionally as J-Pop singer, Marina) and composer Hikari Syuyo, with series writer Jun Maeda handling much of the lyrical content.
Throughout the story of
Charlotte, the only member of Zhiend ever discussed or even named is frontwoman Sala Shane, a blind, has-been rock star, whose previous fame and fortune resulted in negative attention and an eventual family crisis. Because of this, Sala makes the decision to instead front a ‘dull’ band, retreating from the spotlight and ‘bartering’ her eyesight away. It’s worth noting that, despite going to the trouble of having the team behind Zhiend create a full 12 track album, the band itself appears on an extremely limited basis throughout the anime, with only a few of the thirteen episodes featuring even a clear snippet of any of the music created. As for the character Sala Shane, her appearance in two episodes is mainly focused on dialogue alone, again omitting much of the music created. Despite this brief appearance, the band was popular with fans of the series, and
Echo was subsequently released, along with an official single; ‘Trigger.’
Although the CD features a secondary disc containing the entire record in Japanese, the band’s initial material was composed and released in English, and is featured as such throughout the anime. Initially, Marina Nakamura’s strange enunciations and speech patterns when performing the English lyrics come across as borderline jarring, making it rather difficult to actually understand much of what is being sung. Instead, Nakamura’s attention appears to be completely on embellishing the vocal
melodies, beautifully utilising her gentle vocal style to compliment the gorgeous compositions provided by Hikari Syuyo. She seems completely in her element for the softer tracks ‘Heavy Rain’ and ‘Clouded Sky’, and plenty of the lyrical content flourishes when paired with Nakamura’s angelic vocal style, such as the dreamy ‘Blood Colour’, a track that blissfully surges forward in delay-soaked lead guitar, while Nakamura croons away;
”The scenery I see is beautiful like my blood, flows gracefully from my wrist that I’ve cut.”
To shine a little more light on composer Hikari Syuyo,
Echo’s instrumentals are nothing less than superb for the most part; Syuyo is completely at the top of his game here, in particular bringing to the record some superb guitar work, such as ‘Scar On Face’s spectacular reverb-heavy distorted chords that swell furiously throughout the track, adding a ferocity that Nakamura then immediately counters vocally; indeed, throughout the record a certain duality between the two is clearly evident, and
Echo completely thrives because of it. Where Syuyo completely lets loose on rockier numbers ‘Ray Of Light’ and ‘Trigger’, Nakamura’s gentler vocal delivery keeps things on the lighter side and the two work together rather harmoniously.
Considering its origins,
Echo comes as a pleasant surprise.
It’s a solid body of work stemming from a more unusual source, but where the record succeeds, it does so magnificently, with ‘Sinking Ships’ and ‘Blood Colour’ standing as some of the albums best material. The album’s only real fault is that at times it suffers from a feeling of being slightly overlong and repetitive, some of the tracks sounding strikingly similar to each other at times, but this is a small complaint directed towards a mostly very enjoyable experience. Zhiend may never tour, nor ever release future material, and sure, the stigma of being ‘that band from
Charlotte’ may remain, but at the end of the day, it’s still music. And it’s damn good music too.
