It happened so quietly that it wasn’t until Idolatry hit me up the other night that I had any idea that things were amiss:

たくさんの愛をありがとう。
魂かけてくれてありがとう。

ディスドロイダー最高🔥

2018.04.24
新宿ナインスパイス
DISDOLアイドル体制終了🔥 pic.twitter.com/Pann1kwE1A

— DISDOL公式 (@DIS_DOL) April 24, 2018

Yup. DISDOL called it a wrap. Or, more specifically, called it an end to idol and the full transmogrification into bandhood.

What a bizarrely inauspicious ending for what had been, for a brief-but-very-loud slice of time, one of the true up-and-comers in the idol underground. They boasted a larger-than-normal roster with better-than-average talent, a pretty great look, a wonderfully nasty sound and some decent resources behind them. And yet, for reasons that I could never figure out, the project never seemed like it was going to take the next step. They only ever put out one real-deal MV, for instance, and ran into the kinds of non-stop issues with membership (or, in their case, leadership) that can take down even the most stalwart of idol projects. The music generally being a mixed bag probably didn’t help things.

The original group dissolved way back in the fall, and the project was reconfigured as an idols-fronting-band kind of thing. I at the time thought that was a cool idea, as the idol+band thing had proven to be a pretty good look, and Bell Agency had the overall talent to probably make something like that work.

Now, though, they’re calling it a day on the idol front and focusing just on the band. As such, per the announcement on their website:

• Haruna is done and done
• Yuki and Mashiro will move on to a new idol project

And what idol project might that be?

BELL AGENCYの新ユニット
「刹那SONIC」5/3(木祝)始動💫

いのち短し恋せよ乙女
瞬間を生きろ、をテーマに活動！

刹那(瞬間)SONIC(音速)

アイドルの輝きも人生も
一瞬で終わるなら最高に終わろう💫

今後の活躍に乞うご期待！ pic.twitter.com/uX0SpKz6xX

— 刹那SONIC公式 (@SETSUNASONIC) April 20, 2018

Plus, Mashiro will continue on as the DISDOL band’s singer, a la CODE OF ZERO.

And so it goes. What all SETSUNA SONIC gets up to is anybody’s guess, but I hope that they bring at least some of that gnarly old DISDOL rock with them. As long as somebody still performs “VICTORIA”, we are all winners.