Would anybody be mad if, say, you were at dinner with friends, and the discussion turned toward idols (as it naturally must), and people started to talk about their favorite chika supergroups (happens every day!), and that special someone turned to you and asked for your opinion on APOKALIPPPS, and, after weighing the likelihood of a call-out should you try to fake your way through this one the same way you did when appealing to the dominant in-group and its devotion to Local Sports Team #2 (we all know how that went, guy, how do you endure the humiliation), you decided that discretion would be the better part of valor and, smiling, admitted that you had never actually heard any of APOKALIPPPS’s music? Yes, Lord Stuffedshirt would no doubt pop out his monocle in feigned, overwrought shock, but that guy’s a jerk and everybody knows it, so who cares, it’s that special someone whose opinion really matters here, and look! It turns out that the question went to you because you know so much about idol and they were hoping that you knew more about APOKALIPPPS than anybody else might!

That’s some fortuitous circumstancing right there, friend.

That’s* an incredibly long way of implying that APOKALIPPPS, who were announced with a certain degree of fanfare almost a year ago, finally have dedicated own-channel material online, and I actually wrote this before listening to it, so let’s take that journey of discovery together, shall we?

I had no expectations, to be honest, so that this isn’t a rage-fest isn’t disappointing — in fact, I’d go so far as to say that its various movements around genuinely loud sounds (and a bitchin’ guitar solo!) were kind of refreshing. The very YMM interlude was a nice touch, too. Tonally, I got reminders of everything from Melon Batake a Go Go to Kamen Joshi to, yes, You’ll Melt More!, which makes me wonder who’s responsible for the writing etc. on the project.

There was hope, once upon a time, that APOKALIPPPS would prove to be a project of regular importance, if not prominence, and it never did quite work out for what I can only assume are good reasons (like, everybody’s busy), but I’m very glad that yes, there’s a second single and yes, it’s a cool, creative rock song that touches on a lot of different styles. And there’s still room for APOKALIPPPS to decide that a steampunk aesthetic is nice and all, but it goes much better with a blackened kawaiicore sound that likes of which they didn’t ever actually tease, but I wanted it so I’m going to pretend that I’m offended anyway.

*Hey, you try doing the same kinds of posts, well into the quadrupal digits, on repeat for well over two years, while finding new ways to introduce the subject matter