If you recall, lovely people, that we are in a weird era of idol resurrection, you may recall that Checkmate, which had all but dissolved into non-existence over a period of months, was teasing a comeback of some sort or another during the last few weeks. On Monday, they issued the big reveal:
【御礼】【ご案内】
本日は合同生誕祭にお越し頂いた皆様ありがとうございました。。
KINGRAGE本日よりrestartです！！！！！
引き続き応援の程宜しくお願い致します。☑️本日よりKINGRAGEの公式アカウントをこのアカウントに移行させて頂きます。#キングレ pic.twitter.com/rE9yVSAevQ
— KING∞RAGE公式 (@newkingrage) May 14, 2018
KING RAGE! What a name! That’s right up there with St. Anger in my book, and everybody knows that nothing related to St. Anger could ever possibly go wrong.
Wherein our hero makes an incredibly attenuated and doubly dishonest statement by which to set up the real point of the post
Seeing all of that, and the new look and etc., I wondered aloud to myself if we weren’t stepping directly into another sigh-why-do-idols-struggle-so-much-to-get-metal-right kind of moment, and thereby shunted this news of KING RAGE straight into the bowels of the Weekender, from which I could plausibly simultaneously claim to be taking it seriously and not-seriously, thereby providing cover regardless of the outcome of the project.
As it turns out, that was silly, because the earliest clip to date is loud as all hell!
#ツーステ#DNBSTEP#メタモルフォーゼ#キングレ pic.twitter.com/IgqEwGKIa4
— KING∞RAGE公式 (@newkingrage) May 15, 2018
Is it supposed to be “dubstep” in that hashtag, or?
Now, Checkmate had gone down a pretty nasty road for a while, hence why they had been one of my sleeper favorites for a while of the same length, but this is like dropping a handful of water directly into smoking-hot bacon grease. I want more of it. Hell, I want them to do a split single with DAIDAIDAI and mistress (which is a thing that can be now that we live in a digital age) and see just how many thunder beats they can drill into a single minute’s worth of song.
Don’t know if you are being serious but… :p
DnBstep is a dance style that it kind of looks like they might be doing in that clip, hard to tell with the flashing lights.
Naw, full disclosure, I applied zero rational thought to that and instead very cynically fell back on all of the awkward idol typos I’ve seen over the years. Good thing to learn, though!