I Don’t Always Listen to Live Idol Albums, But When I Do, I Prefer PassCode’s

/ Homicidol Maniac

This post is entirely about doing three things:

  1. Posting about PassCode, which we don’t get to do enough
  2. Enjoying a PassCode album, as we haven’t had a new one in a while
  3. Spreading the gospel and hooking in some people who maybe aren’t as familiar

Anyway, let the title describe it for you. I almost always pass on live records from big idol gigs, the exception to date being the OG Red Night/Black Night Babymetal recordings. There’s just only so much time and unfathomable amounts of music to fill it with, and I may love idol but I also love a lot of other things; if I wanted to listen to off-quality recordings of people who for the most part aren’t particularly good singers in the first place, I’d invite my friends over for DIY karaoke again.

But I made an exception last week because dammit, I haven’t heard enough PassCode lately, and I’d always wondered what the live experience was like without accompanying visuals to help sell the package. So when this showed up in my New Releases thingie on Spotify, I knew what I had to do:

Leaving aside the 30 layers of manipulation on the vocals, they sound so good! We expect that the band will sound good and crisp in this setting, and they do, but I was surprised that I could pick out each member in turn, honestly, and I’m not just talking about the obvious Yuna belters but the swaps between Hina and Nao and Kaede, too. Yes, I know those trades anyway because this is a record of greatest hits, more or less, but it’s always surprising how I pay attention to very different parts of songs whether I’m listening at home to a perfectly mastered recording vs. the live experience, and in this case it meant more of just immersing myself in LOUD. Yuna, yes, of course sounds the best because Yuna is the best and will remain the gold standard in idol harsh vocals until the heat death of the universe.

Anyway, good times, surprisingly good live album, opportunity to post about PassCode met. I was left with a very serious wish that I could get into the pit and throw a few elbows, which is a shame because I’ll almost assuredly never do that at a PassCode show!