It’s been about a week since the first full recordings were available online, right? And then the MV dropped a couple of days later and I made my eager face and watched and waited and waited and watched and … like, PassCode usually has an international version of their videos available after a brief interval, so I’m not crazy to have done this. But maybe because it’s being used in this commercial, we filthy gaijin don’t get the full version?

So okay, no MV for us, but the song exists, so first listen to it if you need to:

I’m not exactly head-over-heels about it, but I’ve been feeling really generous toward PassCode ever since my series of listens to the Clarity album had me lauding it as easily one of the best of the year (and I’ll fight anybody on that, watch me) — it felt good to hear them return to some old terrain while still pushing at the boundaries of what their sound can do — so maybe my usual trepidation about a song like this from them is being drowned out by those more positive vibes. I don’t know! I just know that yes, this particular style from PassCode, the more purely idol sounds, is where they usually start to lose me, but I really appreciated the sunniness in “Atlas”, even if the Yuna Part was maybe somewhat forced.

And it’s not like it matters all that much, after seeing how their tunes were split between pleasure and pain on the last album, I’d wager that whatever track/s accompanies this on the record will be heavy as hell and angry and stuff.