I’m Actually Applauding Watanabe’s Stealth BiSH Album Release

/ Homicidol Maniac

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
— Some jerk called King James

I wasn’t actually even asleep yet when the messages started coming. But did I ignore them? You bet! It was late as hell and I was trying to wind down, not get into some mess. So imagine my surprise then to wake up to a chorus of humans calling out that BiSH had just Beyonce-released a new album:

/record scratch

Now, this is clever as hell. Watanabe had teasingly tweeted out his thoughts on “the new BiSH” album a few weeks ago, calling it “a masterpiece.” I took that to mean “ha, now you idiots will be all slavering when I decide to release the thing in April!”, not “no we’re literally doing final mixes right now.” What a jerk. It’s available in some stores over the weekend, then will disappear for a few weeks for a full release later in the month. THE GUERiLLA BiSH indeed!

Here’s the lead single, “My landscape”:

Man, that’s pretentious. And I don’t mean high-school-kid-drinking-dad’s-scotch pretentious, I mean we-are-literally-believing-in-our-own-greatness pretentious. It’s BiSH doing the BiSH that I least enjoy (remember, I called “Promise the Star” butt, which it is!), but doing it well, and doing it in a way that’s going to have an accessible mass appeal. How did the Single That Should Not Have Been do, sales-wise, anyway? I’m curious, for real, but also lazy.

This is better than the butt-fest that was “Promise the Star” in every way

So I listened to that about 30 times. The dang video was filmed in the USA? And they didn’t so much as play a single gig? Now I’m just insulted. But also intrigued — if Avex (I’m presuming it was Avex money) will send them across the Pacific to shoot a video, that opens the door to my dream scenario of seeing “Hoshi ga” done three times in a row on Saturday Night Live.

Here’s the whole track list:

My landscape
SHARR
GiANT KiLLERS
SMACK baby SMACK
spare of despair
プロミスザスター
JAM
Here’s looking at you, kid.
ろっくんろおるのかみさま
BODiES
ALLS
パール
FOR HiM

That’s a lot of completely new music! But they included the most boring song in WACK history (that’s “Promise the Star,” which, you will recall, is butt) on top of another slow, emotionally manipulative power ballad (that’s this song!). I wasn’t blown away by “Orchestra,” either, though, and my belief in the absolute value of KiLLER BiSH only grows over time, so I’m willing to put a lot of stock into this being another amazing record overall. And we’ll probably get at least one more MV before the actual real-deal launch date, which just so happens to be crammed up against the awards deadline because Watanabe knows what we do and wants us to suffer.

This was very well-played, dude. There’s potential that it’s a hoist-by-your-own-petard moment, but I’ll play along for now.

7 thoughts on “I’m Actually Applauding Watanabe’s Stealth BiSH Album Release”

  1. Totally sounds like Gang Parade.

    Not a terrible song but BiSH has become so terribly boring aside from the couple of punk songs they made – I want the original album BiSH back.

  2. A heavily remixed version of it would be a perfect song for Gang Parade.. Doesn’t fit well with BiSH, although their singing and dancing are great.. Oh and also “FOR HiM” in French would be “Pour Lui”. O.o

  3. I have the album. It’s good. There’s no going back to the original sound to when they first premiered. Back then they were still enveloped in the underground independent vibe which transferred well into their sonics and songwriting. Now they are well deep into polished territory. Let’s face it I mean we can either ride along with it or jump off the yacht.

    This new album is really freakin rocking though. By just the 2nd song “SHARR” I was losing my mind and had the urge to just start throwing shit around the room. Overall production is on point and consistent and maintains interest and the vocals really shine.

  4. Unlike some people who run this blog I’m as fond of Bish’s mom-rock stuff as I am their punk/power pop/ folk-metal stuff so I put this ahead of Promise but behind Orchestra on that count.
    The big question I have (aside from them not mentioning their going to the Mojave’s aircraft boneyard so I could plan a camping trip there at the same time) is does Bish have colors now and is LingLing in charge of pink?

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