I can’t believe how much great stuff has been published in the Loudolisphere over the past week! Seriously, I personally have 12 drafts from just the last several days, and whether I get to half of them before the next week is out is purely speculative. I’m nonetheless jumping NEO JAPONISM and their “it’s a new year and you all need for us to set you right” new MV for “Trigger” to the front of the list because it’s NEO JAPONISM, who are incredible, and the song and MV are 18 kinds of awesome. If you only want one thing to prep you for 2021, make it this:

Good lord, that’s gnarly. That guitar lead is absolutely filthy, and I love how hard the percussion drives it home. All with really great vocals on top sort of galloping over the instrumentation to take the pace to another level. If anybody else out there remembers an Epitaph band called Deviates from like the early 00s that never did anything again, you may have the same thought process that I did, that “Trigger” is like a Deviates song, only harder. I can’t believe I was actually afraid that NEO JAPONISM would take their foot off the pedal as they grew in prominence. What an utter fool I am!

If you recall, I almost had NEO JAPONISM as my 2020 Idol of the Year but felt that there just weren’t enough pieces there compared to the group I did tab; there’s a lot of great idol happening right out of the gate for 2021, so the competition will be fierce, but I’m happy to put them right on my early short list and even happier to wait a minute for more jaw-smashing work.