Is it okay to call Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da “living legends” when the group may be closing in on a sixthiversary but there’s only one of the originals left? Yes it is because I want it to be? Fantastic.
Living legends Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da, fresh off of a year of causing their many longtime fans to soil themselves in fear that the group may be on the outs, or at least all but completely redefined, dropped their 12th single the other day. That’s a lot of singles! But it’s the first new material from the all-but-completely-redone group, and it’s a great opportunity for a “came out swinging” cliche, not least because saying it would not make me a liar, just an unimaginative nincompoop who couldn’t think of a better way to describe one of Zenkimi’s most ambitious works:
I don’t use “most ambitious” lightly, not when it comes to one of the most innovative and well-developed products to ever tie a digital hardcore breakdown to cannibalism. Feel free to argue — you’re allowed to be wrong!
Musically, while I’ve felt that the last few Zenkimi releases broke them out of the copy/paste run of Codomocore they were on, this was the first song of theirs in a while that made me genuinely stop and pay attention to it because, for once, if I hadn’t known it was a Zenkimi joint on the way in, I wouldn’t have immediately guessed it was them. A little dancier, a little more upbeat*, less -core than a lot of their best work but eminently more fun — they even make that weird break with the growls sound like something that the kids at the club would have some kind of preordained move for.
And this video! While I’m not sure I ever need to see Megumi leaning from a supercar, it’s hard not to love the absolutely insane mashup of visual elements to back the song. If “wildly violent video game action” doesn’t get you, what about “okay so maybe we’re in a Puffy video from 1999?” or “we’re doing that heavy saturation technique to make sure that your emotions are sufficiently manipulated, is it working” Just cool as hell all around. I mean, front to back it’s clear that the premise and setting do make their own kind of sense and there’s meant to be a little story being told, and that’s great; I speak of a what-a-weird-ingredients-list kind of reaction, not a sum-of-its-parts.
Twelve singles in, a whole-ass membership overhaul, and I’m not convinced that Zenkimi has missed so much as a half-step. It’s great to see — expect more good things to come, obviously!
*Not in a positivity kind of way, and in no way referring to ska or reggae of the like!
