An Emotional Monday Match Game

It’s Monday, so let’s get emotional!

The idea for this match-up was sparked a couple weeks ago when the fabulously-named On the Treat Super Season dropped their latest (excellent) single, “Emotion”. That very the same day, melly, over on the Homicidols Discord Server,  recommended GANG PARADE’s “Karada Emotion” for the Homicidols Weekend Radio playlist. This got me thinking about the sheer number of alternative idol songs that incorporate the word, “emotion” into their titles including my favorite track by Q’ulle and that PIGGS tune that keeps getting stuck in my head.

With all of these Emotions vying for our attention, it’s only appropriate we try to sort them out and determine, once and for all, what is the dominant Emotion?

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Death Comes Even for Q’ulle

There’s nothing funny about this anymore, guys.

At least it won’t be in 2019 — Q’ulle, who got avexed as hard as anybody ever got avexed and have been drifting off toward solo and personal projects for a good long while, and who had already lost one member, are going to wind things down over the rest of the year and into next summer, when they’ll finally break up. Their unlikely career and long string of high points makes this one a little less sad than some — you want to congratulate them and give them high-fives, rather than rend your garments — but still. I’m pretty much out of groups from original Homicidols left to cover!

This Is the Very Full Trailer for Q’ulle’s New Album

I hope that everybody was looking forward to Q’ulle’s upcoming album release, their second under Avex, at least half as much as I have been. Arguably the finest purveyors of idorock left alive, the former dance troupe is always at least good and has an upper echelon that most idols, frankly, can only dream of trying to reach. Plus, unlike a lot of projects, they didn’t have to change what they were doing when they went major! They just, like, did even more.

Give this a quick spin:

That’s a lot of previewing to do! Granted, there’s enough music that you’ve heard before (because you are a Q’ulle fan, like all smart people are) that it’s not totally fresh and surprising, but there are some new moves here that I wasn’t prepared for. Yakko’s death growl, for instance.*

The thing released today, so go get it!

*May or may not have happened

Here’s a Clip from Q’ulle’s New Album

Ah, Q’ulle, the dance-troupe-turned-full-blown-idols-with-a-metal-vocalist-among-their-ranks, source of almost boundless fun and remarkably consistent quality going back … holy crap, a pretty long-ass time at this point, and without a single graduation (despite broken bones, even!). Good on them.

While many an idol struggles upon being taken into the deeply exploitative embrace of Avex, Q’ulle’s one of the projects that’s managed to keep churning. Sure, it’s not at the same dizzying rate as they had pre-major debut, but one could say that about just about any idol thing, even the ones that don’t make the majors. What Q’ulle has done in their almost two years with the company is do idorock about as well as anybody can, across a strong series of releases, and now they’re ready for their second major album, due out Jan. 16. “One Way Dream” here is from that! Continue reading

Q’ulle Continues to Prove Their Mastery of Their Domain

Idol rock is, when you get down to it, a perfect beast. Rock music, for all its historical swagger and bluster and preening, is ultimately about rhythms and hooks, which is why it’s always so easily be re-worked with pop sensibilities for people who might prefer to skip the distortion on a Monday morning. Add on top of that idol and its eminent flexibility, and your result is something that just plain oozes crowd-pleasing … when done right. Just like eggs or pizza, it is possible to get this wonderfully simple formula wrong, and then it is very bad, which deserves credit in itself for being so hard to accomplish.

Q’ulle, though, perhaps the modern doyennes of true idol rock, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen them miss. And this new single out in a couple of weeks has all the hallmarks of being right at the top of their body of work:


Taking some cues from Yuzuki, I see

Here’s what I’m taking to be the B-side, which … it’s a nice B-side: Continue reading

I Think This Is What the Kids Mean by ‘Extra’

One of the more interesting developments in idols who do loud music, I think probably ever, has been Q’ulle’s Yukuzi and her project with BLOOD STAIN CHILD, which has in every instance so far yielded sonic madness of a type that somehow actually projects beyond the scope of human understanding and more into a realm in which “idol” and “metal” in combination is something that takes on all aspects of both of those things in totality at exactly the same time. The first album’s release has been part of a drawn-out promotional campaign of ever-increasing musical stakes, as if everybody in the band decided to engage in a perpetual state of one-upmanship.

The latest (and last?) release is called “National Anthem”, and I want to know which country would claim this as their own song, because that country would be the other side of the wormhole from Event Horizon. I mean, listen to this thing:

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I Want to Be in a Q’ulle Dance Video

Note: I do not dance well

Yes, friends, it’s time for the quarterly revisiting of things Q’ulle, which I am relieved to say has not yet been obviated by Yuzuki’s solo spelunk into extreme metal. When we last left our heroes, they were riding their own kind of Avex-era high, doing theme music for what looks like a very 90s kind of TV show. A few months later, their first digital (Avex) single is releasing …

… and there’s the ever-essential, uniquely Q’ulle package of video products to promote it. Continue reading

Yuzuki’s Band Turn Continues to Be Very Loud

In the ongoing saga of Q’ulle’s Yuzuki having probably the most impressive overall up-stepping solo project in contemporary idol (YUZUKINGDOM!), the erstwhile dancer-turned-singer-turned-this continues her BLOOD STAIN CHILD collaboration with a new single that isn’t quite as throat-rippingly nasty as the first track, but isn’t exactly letting you off easy, either:


Somebody explain what “Roskill Lavender” means, please

I like Good Yuzuki vs. Evil Yuzuki, myself. Continue reading

Yuzuki Goes Way Beyond Q’ulle

So after that last little bit of Q’ulle, I was scrolling through their feed for an overview of what all they’ve been up to lately (besides owning so hard, that is), and my eyes caught something that’s what you would probably consider to be a little atypical for the elegant, fashion-line-owning dance idols:

What the heck is that! Why, it’s a solo project from Yuzuki, naturally! Continue reading

Q’ulle Did Great Theme Music

It seems that our old friends in Q’ulle are taking good and generous advantage of their Avex association, too, and for good and cool and on-brand ends at that. My first response to seeing a little bit of buzz around the following was to get all excited about another new album or the like, but it’s actually for a collaboration with something (a show?) called DYNAMITE BOATRACE:


Now that is some quality-ass idorock

This being a Q’ulle release, of course nobody’s going to be satisfied with just that much. Continue reading