My thoughts on “décadence”, the second digital single from KAQRIYOTERROR.

Release Date: February 2nd 2021

Tracklist

1. décadence

For a while now I’ve kind of struggled to keep up with various aspects of life, hobbies and what have you. I’m not really sure why that is when I’m spending more time at home these days than I have in a very long time but for whatever reason I’ve let some stuff slip and my Idol fandom is no exception. Where I once followed as much of this stuff as I could almost religiously, these days I really do let a lot of things pass me by. So much so that I almost ended up missing yet another codomomental group going through a major line-up overhaul. Oh well, some things never change eh?

KAQRIYOTERROR are the latest group in question to be going through some changes, having recently said goodbye to both DKI and Namidamaru at the end of January. That left the group in a pretty precarious position of only having 3 members with Sumomo being the most senior, which kinda blew my mind while doing some research for this article. So then enter a familiar face to save the day. Yamakomaro has returned to the group that she very much played a large part in getting to where it is today. What exactly that means remains to be seen, but I like many others am rather excited by this unexpected development.

“décadence” is the group’s first release under the current line-up, and their second digital single in all. It follows up last year’s decent but ultimately not very exciting and somewhat unfocused “Avant-gardE 0 point” album (review here) so for me personally I’m hoping that this is something of a fresh start for the group and that Yamakomaro can provide an X-factor of sorts that can perhaps go some way to recapturing the sort of personality and energy that KAQRIYOTERROR debuted with. Am I asking for far too much? Probably but a guy can dream can’t he? Will this single be everything I want and more, or more of the same? So many questions so what say we go about trying to answer a few of them, how does that sound?

The first thing that struck me about “décadence” before even having pressed play was just how short the track is at a hair shy of 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That isn’t a lot of time to be giving yourselves so hopefully they were able to take full advantage of it. Unsurprisingly they waste no time getting right to the point of the track, that being a full on electronic assault on the senses with a very chaotic instrumental that goes some way to harking back to the group’s earlier musical direction, so that was pretty nice to hear. The vocals are heavily vocoded, at times rather distorted too and cover a decent range of styles from clean Pop tones to more Rap influenced styles of delivery so there’s a decent amount of variety going on, though it’s kinda hard to make out much of what is actually being sung so a lot of the time you’re focusing more on how the melodies or flows sound rather than the actual lyrical content, at least in my listening experience anyway. A shame too because there is actually a decent amount of English going on in there somewhere but perhaps that’s even more of a reason to obscure things the way that they did, heh.

Yeah, not quite the Kaqriyo Terror Architect of old and I would have appreciated a bit stronger of a melodic component than we ended up with but otherwise “décadence” is a pretty strong track with a good amount of personality to it. It might be a little bit too chaotic for some though but then again I’m not sure why you’d be listening to most of KAQRIYOTERROR’s recent output if that wasn’t your thing already in the first place.

It’s way too early to tell what, if anything this song means for the future musical direction of KAQRIYOTERROR as a group. Definitely a much more interesting proposition than much of the group’s last album and depending on where they were in the creative process on this one when Yamakomaro decided to dive back in you could definitely make the argument that her return has had a rather positive effect on things already. Or that could just be complete conjecture on my part, either way I liked a lot of what I heard here so that’s a plus in my book.

I think the main thing coming out of this digital single for me is the question of where do we go from here? codomomental are kinda hard to predict lately so it’s hard to say but I personally hope they don’t waste a ton of time going back and redoing previous efforts again with Yamakomaro, even though they’re going to have to do it to a degree just to be able to play shows. New music and (re)establishing KAQRIYOTERROR’s group identity would be time better spent in my opinion but I’m just along for the ride so who knows but hopefully we’ll hear more from the group sooner rather than later no matter what that might be.