My thoughts on “Space Hero”, the debut single from unknown.

Release Date: May 5th 2021

Tracklist

1. Space Hero

It always makes me curious just what exactly it is that goes into naming an Idol group. Let’s face it, there have been some pretty memorable group names over the years and some have been for better reasons than other’s that’s for sure. Having a distinct name is pretty advantageous I would imagine as it would make it easier to search your group on social media and such and many groups do tend to go this route…but then there are the ones who go in completely the opposite direction.

unknown are a very new group at the time of me writing this article, having just debuted in the Spring of 2021. They boast a line-up of six members and the concept is that they’re Idol heroes in space who are fighting to save the world…seems vaguely familiar somehow but I won’t dwell too much on that. The group is produced by a man called Peanut Butter Kōchō who also produces another group called My Best Friend and the musical style here is described as a mix of Shoegaze, Alternative Rock, regular old Rock music and some odd time signatures. Sounds pretty promising to me.

I’ll admit that I know pretty much nothing about this group coming into this review but I kinda saw it there when putting together one of the recent Last Week in Digitals and something about it made me think it might be cool to check out. The song was actually being used as the ending theme of the TV Tokyo variety show Otoryu for the month of May so clearly some people already think rather highly of it. Well, time to find out for myself if unknown are a group that we should all be paying much closer attention to, so with that being said let’s take a listen and see how their debut release shapes up.

“Space Hero” gets off to a very fast start, with little time for any sort of build-up before there’s a fully formed instrumental and a vocal track flowing into your ears. There’s definitely a pretty clear Alt Rock feel to things early doors here and there’s a slightly non-typical time signature to it all as well so in that regard we’re very much getting what was advertised it would seem. The vocals are fairly simple by comparison, being delivered in a nice bright, natural tone and sort of lifting what might otherwise feel like a heavy instrumental arrangement along with the help of a string section that’s offering a melody or two in the background as well. Speaking of which, there are some nice hooks both from the lyrics as well as the instrumental side and they do a good job of tying all of this together with the self-imposed odd time signatures of the track and it actually ends up being quite catchy in the end too.

The choruses do a feel a little weak to me personally though, which I think is more to do with the ethereal Shoegaze-y style they went with more than the actual lyrics or the delivery. I don’t know, it kinda just feels like it could have had a bit more impact if they’d pushed a bit harder in the direction that they were clearly going in but maybe that’s just me. Outside of that though this is a pretty nice little Alt Rock song with some well placed, very complimentary elements being borrowed from other style and the members all put in a good shift vocally too, though like I said I think there’s a lot more potential to be realized there as time goes on.

Considering I picked this single up to review on a whim I think I got a lot more out of it than I bargained for. unknown are a super new group but this is a pretty solid debut for them and they’ve definitely made a positive first impression on me. I can easily recommend “Space Hero” to anyone looking for more Alt Rock from their Idol listening and I’d say the track is worth checking out for its use of Shoegaze and elements of string instruments alone personally. Something a touch different from the usual Digital Hardcore, screaming brutality that seems to be the norm these days.

It’s still early days for unknown as a group and let’s face it, trying to look them up is not easy in the slightest and they also have all of the other challenges that new groups face in these uncertain times too. Who know where they’ll be 6 months to a year from now but the music sounds promising and their music has already been picked up by a TV show being produced by a prominent station so that’s probably better than most right now at least. Guess we’ll have to wait and see but I’ll keeping an eye on this one I think, I’m definitely curious to hear what some of their other songs sound like that’s for sure.