Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Let Me Hear Review

Fear and Loathing is a very interesting band musically.  They range from electronica metal, to flat out hardcore metal.  This gives the band a sound that is very unique and something you really don't here out of too many other bands.  Their unique style has propelled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to fame in Japan and has helped them achieve a good size audience among other metal lovers around the world.  Their songs are featured in many anime shows, like their Just Awake song as the ending in the Hunter X Hunter anime, and this one as the opening for the Parasyte anime.  Considering all this, it is hard for me not to want to talk about one of their songs.

Musically, there is a lot going on in this song.  First thing I want to point out is the guitar playing of Sxun and Taiki in this song.  It has a good heavy sound that really gives the song a good energetic boost.  The keyboard playing of Keisuke Minami are also pretty good and is part of that electronica feel that I mentioned earlier. When it comes to the vocals, I like the singing melody of the clean vocalist, So Takeda.  My one criticism of  his singing is the fact that he is singing the entire song in auto tune.  I think the song would be fine without it from my perspective.  However,  I do believe that he does it for the electronic feel and I will give him credit for at least not trying to hide it like many other artists have done.  He is basically using it as an instrument.  The composition of this song is the most interesting thing about this song.  Through out the song they go trough many types of metal and music genres.  At first it is an electronic metal song, then goes into new metal, to metal core, back to the electronic style, and ends with metal core once more.  Even though it changes the tone often, it actually works.  The transitions are executed very well and the song doesn't feel choppy which very hard to pull off if you are going to do a song like this, but these guys did it very well.  

Lyrically, this song works pretty well for the anime it is attached to.  Lyrically this song is about humanity believing that it is superior on Earth and taking it for granted.  It's about finding out humanity's real place and purpose in the world.  This matches the Parasyte anime theme perfectly and is very effective in portraying the anime's message.  However, outside the anime, the song lyrics don't really stand out all that much. The lyrics are not bad, but for a song that is as musically driven as this one they are not that notable.  

While the lyrics may not stand out that much, the music certainly does.  With the deep heavy guitar and the interesting musical transitions this is defiantly one of the more interesting songs I have heard.  The band did not take a traditional route musically and really experimented with song transitions that you really haven't seen anywhere else except some prog metal.  For their different song structure and successfully making that structure sound good, I give this song a 4.5 out of 5.