So last week I had a slight Gackt-related meltdown. You see, I had a very busy November, and somehow I managed to miss the announcement that he’d be releasing an album in December; I found out the day before it came out. Considering how long I’ve been waiting for this album, I couldn’t believe I’d completely missed it. Can you say fandom fail?
Anyway, RE:BORN has nothing new as far as material goes; the tracklist is composed of songs from the multitude of singles he’s put out over the past year. (And when I say multitude, I’m not even exaggerating: the songs on this album come from six singles, and that’s not even counting the other three he put out this year. He’s been very busy, not that I’m complaining.) A majority of the songs came out in June over four straight weeks of singles, which I meant to review and then never really got around to the last three. So it’s high time to do that now, I say.
The album starts off strong with “JESUS -ЯRII-.” It’s different from the version released last November by about forty bonus seconds of rocking out; not much else has changed. I listen to this song almost every morning as my alarm clock — look, Gackt yelling “wake me up” gets me up, okay — so I was hoping for something more substantial, but I’ll take this. “SUDDENLY,” “NO REASON -ЯRII-,” and “IN FLAMES,” a few of the B-sides from the summer singles, follow it well; they’re all great rock tracks. “IN FLAMES” was my favorite song from the summer singles, and somehow it sounds even better here.
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“SAYONARA -ЯRII-” is identical to the version on the Jesus single last fall as far as music goes, but it now begins and ends with sound effects that rather take away from what’s otherwise a gorgeous song. It does, however, lead very well into “GHOST,” which came out last January as Gackt’s introduction to techno. I enjoyed it then and I still like it now, and the same goes for the GHOST single’s B-side, “BLUE LAGOON -深海-“, which follows it here. More than anything else, “BLUE LAGOON – 深海-” makes me think of an underwater sub, and given the war theme of Gackt’s Reminiscence et Requiem II tour (where most of these songs debuted) it works well.
“OBLIVIOUS -顔のない天使-” takes us away from the techno and to a really pretty ballad. Ballads are usually hit or miss with me, but I rather liked this one. It and “MY FATHER’S DAY” finish up the B-sides from the summer singles, and we’re left with the four A-sides in order. “小悪魔ヘヴン” remains a very entertaining song, while “FARAWAY -星に願いを-” is more pop. “FLOWER -ЯRII-” now has Gackt speaking before the song and is still one of my favorites from the summer songs. Finally, “LOST ANGELS” closes the album out beautifully.
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Overall, this is an album I’m going to have on repeat for quite a while. I don’t know what it is exactly — none of these songs are new, and if I’d known the order of the songs I could have been listening to it months ago. There’s just something about having it in official album form that makes it that much better to me. For some reason, I couldn’t get myself to listen to his summer singles that much when they came out, but I feel like I could put this album on repeat for a month and be perfectly content. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand how Gackt does that to me, but I’m not exactly complaining.
Of course, there’s also his latest single, and that might just win out…