ACIDMAN - Returning
By Owen • Feb 3rd, 2007 • Category: Japan, Opinion, Videos, music, rockWith green chord, ACIDMAN’s latest album just around the corner — it’s due for a February 7th release — it looks like their promotional efforts are in full force, trying to get the word out to any unfortunate souls who haven’t heard of them. green chord looks set to be yet another successful concept album in the vein of and world, their previous release, and although Returning features none of the nature elements present in their previous PVs, Slow Rain and Prism no Yoru, it does exactly what a promotional video should — it gets you all hyped up and excited about what’s to come.
The PV itself was well edited, but as the theme of the video happened to be “professional musicians doing their thing” it came across as repetitive and dull at times. You see Nobuo, Masatoshi, and Ichigo going about their daily recording studio activities. There’s some split screen shots, and footage of them doing their thing at concerts (COUNTDOWN JAPAN’s Tokyo gig among them), with the rest of the video split between close-ups of them playing, close-ups of their instruments, close-ups of the AV equipment, and some random candid moments.
The song, however, was a different story. Nobuo evidently should stick to singing in Japanese — the entire song was so convoluted and Engrishy that the only line I managed to decipher was “I have to accept everything”, and even that with some effort, thanks to Nobuo pronouncing ‘accept’ as ‘except’. Language barrier aside, it’s one of the most upbeat and refreshing songs to come out of ACIDMAN in a long while, and as an added bonus, the chorus breaks in a mere 30 seconds into the song, without the obligatory minute-long intros and even longer verses that fans would have come to expect.
*this PV review was brought to you by Owen, new writer for SparkPlugged and music aficionado, who believes that the rock trinity of ACIDMAN, Incubus, and Oceansize will save the eardrums of all who believe in the value of music, rather than record labels.
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Great article Owen, thanks and welcome to the team!
Yeah, visually “Returning” isn’t very exciting but us fans don’t expect stunning PVs from ACIDMAN. They are much rather great live performers so I guess a PV with them mostly performing live is perfectly fitting. I agree.
I love the actual song and I’m even more excited for green chord (I didn’t think that was possible :P).
I think that the music is stronger without the concert footage. There is only so much you can put in before it feels like you really just missed out on a great show.
There are some cool shots and moments in the video, but not as cool as the song itself.
Thanks for the feedback, guys, appreciate it a lot. (:
Shay: I guess after Slow Rain’s “wtf” moments (playing without an amp in the middle of a field is lol) and Prism no Yoru’s odd sense of being with the pseudo-Aurora Borealis, I’d come to expect another PV in the same vein. Granted, it was unique in that sense, but I’d have to agree with you about not expecting stunning PVs.
Toad: Seconded. I guess they probably didn’t want to detract from the experience of the song and thought that misc footage would suffice, or maybe they couldn’t find an appropriate script for the PV.