REVIEW: Exist†Trace: DAYBREAK PV

In all honesty, this is the first full video of the band that I have ever watched, and I'm not quite sure what to think. The ladies have been around long enough to have their own niche of fans, who I'm sure awaited and enjoyed this release, but as someone alien to their music, I find myself sitting on a fence.

The album cover is at once eye-catching and forgettable. At a glance, it has a nice balance of colours, and the space is divided well between the band and the album title, also, there is a smooth progression from dark to light in the background as well as the foreground. The members have just the right amount of red and white on them to contrast the cool-colour theme without compromising the overall aesthetically pleasing look. On the other hand, the cover is like every other album cover in the world; it reminds me of everything from Glay to Song Jieun to The Backstreet Boys. There's no quintessential Exist†Trace-ness as far as I can see, and it takes the title of the album a little too literally; anybody can stand in front of a sunrise, I feel like I could just as easily put the Teletubbies with semi-serious expressions in their place.

Photoshop fun! This really does work with anything of five.

Its pretty much the same with actual video. Exist†Trace seems to have made a business of borrowing small details from everywhere and putting them together in a halfway-decent manner. Every five seconds, I feel like I've seen this before, and not in the good way. The band seems to be working their inspiration too literally.
I'm not just talking about her looks here; the way in which she moves and her facial expressions while singing are an exact combination of Kim Heechul and Gackt. I'm not going to blame her for this, though, its just an uncanny resemblance.

Both the garden and the stairs that they use as sets feel like anything Antic Cafe had used when Bou was still around. The parking lot could have been used by just about any band looking to produce on a shoestring budget.

There isn't really much of a plot for me to comment on; they stand around, they play, and the sun rises at the end. It provides an interesting visual of Jyou for the last still, but that's really about it.

The special effects used were a hit-and-miss. There were some clear winners for me here, though.

This one at the beginning, which introduces all the members is confusing, because they show the visuals in sets and then alternate back. It would have been much more successful and smooth if they had the members shown in a conveyor belt-style chain format.

This was one of the better parts of the video for me; the effect is pleasing and goes well with the music at that point. I feel like this would have made a much more distinctive album cover, but maybe it's just me.
Another part of the video that I liked. The MC Escher fan inside of me enjoys symmetry, and its a nice break between two shots of the guitarists walking towards each other. The scene as a whole is interesting, and lends itself well to the point in between the chorus and guitar solo.

The camerawork is neat overall, and changes in time with the changing of pace during the song. If there's one thing I would complain about here, its that the video seems to be of Jyou and The Girls, as opposed to Exist†Trace. I have nothing against Jyou, but it gets boring to watch her do the same thing over and over after a point. The only real camera-time that the members get is during the guitar solo, which was visually interesting; the tension between the two guitarists was a break from the otherwise listless atmosphere of the video. They genuinely looked like they were having fun.

The song itself is...nice. I imagine it would make a good theme song for any anime [In fact, I'm replacing The Hero Without a Name by Antic Cafe with this song in the anime Darker Than Black in my head right now, and it works quite well, actually.] Each of them are competent at what they do. The bass and drums provide a strong platform for the song, but it is almost completely guitar-driven. The solo is fine, although I would have expected something more, like the extremeness brought to the stage by giants like hide and Pata. Somehow, I feel like it didn't do justice to the song by way of being out there, in everybody's faces, and it didn't do justice to the visual intensity of that scene. I like Jyou's voice quite a lot, it is stable and she hits all the notes that she tries. I do feel like the song could have done without her initial WHOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-ing, though. The guitar opening that comes after that is far more sophisticated and a better hook. There is a nice progression from verse to chorus through the song, and it is well-arranged; the number of bars allotted for one sound is just right, and is engaging without being boring. Its nice, but nothing I've never heard before, to be honest.

Overall, I feel like the band is playing it a little too safe for one that has been in the industry for eleven years now. Somehow, there just isn't much that separates them from any other band out there, apart from the fact that they're all women, and that can't be their selling point for much longer; they've got to re-invent their sound and find something that's distinctively theirs. This isn't horrible, but I wouldn't spend my money on it.

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