For the last 11 years, 12012 has been a huge fixture in the visual rock scene making their debut on Kisaki’s record label, “Under Code Productions,” alongside other massive Visual Kei stars. Their career has had a number of ups and downs ever since including a brief hiatus between their fifth and sixth full-length albums. The hiatus began as the band was becoming progressively more pop/rock and veering away from their VK roots only to come back harder and darker than ever with their self-titled album in 2012. After getting some pretty harsh reviews from long-time fans, the band didn’t necessarily change direction again, but they did start favoring quality over quantity. Since their self-titled comeback, 12012 has released 3 EPs including this year’s incredible XII.
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| 1. Vicious of Absolution 2. Story of a Different Dimension 3. The Red 4. Alone 5. Aqua |
"Vicious of Absolution" is an absolutely perfect start to this too-short EP. The song has an ambience of their very-early work and is true to typical visual rock form. While I’ve always enjoyed Wataru’s vocals, his recent work has been extremely dark and focusing more on the harsh vocals rather than his cleaner, more melodic singing. The opener to XII shows not only his talent as a singer, but also Hiroaki’s composition skills. The general air and feel of the song is true blue visual rock. Between the liberal use of piano and heavy cords and powerful melodies, it’s hard to find one particular thing to like most about this song. Coming down from the high of the opener, 12012 gives fans the very ambiguously-genred "Story of A Different Dimension." This one uses more electronic, almost hip-hop influences than it’s predecessor, but fails to leave an overall impression besides the fact it wasn’t all around a bad song.
The single most different song on XII is Wataru’s own composition, "The Red." It recalls their self-titled album and follow up EP, Deicida of Silence, in it’s general heaviness and relies heavily on Wataru’s harsh vocals. What I like most about the song are the rhythmic guitars, they set a great pace for a song that becomes a little too long by the end. While I do enjoy a hard 12012 song every now and then, what the song desperately needs is a fat-trimming. At almost 6 minutes, the song really doesn’t change up the pattern set within the first minute or two. The contrast between "The Red" and it’s follow up song, "Alone," is staggering. Alone is a mid-tempo ballad that is almost a toned-down "Vicious of Absolution." Both songs feature piano, clean vocals, and gorgeous melodies; but the overall difference between the two songs is that Alone’s chorus is more availably catchy and the mood is more somber than "Vicious of Absolution’s." While "Alone" may be a great composition and beautifully sung, it isn’t the sole ballad on the album and doesn’t even compare to the enormous EP closer, "Aqua."
The final track that 12012 gave us before their second indefinite hiatus is "Aqua," an absolutely perfect song to go out on. Less enthusiastic fans of the band may not find the beauty in the song that long time fans do, factoring in the fact that it’s a ballad and its considerable length. However, the composition and vocal talent are there. The lyrics are more or less the same over the course of the almost-ten-minute track, but they are nonetheless hard-hitting. The track is very deep, bordering on depressing leading up to what isn’t really a typical chorus, but is more the climax of the song where Wataru sings “ 愛してくれない 優しい偽り 愛してくれない 冷たい微笑み,” which means “Please love me, with a gentle lie. Please love me, with your cold smile.”
All in all, the EP shows a great variety of songs and doesn’t generally become too repetitive. I strongly recommend this album to long-time 12012 fans and would suggest to newer fans of the band to at least try it out. Let it grow on you and you may find that XII will become a very treasured release by one of the best bands to come from the visual rock movement. Please support 12012 by buying XII here on CDJapan and hope to see them back to making music soon!
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