Written by: ASGI TK
It’s time for another new review! This time, I’ll be reviewing Evolution, the latest album release by Kazha. If you still aren’t sure who this band is, be sure to check them out here or find out more from their official home page! Before I begin though, let’s take a look at the track list, shall we?
1. Wake Up II (Wake Me Up)
2. You Became the Light
3. Breathe Again
4. Face Your Fears
5. Forever Yours
6. One Hundred Years
7. Frozen
8. Break into Pieces
9. Tomorrow
10. Blend & Fly
By the way, you can purchase this album via iTunes and Google Play.
Just by glancing through the track list, I already feel as if there might be a lot of valuable lessons to be learnt from this album. Each and every song title seems to give the impression that there is some great meaning behind it. Without further ado, on to the album’s first track!
Track One: ‘Wake Up II’. So why the ‘II’? To be honest, I don’t know for certain but they do have a song titled ‘Wake Up’ on their 2010 album, Overture. Could this be the sequel to it? Anyhow, this one is a great start to the album (assuming you didn’t hit shuffle). It has a great rhythm and isn’t too light pop or heavy rock. It’s so well-balanced that I can’t help but get excited for this album, as opposed to feeling fed up right from the get-go because of some bad opening track... The lyrics are really well written, too; I especially appreciated the sense of irony and other techniques they used to express their thoughts. A very good example is how the song begins with, ‘Wake me up into your dream.’ Now this gets me hyped up to want to hear the album out to the very end!
Track Two: Next up is ‘You Became the Light’, which is a really fantastic song but then, I’ll spare you the pain of going through an over-detailed play-by-play of every single track on this album. To find out more, you can purchase it yourselves!
Track Three: It’s still only the third track so we are barely into it yet. I love the instrumentals here. It just sort of captures me and I find myself following along and enjoying the whole thing from start to finish. Although I didn’t go through the previous track for this review, let me just hint out that it and this song seem to be closely related. Right now, I’m really expecting even more connections between the songs to become apparent soon...
Track Four: ‘Face Your Fears’. Face it. No beating around the bush with this song. To sum it up, it seems to be saying that there is simply no meaning in ‘trying’ to face up to our own fears; it is up to us as individuals to break down our own mental barriers. If not, we might just lose ourselves... Oh, if you hadn't realized, this song is the shortest out of all ten tracks on the album. Succinct, direct and to the point! A work of genius.
Track Five: What a sweet title. It’s not easy to just declare ‘Forever Yours’. The lyrics portray some very strong feelings for the other party, to the extent that I could call the protagonist a ‘slave’ of love. No doubt it is splendid and all that somebody this dedicated still exists. However, in my personal opinion, there is certainly no need to make such big sacrifices in the name of ‘love’. Sometimes, we have to still consider the possibility of betrayal. Not to be paranoid, but we have to expect the unexpected. And it’s not that I hate this song either, although I can’t say that the lyrics really hit home for me...
Track Six: ‘One Hundred Years’. Definitely not a short span of time, but why this title? Let us delve a little deeper then, shall we? It’s certainly a very light song that could probably be quite relaxing. Somehow, I get the feeling that it might actually be quite a smart move to have placed this one in the middle of the album so that listeners get a bit of a ‘refresher’ instead of slowly getting worn down with feels. Unfortunately though, this song was a bit of a sad one, too. It actually reminds me of the theme song from ‘Final Fantasy VIII’. (I won’t go into depth here as to why but those who are still unfamiliar with this awesome game, especially its story, should give it a try.) While Faye Wong’s ‘Eyes on Me‘ – the theme song in question – is great, I believe that ‘One Hundred Years’ could easily replace it and do just as well for the game. The song explains its use of the phrase as a form of exaggerated sadness. Brilliant that.
Track Seven: ‘Let it go, let it go...’ Wait, NO. This isn't a new Disney cover, is it? Jokes aside, this song instantly changes the mood from ‘One Hundred Years’ back to the semi-heavy mood. In general, I would describe this song as kind of drawing on the ‘darker thoughts’ of life. Negativity is much more evident on this track than with any of the other songs... A sign of things to come later on in the album, perhaps?
Track Eight: Heading on to the eighth track on this album, we have ‘Break Into Pieces’. Initial thoughts just by judging from the title led me to the conclusion that this song would not merely be about something like glass shattering into pieces but definitely have something deeper going for it... Apart from vocalist Kazuha describing herself as ‘breaking into pieces’, it also implies a level of hatred towards someone to the extent that she expresses wanting to ’break‘ him or her if she ever saw them reflected in a mirror(?).
But the greatest wonder is who that someone might be? I’m really curious to find out. Could it be...herself? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think! Regardless, this song has a great rhythm and is very catchy, probably of the tracks on this album that are particularly worthy of the repeat button.
Track Nine: ‘Tomorrow’ is another day. Or so they say. (I beg to differ.) How does this song portray tomorrow? Well, from listening to the lyrics, including ‘you and me always together’ and ‘I’ll be there for you... I’ll be there for your smile’, it feels as if though it is something like a one-sided relationship. The singer loves someone a lot but that someone may be treating her like a normal friend. However, this is just my take on it and may not represent the actual meaning behind it...
Track Ten: Here it is – the final song! It was definitely a brilliant move to place ‘Blend & Fly’ as the last track. With its upbeat instrumentals, it seems to clear away the dark skies of previous tracks. This is something I can totally believe as the ‘closing statement’ for the album. Simply perfect. (And yes, I’m not going through this finale in detail either; you guys will have to find out for yourselves!)
In conclusion, this album is quite a catch! I really give this band props for their stellar effort in arranging the track list to allow the listener to have the best possible experience of their music. Of course, nothing’s ever perfect though and I’ll briefly go through some aspects that I believe could have been improved on for this album or individual songs. I can’t quite put my finger on it exactly but I actually had to play back some songs a few times before I could catch what the lyrics were supposed to be. It may have been more to do with the pronunciation of some of the words than anything else, which made it hard for me to accurately make out what was being sung. Regardless, this issue can easily be solved and I really believe that I will see improvements by the band in their future releases. Also mentioned earlier, the awkward transition from ‘One Hundred Years’ to ‘Frozen’ should have been more carefully considered. I would have preferred ‘Tomorrow‘ to go after ‘One Hundred Years’ myself, but I guess there must be a legitimate reason for why the band chose the order they did.
To close this review off, I would like to say that I’m in no way a representative of anybody else. The content of this review is just my own personal views of Kazha’s music. Either way, whether you like or didn't like my review, I would be so grateful if you could leave some suggestions about any areas I could do better on! Thank you all for reading this review!
Special thanks to Nesshin Music for providing the music!
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