Post-hardcore band
THREE LIGHTS DOWN KINGS recently made their major debut on Sony Music, and their first full-length album
LiVERTY is bursting with excitement for their new beginning.
While
FIRST IMPACT gets the album off to a loud, but slightly forgettable start,
Everybody!! Up to You quickly makes up for it. A fast, guitar-driven rock song with hopeful lyrics, it sets the stage for the rest of the album, which revolves almost completely around the themes of embracing the future and positive change.
The standout track of
LiVERTY is easily
As I’m Alive. The nostalgic video game sounds, soaring synth, aggressive drumming and catchy choruses all combine to give it a fresh, inspiring feel. The contrast between frontman
Glielmo Ko-ichi’s autotuned clean vocals and guitarist
u-ya’s screams is utilized to its fullest, with the two men trading back and forth frequently and
u-ya punctuating the song with passionate cries of “Wake up!! Stand up!!” that are hard to ignore. It’s no wonder that it was released as a single.
BRAINWASH is another obvious highlight, although the version featured on this album has less punch than the original, with less emphasis on the drums and guitar, as well as a strangely mellow intro that feels like a complete mismatch with the frantic energy of the song.
3LDK have their sights firmly set on the future, and it’s incredibly obvious in their lyrics. Almost too much so. Even the party rock song
Monster Disco is filled with lines like “Let's start the endless journey / Say, good-bye to passing days”. In fact, there’s so much talk about hope for the future that the songs that aren’t directly addressing it almost seem out of place (e.g.
All Out Attack). Granted,
All Out Attack is a bit odd in general, with lyrics about getting ready to take on an alien invasion, as well as a sudden electro section in the middle that seems to drop in out of nowhere just to mix things up.
The songs are all solid and catchy, with the band somehow striking just the right balance between big pop-rock choruses, relentless, frantic synth, springy game sound effects and hardcore screaming and breakdowns, but many of them suffer from the same problem; awkward English lyrics. It’s easy enough to get the gist of most of the songs, so it is not such a big deal when just listening to the album, but singing along might be a bit of a challenge.
Glielmo’s pronunciation seems decent on its own, but between the autotune garbling his voice and some unfortunate grammatical errors in the lyrics, it becomes almost impossible to decipher what he is trying to say when tracks start to pick up speed.
Glielmo’s English is stronger on a few songs, particularly
FIRST IMPACT and
SILENCE and FIRE, but after listening to the last track
Dear Future…, which is almost entirely in Japanese, it might be nice to see a bit more Japanese or at least a little more proofreading on future releases.
The band's pop-punk side comes out on
Welcome To Splendid Light and
Dear Future…, closing the album on a very upbeat note.
Welcome to Splendid Light is just as cheerful as its title sounds, with mostly clean vocals, a wo-oh chorus and lots of sing and clap-along moments—the guitar and synth even seem to hum the wo-oh-oh’s back to
Glielmo in places. A fun song about letting go of your past self, young adults cringing over their old pictures can surely relate to lines like “Can you believe what you used to be?”.
Dear Future… has a similar feel, but its cute "Step by step, step my way" chorus is balanced out by loud guitar and drums and some of
u-ya’s most intense screams.
Overall, while the lyrics seem to have gotten a little lost in translation in places,
THREE LIGHTS DOWN KINGS have brought an undeniably catchy, energetic collection of songs to the table, and
LiVERTY is a very promising start for this new stage of their career.
The PV for
As I’m Alive can be viewed below.
