01. The World of Mercy
02. DOZING GREEN (acoustic ver.)
03. GRIEF (live)
The World of Mercy starts off with some blompy electronic bass/kick with a bell and guitars sprinkled on top. Although I love electronic elements in metal when they complement the other instruments, in my opinion that electronic bass sticks out too much; it's just too loud in the mix, especially when it reappears later on. The same can be said of the plucky almost gamelan-esque synth that pops up in the latter half of the song, too, which for a note or two sounds like it's literally clipping. I'm pretty sure that wasn't intentional...?
I mean, sure, the people who did the mixing and mastering are probably more to blame than the band members themselves (especially since this song suffers from the same problem their latest full-length had, as in everything being squashed by the low end), but still. When the acoustic second track could be argued to have more punch, that might suggest something being wrong...
Okay, enough about how it could've been mixed/mastered better. I don't want people to start thinking that this is a negative review.
When the vocals first come in, it immediately starts to develop an atmosphere. Once the entire band kicks in, pounding drums and heavy riffs galore as usual, and the song takes several turns towards the epic. Their longest songs tend to be their most epic, and this one really does reach epic proportions with absolutely smashing riffs, lush leads and a choir as a cherry on top at just the right parts.
One thing that's missing is an epic guitar solo. Seriously. If this song had an epic guitar solo, that would make it an absolute masterpiece, but it doesn't have one. There's a lead bit that serves to boost the epicness of the song, but it's not a full-fledged solo and that's kind of disappointing, even if it's not like every epic song has to have one. It's just slightly unexpected that there isn't one in this one.
Anyway, what really crowns this song in my opinion is that part around 8:40 with the deep growls and a somehow heavier variant of the riff with a more powerful drum beat. That part, and everthing that comes after, take this song from being a really good song to being a great song. It's such a sudden change, yet so natural that even on the first listen it becomes clear that the song wouldn't feel right without it.
As for the acoustic version of DOZING GREEN, it's exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less. While I've always liked the song, this acoustic version just isn't as interesting as I expected beforehand. It is beautiful, of course, and I'm glad they made it, but it especially ends really abruptly.
The live recording of GRIEF is pretty self-explanatory, nothing to remark on that but I have to rant some more about mixing: this is mixed better than The World of Mercy itself, which is pretty weird. Just sounds crunchier, and most importantly the low end doesn't squeeze everything else down. Oh well.
If, instead of DOZING GREEN and GRIEF, they'd included an acoustic version of maybe 鴉 and a live recording of Lotus or something as the B's, this single would've been the most epic single ever. I'm aware that saying "X could be better if it was Y instead" is annoying, but I'm just saying that because The World of Mercy is such an epic song, epic B's would have made this single as a whole more epic.
What I really want to hear is an acoustic version of Macabre, or a new and heavy version of 蒼い月 and/or Mazohyst of Decadence, or just any kind of re-recording of GARDEN or 予感 for nostalgia's sake. But we all know that they're never going to make any of those, because they don't want their fans to have a thousand simultaneous heart attacks.
...oops, sorry, got a little carried away with fantasies there. Time to sum up the review with a rating:
Enjoyability: 9/10
Relistenability: 9/10
Memorability: 9/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 7/10
Originality: 6/10
Epicness: 9/10
Nutshell: If this is representative of what their next album is going to sound like, I can't wait!
