The young visual kei band DUALUZ has a second single planned with the title Insult us. Whether this is a sincere request to the fans to come with insults is not very clear. But one thing that is clear is that the band came with a new music video from one of the tracks: Ugly Star.
With Ugly Star singer zL goes straight to the point with a lot of death grunts. If you are only familiar with the music videos of the band, this will probably be surprising. Ugly Star is exactly the opposite of 不可視モノトーン (Fukashi monotonous, invisible monotonous) and EGO. The song has a focus on the harsh vocals and a melodic chorus. This chorus is very attractive to sing along with.
With the previous music videos, you already saw what they have got. It is always waiting and see if a band like this wants to follow the same path or wants to show themselves from a different perspective. It is important they do not deviate too much so that it would not scare off the fans that they just have gathered around them with the previous releases. Ugly Star seems to be a trip to more violent unpolished music, garage rock, but the implementation should still be worked on.
First of all, it is important for the singer to work on his harsh vocals, before he will ruin his vocal cords into time. It seems as if zL is exerting a lot of pressure to get the throat sounds out of his mouth, which doesn’t make it sound natural. This may not be the right word choice. After listening to a lot of metal music that includes death grunts, you will be able to hear the difference between good and bad grunts. Listening to zL’s grunts gives me the feeling that I am suffering from my throat, instead of being able to enjoy it.
Personally, I am a supporter of death grunts, but in Ugly Star they seem too hard for the entire song. Especially when the song turns into the chorus, it is a big turnaround for the singer to sing with clean vocals. The chorus is the piece that quickly lingers in your head, which is a good sign.
The music video is simple: the band is arranged in a circle and the camera rotates around it. The post-processing of the video makes the band looking very dark. As a result, for example, the look of the guitarist looks like he has opted for a combination of a creepy-cute look with hairpins crossed in the hair and panda bear eyes. But when you see him in a close-up it isn’t the case at all. In total is the video not that special and gives the feeling that the band have chosen to focus on the song instead of the music video.
This was also the case in the previous videos, although the content of the video of EGO seemed to be more thoughtful, which made it more playful. But perhaps it could be that this video was made ‘ugly’ deliberately to put more emphasis on the song and the single in general.
Whether Ugly Star is the best song to promote the new single, I will leave this in the middle. It may suit well with the suggestion of the band to ‘insult them’. But nevertheless, the band shows that they dare to bring variety to the music they make. This is quite positive!
Rating: 50/100
