The fox god has fallen asleep - A review of Kitsune Metaru's Seiko to Eiko

Chilean quintet Kitsune Metaru offers a mixture of electronic pop music and elements of heavy and power metal in the key of kawaii metal pioneers Babymetal. The band's debut New Order Kitsune was nothing but a curious side note of slightly below average quality. Seiko to Eiko is even worse as it's completely forgettable. Kawaii metal is usually surprising, quirky and extravagant as it will provoke strong controversial reactions. This record here is best described as inoffensive background music. 

The guitar riffs are so simplistic that they fail to leave a deeper impression. The rhythm section is a little bit more dynamic but rarely given the chance to take the lead. The electronic elements work well but are too scarcely employed. The band's new vocalist has an average melodic voice that is neither good nor bad and therefore completely exchangeable. The mixture of Spanish lyrics and Japanese stylistics still doesn't gel. The album feels like an uninspired rehash of the first release. One almost gets the impression that the six new tracks on here are those that were deemed not good enough to be included on the debut. 

Speaking of six songs, this record really doesn't offer value for money. While the debut still had nine tracks plus an alternative version of one song, this release only includes six new song plus three live tunes that are ironically lacking any concert atmosphere. Perhaps these songs were meant to give us an idea how the new singer interprets tracks from the band's debut release but the three live tracks feel like they were lazily copied and pasted onto this release to make it a full length record instead of an extended play. If you take away these three unimpressive live songs, you only get twenty-six minutes of new material. 

While New Order Kitsune could still be considered an intriguing oddity for genre fans, Seiko to Eiko is a lazy effort by the numbers that doesn't have anything in common with the vivid quintessence of kawaii metal that gave a breath of fresh air to the metal genre about five years ago. It's great to see bands outside of Japan inspired by this genre but Kitsune Metaru's approach to it is simply stated unimpressive.

Final rating: 25%