Music Review: Asian Kung-Fu Generation

Alright Fellas, this is my first music review, so cut me some slack, I promise I'll come back to these guys after I get better at rating.

I've been listening to Asian Kung-Fu Generation since I heard them open for Naruto or Full Metal Alchemist back in the day. Since then they've done a couple anime openings, the most recent and well known being Bleach's 8th Opening "After Dark". The Band's been around since 1996 but never recieved much attention until the 2000's. Their music stays pretty consistent in terms of sound and distinct Rock flavor, although this should in no way shine a bad or repetitive light on them, it's easy to tell when your listening to an Asian Kung-Fu song, but the same can be said about Trent Reznor, but we all love listening to NIN, right?

Alright on to the actual music, I picked up my first real album by them when i was in Japan and we were renting music. I searched out some Kung-Fu Generation and found Kimi Tsunagi Five M, one of thier earlier albums from 2003. I really enjoyed the album because it got me away from the massively popular Haraka Katana & Re:Write, that was posted all over the intenet. Much of the music tunes in to the same vibe you get when listening to the other two, the lead singer Masafumi Goto has a nice range in vocals, but he does tend to, eventually, get up to that stressed scream/yell we know ever so well from Re:Write. While talking about Goto, it should be known that he's also the bands rhythm guitarist, which lends us a reason why the music portion of thier work stays relatively consistent, its difficult to play mean riffs and shout your lungs out simultaneously, if you've ever tried it. The music is all about the rhythm guitar though,the lead seems to be there just to bring some fast and eloquent variation to the hard chords being played by Goto.

I'd definitely reccomend this band to any fan of harder, faster paced rock, especailly if your not put off by the fact that their screaming japanese lyrics at you. If you are a rocker, I feel this band has a pretty good staying power in terms of replay value, the only thing you'd want to avoid is listen to a song like "Shindou Satoshi" when your down, because you won't be able to seperate the song from the feeling. This does work in reverse though, whenever I listen to "Haruka Katana" I feel like I need to go running. As for music videos. you just have to watch the one for Kimi to iu Hana to get the quarky kind of band they are, or Haruka Katana for thier more garage band apperance. How ever see them they tend to be pretty cool looking no matter what thier wearing (suits and wings in After Dark :) ).

Check them out here:

Kimi to iu Hana: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=1CUqWDL2Sn0&feature=related

Haraka Katana: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=HnvsJDD2CV0&feature=related

After Dark: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=8ko0zp2aFew&feature=related