Labels: Golden Shiny Wire Of Hope
Review by: Tom Sloan
There’s only a couple of bands that inspire the highly unnecessary obnoxious-collecter-fan-boy side of me these days, one of them being Die, Emperor! Die!. Off went the well-hidden green money, and 6 weeks later back came a box full of veritable delights from those wonderful people at Friends Forever records, including live cassettes, a charity-shop t-shirt, a nice letter, and this rather fine slab of emo-awesomeness. D.I.Y rocks.
The record wasn’t actually released by Friends Forever, and I can’t say who’s release it actually is because it seems I’m missing an insert (either that or it’s a classic case of a most emo bit of under-labelling).
I am presuming the missing insert contained some information on Toru Okada, because all I’ve got is their name printed on the front of a bit of brown card. Here’s some information though; they’re very, very good indeed. It all starts slowly in an almost Mineral-esque bit of warmth and sadness, before gradually building up to shrieks and tears being shed desperately left right and centre courtesy of 2 or more vocalists, whilst the guitars get louder but somehow stay warm and pretty. A sure fire way of impressing me. Then it all breaks down again; people start talking through the tears, whilst guitars are picked delightfully. Sadder than sad. Toru Okada are probably astoundingly derivative of that-mid-90’s-band-I-haven’t-discovered-yet, but they work on the same level as Portrait and the two kids on the b-side of this record. This song bloody kills me.
The DED song I imagine was on their demo, as mr. Collective put this on a mix-cd for me a fair while back. It starts with clean guitar before those “”(insert superlative about how intense and desperate his vocals are without using the words “intense’ or “desperate’)- come in and wrench my attention away from whatever I was thinking about. The guitar part gets messed up, the vocals wrench some more “” they’re too good, raw, and too inspiring.
My favourite 7″ for ages.