Not so Merry anymore…

May 9, 2010 psychoballerina
Tags: merry, music, visual kei

One can get too close to music, too involved in the fortunes of a band, too in love with a band. It’s a strange kind of relationship actually. It is not just confined to teenage groupie love but, thanks to the power of music to affect our very being, loving and following a band can have a huge impact on one’s life. We enjoy and feel the art that they create for us. Music comforts us or raises our spirits through any number of moods and the band we feel closest to can do this best of all. Through attending concerts and listening at home we can get closer. Unlike the liking of an actor or sportsman, the relationship with a band can become somehow deeper, and when things take a less than desirable turn the pain is almost akin to heartbreak.

I’m not surprised by people who cry when their band breaks up or takes a direction that isn’t so appealing but I could never fully understand it. This was until yesterday when Merry, a band very dear to my heart announced a radical change in direction.

The visual kei world is a rather dark world, as was told in the revealing interview posted on Tokyo Damage Report a month or so ago. While that interview was a mixture of truths, half truths and elaborations, the basic theme served as a warning about the control of major labels like Free Will and PSC. Merry have become Free Will and the change in them is so sudden and drastic that it seems almost forced upon them.

At the live at Akasaka Blitz, a live we believed was to be a special day, the band, while playing a blistering setlist, failed to convince us of their ease on stage. They lacked a warmth that they usually have for both fans and each other. There was little more than a straight play through of the songs. No smiles, no quirks like Gara’s headstands, no flag waving or mindless chatter from Nero. Yuu, the guitarist, looked in pain a lot of the time. He looked as though this was the end of a band he had built up. It wasn’t noticeable mid live but rather an image that developed in the aftermath. When Gara told us that Merry were to become an ‘even more amazing band’ he spoke so coldly it was as if he didn’t believe in his own words.

Finally, the new single was announced. The title was our first clue, a title so very un-Merry. A band known for jazz, retrock and eroguro had a single called ‘The Cry Against…’ Then the song played and a bland metal so indistinguishable from Dir en Grey or Gazette filled our ears. It was unlike anything Merry had even been making two months prior. Is this the cause of Yuu’s melancholy perhaps? Song writing has suddenly been wrenched from him and Kenichi to be taken over by cold corporate bods who know what what sells is a sound like Gazette, a sound like Dir en Grey. At that moment you could hear the hearts breaking. As we were given fliers at the door our hearts broke more. Everything had become cold and commercialised and it is hard to not wonder whether this is indeed the much-reputed control of Free Will. The new website is now pushing the fanclub in a way we have never seen before. The money drive is on.

Merry were great for many reasons; their refusal to conform, their quirkiness and their warmth to their fans. They may never have had the greatest fanbase but the band never seemed to mind. They also gave their all for the fans who stuck by them. Gara’s stubbornly fast return to the stage one month after a herniated disc sent him to hospital showed this to us. He was doing it for the fans. The Merry of yesterday and the new Merry are really not like that now. I never thought they could squish a sheep-shaped peg into a gazette-shaped hole but it seems they are trying. And finally, a band who have given me joy over the last nine years has in one moment unwritten everything of that past decade and broken my heart

Entry Filed under: Japanese music

2 Comments Add your own

• 1. Marbe  |  May 10, 2010 at 6:30 pm

  Hi!! I hope that don’t bother you! My comment

  I think like you,I don’t like their new sound at all. The Cry Against isn’t merry!

  But I want and need to believe that it will not be his definitive sound from now on
  I’ll keep on supporting them!

  Reply

  • 2. psychoballerina  |  August 28, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    I have the same feelings. I want to continue my support but it is going to be hard.

    (apologies for my late reply, wp didn’t tell me I had comments ;;)

    Reply

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