The other album is the debut from Lillies and Remains. While it isn't exactly the same sort of monolithic slab of material as the former, their album Part of Grace wins extra sparkly bonus points for being their debut full-length effort. They did previously release a mini-album, but the real test of a band is whether or not they can maintain the correct pacing and high quality needed for a truly great album. Anyone can wright a good song and surround it with some decent filler. It's much tougher to continually wow a listener for a dozen or so songs.

Part of Grace does just that. First off, it breaks with convention in that, while it's the typically poetic, emotional downward spiral one might expect from a modern post-punk band, it also has a genuine dark side. Lillies and Remains don't mess around with a closet of irony and pretty emo "feelings." These guys are gloom and doom done with high style and honest brutality. Front-man KENT, who essentially embodies Lillies and Remains in that he wrote both the lyrics and music and produced the entire album, sings in a lower, sinister register that most bands, let alone Japanese bands, would never dare attempt. Yet they still manage to write songs full of beauty and fragility, coupled with danger and crippling despair. They will just as often get you dancing as the will put you into a brown study. (Look it up.)

If you're interested in getting a much more thorough pathology of the album, you can head on over to my own blog for the play-by-play. For a much quicker summation, hit the jump here for a couple of videos that will either blow your mind or leave you unimpressed. After that, I recommend you immediately buy the CD from CDJapan or buy the (much cheaper) MP3s from iTunes. Oh, and you can also check out Japanator Radio for a few samples.

"Moralist S.S."

"Wreckage"