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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Song of the Week! 1 April 2018


I'm back! Let's see what we have here, this time around...

 Shin Zombie (シン・ゾンビ) GLAY x Taiko no Tatsujin Tie-In Song
Version
Allx3 (116)x4 (177)x6 (275)x9 (794/765)
 Taiko 0 Y
 180
 none
 ???


Normal Route

For the futurenauts browsing this page, let it be known that the returning April Fools shenanigans have let to this post to be... let's just say 'something completely different' from our usual SotW course of action. That specific content is still available on the blog, but it has been relocated to an hidden space of our Contacts/FAQ section. I wonder if you can find it...?

Back to the topic on hand, what you're looking at is a tie-in collaboration song that graced Yellow Version arcades as part of an album deal with Japanese rock band GLAY. Formed in the Hokkaido prefecture in 1988 as a Visual Kei act, its current lineup consists of lead singer Teruhiko 'Teru' Kobashi (小橋照彦), band leader Takurō Kubo (久保琢郎), lead guitarist Hisashi Tonomura (外村尚) and bassist Yoshihito Wayama (和山義仁). With a career that touched both the indie and label-based Japanese musical landscape while tackling many other music genres in the progress, the GLAY act is nowadays one of the top-selling bands of Japan, with an estimated track of 51 million records sold between their singles and albums.

The GLAY tie-in efforts with the Taiko no Tatsujin brand have gone one step ahead from the usual collaboration fanfare, as the release of this song has gone through quite the Taiko makeover for its debut album! July 12th, 2017's SUMMERDELICS studio album, in fact, was announced with quite the extensive visual/sound imagery from Bandai Namco's drumming series, as the tie-in deal has led to the creation of a dedicated website for said album where Don-Chan voice cues will guide the page's viewers to a full rundown SUMMERDELICS's content! Not only that, the actual tie-in song of the deal -Hisashi's Shin Zombie- actually features its Oni notechart as part of the song's original version, showcasing its Master Route notechart in quite the unusual way. The song in modern Taiko arcades is also showcased in a different way from many other collaboration tracks, as your Taiko avatar will say the song's name when highlighted in the Song Selection screen (video). Ultimately, the SUMMERDELICS album made it to reach the top of both the Oricon weekly charts and the Billboard Japan Top Albums Sales, ranking in the 50ies-placings in both yearly-sales charts.

This song's Oni notechart is one of the many cluster-packed trials with one slight route change near the end, whose branching condition is linked to the first drumroll's perceived hit counter. Dare to surpass the 8 drumroll hits and you'll be served with quite the nasty 1/24 cluster to deal with a-la No Way Back Ura; otherwise you'll be set to the road for yet another Nam-combo play with more 1/16 charting that feels in par with the rest of the song.