Alex & Tokyo Rose - Akuma III

I'm genuinely excited for this. I think I still like the first Akuma the best. All three Akuma albums are excellent and offer a variety of amazing sounds. All three pushed the creative limits of their creators as well as what's possible in the synthwave genre. Maybe after a few more listens this will be my favorite.

All semblance of traditional synthwave as we have understood it in the early 10's is pretty much gone. There's very little traces of 80's feel left. This sounds a lot more like 90's or 21st century or something. Maybe I'm not the best judge in determining that, but this is definitely a far cry from Perturbator's I Am the Night or Wolf and Raven's Renegades. Hell, it's quite a different beast than the very first Akuma. Even on Akuma II there was still strong melodies that signalled to the listener that this is still synthwave and still retro inspired on tracks such as "STRNGR" and "Danger City" . I don't believe there's any of those melodies on Akuma III .

What we have here is even more slickly produced modern EDM. I guess you could say there's melodies. But these are not at all like the kind that make a song easily identifiable as synthwave. There are no arpeggios or sequences with multiple notes that sound pleasant. The focus is instead on hard hitting rythms, vivid textures, and short burst melodies that rely on maybe two or three notes to get the point across. There are also more frequent tempo and feel changes. The tempo itself is overall fast except on "Reclaim Soul". This song is probably the only song that has any kind of attachment to that 80's feel. Even then it's not very strong attachment. The final song, "Euphoria of a New Beginning" is an epic, monstruous, tour de force. Every trick is pulled out of the bag to deliver a monumental closing masterpiece. Even with the faster tempos, aggressive rythms, and strong textures, there's a certain graceful serentity above it all. That's definitely the one thing that ties all the Akumas. They can be as aggressive as they want, but there's always a certain beauty to the madness.

I think this is a very fun way to close out this trilogy. The first Akuma is very much an 80's retro inspired synthwave album with a dark twist. Akuma II still featured some retro inspired moments, but clearly a shift towards the future. Finally, we have arrived at Akuma III. Our spectacular tag team of music producers have almost completely detached themselves from the 80's and now sound like something belongs in Jet Set Radio,The Matrix, Blade, Drive, or some other 90's action flick (there was a movie called Drive in the 90's. Go check it out!). As a result, this album is still very much retro: 90's or early millenium retro. Maybe this is a euphoric new beginning in retro music.