Beelzebub OP Single – Hajimaru no wa, Sayonara – Review

Review: ON/OFF’s works have generally given me the impression that they hinge wholly on composition and arrangement. Their Vampire Knight and Durarara!! openings worked out for me, though just barely. “Rondo” relies on, (surprise) its rondo structure in the opening stanza to stand out, even though it degenerated into generic pop soon after. “Futatsu no Kodou to Akai Tsumi” and “Butterfly” both had the piano working its magic, where it set a strong punctuated beat in the former and embellished the melody in the latter.

While those aforementioned works are moderately enjoyable, ON/OFF has no such luck this time with ‘Hajimaru no wa, Sayonara.’ This song, composed by T.M.Revolution and access’s Asakura Daisuke, goes very heavy on guitar and synths. Looking at Asakura’s past collaborations, it is clear that nothing short of overwhelming confidence and daredevil delivery can carry his music across, something which is sorely lacking here as the vocals provided by ON/OFF are just too heavy and monotonous.

‘Hajimaru no wa, Sayonara’s’ listening experience is like sitting in on a karaoke session, where the only concern is getting the words and melody out, with a few random crescendos here and there to try to add a bit of flavour. It does not help that the song is very repetitive, and the vocals are so heavy that they bulldoze through everything without letting you hear much of anything else. Add to that too heavy a dose of optimism, and the song gets almost obnoxious by the time it’s done.

The B-side suffers a similar fate. Despite having a rather promising instrumental opening, the effect is soon lost. Besides the usual lack of anything good, ON/OFF does a rather horrible job at handling both the high and low notes. The higher ones sound very tough on them, as they strain to meet the song’s technical demands while the lower ones have some weird twist to them, which adds little musical value.

In a way, ON/OFF came onto the music scene without any ability to bring the composition further, a skill they still have yet to acquire three years into their career. In fact, the whole idea of having two vocalists with voices which can hardly be differentiated from each other makes little sense to me to begin with. I still have yet to find out who they manage to sell their singles to, but to those seeking good music, please do not bother with this one.

Rating: Bad

Beelzebub OP – Hajimaru no wa, Sayonara