Let's try this album!! [SAISEIGA / THE SUN / RIDE ON] FIRST time REACTION!! 

Saiseiga is a wonderful hungry band. I had a chance to interview them and found each member to be quite unique. Katsuki and Tohko take on most of the songwriting duty, which is interesting. Regan is one incredible vocalist. Wakkun is the most unassuming metal guitarists you will ever meet. Their personalities make this band a special blend not found elsewhere.

SAISEIGA’s first album is amazing, especially the first 3 tracks. But every song is great and it was one of my favorite albums from 2022.

Thanks for coming back to Saiseiga, because since discovering them on your channel, they become my favourite small band (if small is defined as smaller than Asterism). Lots of reasons - you'll hear the variety for yourself - but Regan's voice is the biggest. Having got their self-produced live DVD Let It Shine, I'd put her in my top 3 Japanese vocalists alongside Remi Matsuo and Mayu. That of course means I'm putting her ahead of the lead singer of my favourite band. Saiseiga bring plenty of creative characteristically Japanese flourishes to their music, but compared with a lot of Japanese bands, they are more rooted in traditional metal and classic rock, rather than pop-punk or metalcore etc. This may be more to my taste than yours, though you did love Chaos Control who also have the traditional metal sound.

If you're interested and don't mind reading long posts, I'll try and see if my informative comment can help you out get at least a better feel of SAISEIGA and the vocalist Regan's approach: if by "out of the box" you mean more along the lines of everything else that's been coming out of Japan since 2010, from Aldious to LOVEBITES to Nemophila and now Hanabie, where it's starkly contrasting to Western Metal, then you're not going to get much of that from this band. If you mean "out of the box" as in doing things against the grain culturally, then SAISEIGA is doing exactly that in the J-Metal scene. They're pretty much on record, via Katsuki the bassist that the song "JUMBLE" is the song that - if forced to choose one song as an example - best exemplifies this band's intention and sound; variety and heaviness/edginess is what they're going for with much less emphasis on the Pop/pretty/cute element regularly found in the J-Metal movement, especially by female led bands. They're very much a tight sounding band of great musicians, but they clearly like leaning into a more raw/rough edge to their music and their presentation - that's also why you're not likely to find something TERRIBLY ornate in their catalogue, although they could if they wanted to. ;) Regan, the vocalist, in that song alone does 2 different growl levels (overall she has a high-end growl that's more of a gruff shout, her mid-level growl which she uses the most and her deepest growl which she uses more in a sparing punctuating way, such as she did in the intro to RIDE ON here) and engages 3 different singing styles. Any time someone says that they find something "off" with one part of Regan's singing or her harsh vocals, I completely understand why and it's really by design. Regan can pretty much cover anything from Classical singing/crooning as she did as the singer for Zettai Club (as best shown in the song Mugen Thriller, it's in Japanese characters on RU-vid if interested, should be the 1st video that pops up in search results), to operatic singing which she indulges in towards the end of SAISEIGA's JUMBLE track off their 2nd album - and yet, she favors a more raw, liberated expression with her voice (sometimes to an almost reckless degree that sometimes concerns me about her damaging her voice) rather than just sticking to one uniform beautiful, sweeping singing style which she's more than capable of doing and did in Zettai Club. Regan is actually taking a remarkably (for Japan and especially as a woman) aggressive approach to her voice and presence on stage; she revels in taking an "attacking" attitude in her performance, physically and vocally. As an example of how remarkable it is culturally, a J-Rock/J-Metal/Visual Kei all MALE band upon being asked to remark on SAISEIGA's music videos, said, "that was scary...haha" To which Regan, still being a Japanese woman, almost attempted to excuse her behavior to them as saying it was the music video director's influence; but anyone that's seen SAISEIGA live knows that attacking, aggressive style is ALL Regan. They were even shocked by her growl and asked her how she did it - she IMO has the deepest Metal growl of all the female vocalists in the J-Metal scene. When it comes to variety, SAISEIGA doesn't bore you with any lack of it - it's one of their strengths - especially due to the make-up of the band: if you hear some hard Punk Rock in the mix, that's Kastuki's (the bassist) and Regan's influence. The "classical" feel you mentioned is totally Regan's direction. If you hear some Prog. Rock, that's Tohko and Wakkun's (drummer and guitarist respectively) influence and any Electronica or Psychedelic Rock can also be credited to Wakkun. If you go to their SAISEIGA website and see their profiles, you'll see just how varied their lists of musical influences are for each member. Metal is what brings them together, but their unifying theme is variety with edge. That can be a great thing for some people, but if you're looking for ONE particular element with this band, you're going to be up and down with them as you explore their music, because they like to try just about a little bit of everything. :)

They are not in my top tier of Japanese bands, but probably right under it. I do enjoy listening to them every once in a while and I love to catch their live shows (streamed) if I can. Regan, the vocalist, is a beast live commanding the stage. I actually really like her harsh vocals, they are also really impressive live as are her clean vocals. But I can see where you are coming from, while I can immediately recognize their music because of Regan's vocals the music itself isn't super unique necessarily. Regan used her cleans more in her old band 絶対倶楽部 (Zetai Club), who were more power metal focussed although with some progressive/gothic influences and she did not only use cleans if I remember correctly. When Zetai Club split, both her and drummer Tohko formed Saiseiga together with guitarist Wakun and bassist Katsuki. The bassist of Zetai Club (Ichnose) is also pretty popular and was one of the bass finalists for Lovebites after Miho left. I honestly think they are overlooked though, while I can see them not being for everyone (plenty of people who really dislike harsh vocals), I do think fans of Nemohpila of Hanabie might give them a shot for sure. They are also very much self-produced/self-supported if I'm not mistaken, so they deserve every support they can get. None of their releases have a "real" label on them as far as I can see at least. They have been releasing a lot of stuff though, 1 EP, 2 albums, 2 live DVD's and a live double cd since 2021.

I enjoy this band a lot because Regan's singing is one of the best combinations of harsh and clean vocals that I've heard. But the music is also generally very well produced (at least for my taste) and has a lot of punch. If I've understood correctly, their song "Sports" is going to get an MV next (probably my favourite Saiseiga song so far).

I think that they are a good band but something is missing. I've listened to all their music but haven't added any to my regular playlists.