ALBUM REVIEW: I Want To Go Home – Kaonashi
Let’s deal with the elephant in the room. KAONASHI‘s vocals aren’t for everyone. They’re at times piercing, shrill and jarring, particularly when singer and band mastermind Peter Rono hits those higher registers. That being said however, they give KAONASHI a unique selling point of, in the vocal department at least, sounding like nobody else. Things aren’t much more standard in the music department either, with a brief look at the bands recent discography showing moments of ethereal emo, catchy pop punk and seismic, pummelling math-tinged hardcore with lyrics that tug on the heartstrings as much as they grab you by the throat and force you to confront uncomfortable topics like generational trauma and social anxiety.
Having experienced a spike in popularity over the last two years, culminating in some viral moments featuring the “oh my god” moment from the track I Hate The Sound Of Car Keys, newcomers to the band thrust into an unpredictable, storied world. I Want To Go Home is designed to be not only the conclusion to the narrative that the band have crafted, but also the beginning, giving new light to concepts, moments and characters touched on previously. To try and explain things in short form would do the band a disservice so it’s highly recommended that if it’s something you want to involve yourself in, that you do some research into the band’s previous material beforehand. Dragging you in by the scruff of the neck with the sinister, lurching instrumental of Confusion In A Car Crash it leads into Fairmont Park After Dark and all of a sudden, you’re thrown straight back into KAONASHI‘s twisted world, blended angular deathcore replete with Peter’s delivery which feels like you’re strapped to the Clockwork Orange chair and he’s forcing you to stare into his mind.
Things calm down, inducing whiplash as Extra Prayers is a gentle, swaying track that brings to mind leaves and fireflies dancing in the night air with its hypnotic baseline, before When I Say kicks the pace back up. The chorus of this track proves one of the record’s highlights and will find its way into your brain for weeks after. The rest of the record flies by with many highs and sadly a few lows, the main one being J.A.M.I.E which features one of the few frontmen whose vocals are as divisive as Peter’s in Anthony Green. Sadly, his overly saccharine tones do little to help the song and it falls incredibly flat in comparison to its rambunctious fellow tracks.
Nobody is doing it like KAONASHI and as such, it’s hard to make any direct comparisons, except to their own work and fellow genre-escapists like THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS and CHIODOS. A sonic combination of their last two EPs, things have a tendency to fly from one extreme to the other, with obnoxiously delivered vocal lines one moment to haunting, introspection-laden bouts of tranquility the next. Ending on a four part epic that has the album culminate in glorious fashion, every so often a line will hook it’s way into your skin like an errant thorn and whether you’re following the narrative or not, will make you think about it and it’s meaning non-stop.
As with all KAONASHI records, the purpose is to take you on a journey and with each journey, there’ll be bumps in the road and perhaps even the occasional flat tyre. For the most part, I Want To Go Home delivers on its promise and when it hits, you’ll be engrossed and unable to look away akin to a series finale, but a few points feel like filler. Fortunately, the good outweighs the bad and this is a remarkable piece of music that will delight old and new fans alike.
Rating: 8/10
I Want To Go Home is out now via Equal Vision Records.
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