Tanooki Suit
Euclid

Nothing ever happens in the summer. It's paradoxical how, during the time of year when people have more free time, almost always uninteresting products are released. I'm sure this summer not even the first album from Tanooki Suit will come out, which I've been waiting for since I discovered them almost a year ago.
So, I decided to fight the boredom by at least writing something about their EP, which came out quite some time ago and I haven't found it reviewed anywhere.

Tanooki Suit is a group made up of two American guitarists who gained attention online when the YouTuber VaatiVidya contacted them to promote their song "Lordvessel" on his channel (dedicated to games published by From Software). This is because, if you haven't already figured it out from their name, Tanooki Suit loves video games, and many of the lyrics in this first EP (as well as the title itself) are indeed inspired by some of them.

After these words, the band might seem like a pre-packaged product for nerds and various initiates with nothing to offer to those who know nothing about these games, but it's not so; because beyond the lyrics, there's the music, and Tanooki Suit plays terribly well.

Their first EP, titled "Euclid," released in 2013, contains five songs for less than twenty minutes of music, but each one manages to be so engaging that it ensures being listened to at least a dozen times. The offering is heavily centered on the guitars of the two musicians, as was predictable. These are sharp guitars that follow one another in numerous riffs that try to sneak into the listener's mind (and often succeed), but despite certain genre tricks (heavy downtuning, distortion galore), they cannot be defined as metal. In fact, listening to their tracks, one thinks more of certain late '80s American music (Bitch Magnet, Squirrel Bait, Sonic Youth), however showcasing a non-negligible technique that, in the solo parts, nods to the rougher side of progressive and post-rock (to get an example of how ethereal they can become, just listen to the intro of "Kaiju," halfway through the EP). The voice is the other great pillar of Tanooki Suit's music: mixed high, lamenting solos, tremendously expressive and lyrical but not excessively technical, and occasionally even launching into screaming (and managing it better than many metal singers, in my opinion). In short, this is a band with more arrows in its quiver than one might think.

Each song also demonstrates its own personality, encompassed in about four minutes of duration. The aforementioned "Lordvessel" proves to be the slowest and most solemn piece of the work, enriched by a final chorus obtained with multitracking, "Hope Rides Alone" starts aggressive and becomes increasingly so, "Kaiju" pushes the proposal to its hardest edges, and "Oh, My Stars" to its sweetest and most dreamy. Amidst all this is "Bones," which synthesizes everything into a single track. Moreover, the lyrics are not incomprehensible to those who don't know what they are about and often manage to convey common feelings that everyone can relate to. "Hope Rides Alone," besides being undoubtedly inspired by some "Megaman" video game, is a tale of rejection, solitude, and revenge, masterfully extracted from the video game narrative like few others have been able to do in the musical field (I'm thinking of early Iron Maiden, the Cure of "Faith"...). The singer also manages to break away from the nerd stereotype in the two autobiographical pieces "Bones" and "Oh, My Stars," memories sung with not a little passion.

In short, maybe this record doesn't deserve the five stars I'm giving it because some might not like it or might find the blend of styles presented too contrived, or because, after all, it's the work of just two people who relied heavily on digital to have something different from guitars (although, in my opinion, the Drum Machine is very well programmed), but I'm giving them nonetheless because I've been listening and re-listening to these songs since last year and still haven't had enough.

Recently, the band has stated that the tracks on the new album are, in their opinion, markedly superior to anything on Euclid. Yet, I remain convinced that it will be very difficult to achieve this result.