Album: Mutiny
Artist: Mutiny
Released: February 20, 2024- Ska Punk International
Mutiny is a band that is the end result of a whole host of musicians from existing bands voltroning together to form a Skacore super band; the like of which the world has never seen before. Mutiny, the album, is the prologue of a science fiction story that spans both bilingual musical performance and print media via a manga. The initial tie-in manga was included in the first pressing of the vinyl album. That sold out almost instantly, so if you didn’t get it, you missed out. This is great for collectability, but ultimately caused me some concern for two reasons. 1) I didn’t get one and 2) having only 300 copies of something is extremely bad for media preservation. Luckily my concerns were put to rest when plans were announced to make the tie-in manga available digitally. This was the most glorious news. Also, I should mention here that the tie-in manga is a prologue for a traditional manga that will release independently of any future music releases. So, keep an eye out for that.
The album itself is high energy ska with trashing guitars and sometimes manic, but always killer horn lines. The album opens up with “This Is A Eulogy”. It is clearly an important character beat in the story. Frankly put, killing people’s loved ones through the means of indiscriminate war always makes more people hellbent on fighting you. The narrator in the song experiences just that. The music and lyrics work to together to make this song an aggressive call to action. It makes me want to grab my laser rifle and comically oversized sword and join the fight. It sets the tone for the rest of the album in an emotionally engaging way. “What A Difference A Year Makes” is the “Seasons Of Love” of the album if the cast of Rent had giant mechs and were extremely pissed at getting bamboozled into fighting a pointless war. The horns go hard, the guitar is fast, the lyrics are gritty and everything comes together with this indignant kind of energy. It is by far my favorite song on the album. The last song on the album is “Theseus” and it is the most theatric of the songs. Throughout the song, each part of the ship calls out as if to announce their support. The culmination of this is the captain declaring that he is the mutineer. This gives heavy “you have my axe” vibes and I think it’s fantastic. A perfect end to this beginning.
One last thing: there is Japanese voice over towards the end of “Theseus”. In the Japanese version of the song, it is still in Japanese. My Dora the Explorer addled brain kind of expected it to be in English. Nonetheless, the Japanese half of the album is equally as good as the English half. While it is the same songs performed in Japanese, the vocals are performed by Japanese musicians and recorded in Japan. This adds an additional level of intricacy that makes their inclusion on the album worth it.
Mutiny is an extremely ambitious project that delivers an amazing musical experience that seamlessly melds Skacore with the story and esthetics of a space opera. If they can deliver an interesting manga, and can put together a mildly theatric stage show, they will have pulled off an epic hat trick. Mutiny has the talent. They have the support of an amazing label in Ska Punk International and the backing of a manga studio in Japan. They have set themselves up for success and I, for one, cannot wait to see how this plays out.
This review was originally post on March 8, 2024 on the former LFDH substack.
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