Japans hardcore/metal outfit FACT have steadily been building a repertoire of material over the last 5 years. The adage of Brit Adam Graham in 2012 helped push their sound further, with the band becoming a triple guitar attack, with Adam also joining lead vocalist Hiro on singing duties. Now a 6 piece, and on their second album with Adam, the Japanese veterans have created an album, ‘Witness’, that leaves you wishing it had been downsized.
Known for wearing traditional Japanese Noh masks on stage and in their videos, FACT enjoy making fast tempo music, with the songs on ‘Witness’ coming thick and fast. Hiro and Adam take on a vast range of vocal performances back on forth throughout – sometimes screamo, sometimes singing, sometimes spoken. This can be heard perfectly on the self-titled song, which incorporates elements of punk along with screamo and heavy metal filled drums. The song itself isn’t terrible, it works in places, but it’s not got that solid sound, just like the whole of ‘Witness’.
Drawing on production tricks, FACT create great verses and choruses but struggle on ‘Witness’ to make songs that have a start-to-finish feeling of accomplishment. ‘New Element’ with its promising anthemic beginning ends up feeling like a mismatch of motives and ideas. Closer ‘Termination’ again falls apart on promises, breaking halfway through into a completely different direction. It’s these songs and almost everything in between that try to smash together multiple genres, which force ‘Witness’ to be a hybrid of a potentially great hardcore/metal album. Some songs do stand out however where FACT manage to mix all their musical elements just right. ‘Ape’ has a catchy rift and is an enjoyable jumpy listen as well as ‘Miles Away’, which draws more on pop punk then on any song. The simpler they sound, the better FACT sound.
The cramming of hardcore, metal, pop punk and screamo on ‘Witness’ unfortunately is too much. Narrowing down the genres in the band to just, for instance, hardcore and screamo would make the bands output much stronger and accessible even. Hopefully by the bands next output FACT will of found their niche, but until then, anyone who enjoys up-down thrash hardcore and metal drum fills will ultimately find some pleasure in this album: just don’t expect ‘Witness’ to be the hardcore album of the year.
JOSHUA WROATH