Album Review: BeForU Fast Album

Rating using the star system. *-***** with 5* being the best. My iPod uses stars, so shall this review. :)

Dive / 3:41
One word: wow. It starts off kind of mellow-techno with soft and unforced techno cues. This is quite possibly the best version of Dive that I have ever heard. While it's not necessarily as suited for DDR as the other versions, it holds up well on its own. ****

Chikara (LIVE BAND style) / 3:12
Naoki must have been taking guitar lessons from good-cool because this live-band track is the awesome. Featuring two guitars, one bass, drums, vocals, two turntables and a microphone. Oh wait, nevermind. It doesn't matter. Nothing can make this track suck. This track is amazing as hell. Get this LIVE BAND style band to do every BeForU track from now on. *****

BreAk Down (LIVE BAND style) / 3:30
This BreAk Down is completely re-done. The vocals, guitar, everything are different. It contains a great guitar solo that starts it off and pads the middle. I cannot begin to elaborate on the awesomeness of this version. However, it's hard for me to say if I like this or Chikara better. Hey, it's good enough for *****.

Firefly / 3:43
Nothing groundbreaking here. It's basically Firefly full version. Firefly itself is a good song, but it's been played to death on DDR. It's certainly not bad, though. I'll be generous and say ***. If there had been a bit more changeup other than adding some extra lyrics it could have been better.

Graduation ~sorezore no ashita~ (unplugged version) / 3:45
This "unplugged" version really exposes the BeForU girls for not being terribly great vocalists. In addition, even *I* can tell that it's not a real piano that they are using. Blue^ was able to easily differentiate it being a Yamaha keyboard. This could have been so much better with some minor tweaking, but this just falls flat on its face.

Love Love Sugar / 3:15
See Firefly. Wash, rinse, repeat. ***

Silvia Drive / 4:44
Other than a nifty little accoustic guitar intro, and really irritating voice loop before it gets into the familiar portion. Once that's done, it's really pretty much the same as the version heard in 9th Style. However, that aside this is still a great song in any form. ****

*SHINING* / 3:43
Back to the awesome LIVE BAND style versions. This is a great rendition of the song, however it seems lacking compared to the other ones. It has a cool little bridge in the mdidle with a hard-rock guitar+organ(!) solo, and another excellent guitar solo near the end. However, BeForU's vocals really don't go well with the excellent music in this track. Strip out the vocals, and make this a GF track, stat! ****

Love Love Shine / 3:17
Ok. This is what I'm talking about. Love Love Shine with some awesome added guitar over the normal track. This track has a perfect mixture of Naoki's new-found love for adding hard-rock to everything and the cutesy keyboard+Riyu Kosaka combo we all expect. A cool percussionless little vocal piece near the end wrapps everything up nicely. Very well done track. *****

Himawari / 3:34
I loved the GF version. This rocks hard as well. What else is there to say? ****

true... (2003 album version) / 4:54
The vocals are mostly the same, but the backing track is entirely redone. It starts out unplugged (still with the crappy Yamaha sample though! blah!) and then adds a nice mellow backing track along with Naoki's ever present hard-rock guitar. It works so well though. This is about 100x better than the long version from the DDRMAX OST. It's so good, though. *****

TEARS / 5:49
I'm kind of meh on this one. It starts of sounding really cool. But, then it repeats the same thing over and over and over again. It has an awesome little interlude, but then instead of capatilizing on it, the song once again drifts into repetitive mode. Once it gets to the part with the vocals, it's basically the DDR version completely recycled. Pretty disappointing, if you ask me. Probably the biggest let-down on this album. **

Shooting Star / 5:15
Another track that's kind of meh. Sort of like Tears "Lite" meets True... (Trance Mix) being inbred and creating this. **

Baby Love / 4:22
This takes us to the conclusion of this odyssey. We have Noria's ultra-cute Baby Love. Let me tell you, at this point my interest in this album is fading super-quick, so I'm hoping this track will pick me up. This track is very much in the style of Silvia Drive. It's sickeningly catchy almost forcing me to like it. Hey, works for me. ***1/2

So, overall an excellent album that's worth a listen. The good tracks far outnumber the bad tracks and it makes a great hour's worth of music. Highly recommended, even if you're not a big BeForU fan.