Fuki isn’t the type to sit back and take things easy. As such, when her band LIGHT BRINGER declared an indefinite hiatus in December 2014, it was only a matter of time before a new full-time project appeared. It didn't materialize immediately however, and the singer spent 2015 focusing on Unlucky Morpheus and session work, including a part in Sound Horizon’s ninth opus Nein. Then, in April this year, she unveiled Fuki Commune, a project whose debut album Welcome! was released on June 22nd.
Though ostensibly a solo project, LIGHT BRINGER fans should take heart from the fact that nine of Welcome!’s eleven tracks were written and produced by the band’s keyboardist Mao. Moreover, in case you’d heard the lead single Kagayaku yoru e youkoso! and were concerned Fuki had shifted focus to synthed-up pop-rock, rest assured that that song is anything but illustrative of the album’s content.
For the most part, Welcome! harks back to LIGHT BRINGER’s earliest work, when they walked a fine line between melodic power metal and synth-driven J-pop. Mao’s regular collaborator Wakai Nozomu served as session guitarist for most tracks, and he’s put to especially good use on Aoi kisetsu ni and Mirai. The song most likely to please LIGHT BRINGER die-hards is closing number Sail on my love, which features ISAO of BABYMETAL’s Kami Band on guitar. Despite its balladesque title, the track is probably the album’s most ‘metallic’ offering.
Alongside Mao’s contributions are two songs Fuki recorded as themes for visual novels. The first of these, Asa na asa na was regrettably chosen to mark the album’s halfway point. Though by no means Welcome!’s worst track – the album lacks any real misfires – being a ballad, it rather awkwardly breaks up the flow of Mao’s uniformly uptempo compositions. Karui zake setsugekka fits into the running order a lot better and boasts a nifty guitar solo presumably recorded by the song’s composer MACARONI☆.
Some may have noticed that this review has yet to comment on Fuki’s vocal performance. The reason for that is quite simple. While there are very few things in this world that can ever truly be taken for granted, the impeccable quality of Fuki’s singing is one. “I’ll never let you down!” she sings in the song of the same name, and eleven years into her professional career, she still hasn't.
