After several loops of the B side tracks, I think my perception of them has changed. And that my first supposed review was really just an initial reaction and whine about not getting what I wanted rather than a one written in my composed stated. I'm sure a few pages before me, one of the SH members said that Hello World isn't competing to dethrone STANDARD but a big step in a different direction and I agree. At first I was a little disappointed that it wasn't edgy enough, that it didn't sound rockish. But I had to tell myself edgy and rocky didn't necessarily produce kickass songs. My perception of the songs did change after reading Rina's notes on the album. I'm so so goddamn happy that Rina's bass drum is far more audible that in previous albums the same goes for Tomomi's bass.

I'll just review the B sides exclusive to this album.

Love Action: Not using a standard time signature instead using syncopation, brings something fresh to SCANDAL's releases and also allows Rina to show off more of her dynamic drumming capabilities.

Graduation: What I like the call the Haruna solo of the album and the weather report of Hello World. This songs really captures the emotion Haruna expresses in her vocals. Though I miss her old vocals, this songs makes me love her current sound.

Onegai Navigation: This song was the instant hit for me when the radio rips came out. I love the dynamic vocals of this song, the high notes and the fast spoken/sung part by Haruna. As it is a reference to Mami and Tomo's driving experience, this song is definitely for the fast drive on the high way. And yes I wish it was longer. But being around three minutes kept its standard high and instead of possibly ruining it.

Hon wo Yomu: In an eccentric piece by Mami which suits her trait. I swear I've heard something similar by some other Japanese indie band but I like that Mami has bought this sound to SCANDAL as well. Since I'm a book worm I've had a problem reading. I guess this songs gives a good perspective of those who can't get into to reading.

Can Beer: A sentimental song by Tomomi, her vocals really bring out the bittersweet and mildly melancholy emotions of this song. The song sat well with me to begin with me, but after reading the lyrics, it really brought it home for me. I somehow feel the emotions Tomo projects within me.

Now to the songs that still haven't sat to well with me. Which are probably good but its just not sticking on me.

Winter Story: Finally a song about winter by SCANDAL. You can feel the snow falling outside whilst you cuddle next to the fireplace with friends. I've never had that experience because its summer right now but winter is never cold enough for it to snow here. The song really makes you feel the lightness of snowflakes and this season's feel.

Oyasumi: I applaud Rina for taking on another instrument and being brave enough to experiment with it and record a song with it. I would say Rina's vocals doesn't really stand out in comparison to the other three but its good to hear her sing again. Rina writing and performing this song has introduced me to a new genre which I appreciate. This girl is full of wonders I must say.

Place of Life: I don't know what to say about this. It is definitely a well composed song but I have little attraction towards it. Sorry. (_ _)

In a nutshell, another great album by SCANDAL. Though fantasy of Rina utilizing her double pedal did not come to fruition, there is always the future releases to look forward to.

As a side comment yus I manage to write one of these long reviews I could never be bothered to do. hahaha

You know, it's pretty awesome to think that Haruna's playing lead guitar in Hon wo Yomu as Mami said in a recent interview — it gets me wondering if it was in fact Haruna who created those little riffs and licks in the song. There's today's fun-fact lol.

Yoake was the 8th best charting anime single in the 3rd quarter of 2014. It was the 17th best-selling (physical+digital), the 5th most played in radios, 12nd most ...uuuum "looked up" in music databases, and the number 1 in tweets in that period! Also it was the 14th best charting anime single in the second half on 2014. 19th - sales, 6th - radio airplay, 17th - database look ups, 3rd - tweets. 45th best charting single in the the 3rd quarter of 2014. 52nd - sales, 50 - radio airplay, 44th - database look ups, 16th - tweets. 86th best charting single in the the second half of 2014. 75th - sales, 61st - radio airplay, 70th - database look ups, 30th - tweets.

Departure was the 40th best charting in 2nd quarter of 2014.  48th - sales, 52 - radio airplay, 48th - database look ups, 11st - tweets. It was also the 86th best charting single in the first half of 2014. 100th - sales, out of 100 - radio airplay, 100th - database look ups, 15th - tweets.

They also have theese awesome graphs, note how big the role of tweets in their Billboard rankings.

They will be nominated for the "Animation Artist of the Year" award at the Billboard Japan Music Awards 2014 for the topping the animu chart with Yoake. While they obviously won't win the award in the "Chart" category, but it's up to us to win it in the "Artist" category! (as it will be a poll)

^^Looks like SCA's fan-base on twitter really shines through!   Hopefully the girls do well for the BJMA~!

I'm starting to really really love "Oyasumi". I think people are overestimating the amount of autotune that's applied to her voice (it's only noticeable in a few very specific instances), and towards the end she gets very sweet and that's just adorable. And overall this is really a unique track for Scandal (I still can't get over those MBV guitars and big drums) so props for that!

Now I also love "Winter Story".

i can`t take it anymore. Everyone write about how wonderful is the album, and i still haven`t listened no one of the new songs. I still wait to arrive. This waiting is killing me . Why i have to wait that much????.fustrated.

I love Winter Story .wow. There is a piece of Vocals of Haru and Timo in succession that it's Awesome.

Joshua10red wrote:i can`t take it anymore. Everyone write about how wonderful is the album, and i still haven`t listened no one of the new songs. I still wait to arrive. This waiting is killing me . Why i have to wait that much????.fustrated.

I can completely sympathize with you. I only just got a tracking number for the album yesterday . . .

flyingwill wrote:That's an issue I've been having with a lot of Japanese acts I'm obsessed with: listening to the singles to death, months ahead of the album's release, and then feeling kinda disjointed when finally hearing the album because I already know a lot of the songs by heart.

"Your song", "Yoake no Ryuuseigun" and "Runner's high" are all songs that I love but that I've heard so many times before that I can't get worked up over them on the album. That said, I don't skip them either.

"Departure" I never liked to begin with. I do skip it.

Even "Image", while I know it's technically new-ish, I first heard back in October so it doesn't "feel" new to me anymore. Also it's very similar in sound to "Your song" and they are back to back on the album. It's two similar songs that already feel familiar leading things off.

Not all of this is the band or record label's fault, obviously. I just happened to hear "Image" early and I didn't have to buy those other singles. But still, they did release them very far in advance of the album.

"Onegai Navigation", "Hon wo Yomu", "Kan Biiru" and "Graduation" are the new songs I love. (I'm really happy to hear a really good solo Tomomi song; it feels like it's been a long time.) "Oyasumi" is interesting but I'm not sure now that I love it as a song as much as I like the fact that Rina's got good taste in her influences. So it feels almost like a four song mini-album to me.

"Love in Action", "Winter Story" and "Place of Life" I could completely live without. Sorry to those who feel otherwise; I tried to like them. That's a little disappointing, that three of the "new" songs to me are just duds. But if I look at the album as a whole, it's 8 or 9 out of 13 songs that are really good. That's not bad. I don't think it's their best album but it's not their worst either, and even their worst is still pretty good relative to other bands. So I'd say it's really good, but I'd probably put it below STANDARD and Temptation Box, which are my two favorites.

.... just want to ask....
....is there any way i can find subtitles for the dvd???

I can't imagine not loving "Love In Action"

I like all songs definetly... .love. anyway it's only a question of personal taste of course.
The songs are so different,Hello World it's a great album for my modest opinion.
@ Joshua i hope you receive as soon as possible Hello World

just got my copy a couple of days ago. ph customs is a real pain XD but whatever its all worth it.

kan beer is an instant hit for me.
not to far behind is onegai navigation.
hon wo yomu really grown on me now its one of my faves.
thanks for all the hardwork scandal! <3

Scandard wrote:In the DVD Documentary you can tell they look SO tired, Mami especially looks like a zombie.

Sorry to go back so far for this quote, but I noticed people talking about this at the time and finally just watched the DVD myself. Anyway I own a lot of similar DVD's like this from them (I buy all the DVD editions) and they're always like this. It's not unique to this DVD.

There's one scene in the studio where Mami does look like she probably just woke up (no makeup, baggy eyelids, etc.), but I think that's par for the course when you're recording. They probably actually slept there. That's not uncommon either.

As far as them not talking that much, etc., I think that's just them when they're working. I was a little surprised at that the first time I got one of their DVD's, but I'm used to it now. They are very serious when they're actually working on something. But you can tell it's from being comfortable with each other, not being tired or mad or anything. They just don't need to be talking all the time, but they do when they feel like it.

I thought it was interesting to hear the tracks on the album as they're actually being recorded, to see a little of the actual process. I do wish I had subtitles too but a lot of what I could get from the interview portions with my limited Japanese seemed less interesting than just watching them work. I was a little surprised at how small and cramped their studio was, and the fact that they mostly just recorded in the middle of this crush of people in the mixing room. They got it done, obviously, but it didn't seem like a place where I'd personally have found it easy to be creative.

Been listening at the album for a couple of days. I love the existing songs, and the new ones are very good. My clear favorite among those is Onegai Navigation, which I played again immediately after hearing it for the first time. I like having a song performed by each of the girls, although Rina's felt a bit monotone on the 1st hearing, but I've warmed up to it by now

2nd week sales - #19 with 4,845 copies (total: 40,544)

Joshua10red wrote:i can`t take it anymore. Everyone write about how wonderful is the album, and i still haven`t listened no one of the new songs. I still wait to arrive. This waiting is killing me . Why i have to wait that much????.fustrated.

That's why I just bought the digital copy and downloaded it.

sillentdx wrote:2nd week sales - #19 with 4,845 copies (total: 40,544)

Not sure what their past albums sold in their 2nd week, but it seems like they're going to struggle to hit 50,000, which is their historical benchmark.

spacecadet wrote:Not sure what their past albums sold in their 2nd week, but it seems like they're going to struggle to hit 50,000, which is their historical benchmark.

If you must know, 2nd week sales for their albums have been decreasing with every release (TB: ~10k, BA: ~7.5k, QAT: 5.6k, STD: 5.4k), so I guess they're not really bucking the trend in any sense. I still won't read too much into these numbers though, because there could be plenty of factors not related to SCANDAL themselves that could explain these numbers.

That said, 50k is still possible. QAT had about the same sales number by week 2, and it managed to pass 50k sales, if only barely.

Yes I love Scandal but the sales seem very low compared to AKB's last album "Tsugi no Ashiato" which sold 1, 041,355 copies.

tonymiller wrote:Yes I love Scandal but the sales seem very low compared to AKB's last album "Tsugi no Ashiato" which sold 1, 041,355 copies.

Kind of hard to compare pretty much any band to AKB; their business model is just so different from most everyone else.

metalleo wrote:If you must know, 2nd week sales for their albums have been decreasing with every release (TB: ~10k, BA: ~7.5k, QAT: 5.6k, STD: 5.4k), so I guess they're not really bucking the trend in any sense.

Thanks. Given that they always seem to end up at around the same final number, that implies that their fan base grew with their early albums and those same people then began preordering or buying first week on subsequent albums. But it doesn't seem like as many people are newly discovering them in Japan now; or if they are, they're not buying the albums for whatever reason. Which would explain why they're now branching out overseas.

I also don't think it's the music itself that's causing the lower sales of Hello World, I think it's a combination of other things.

So earlier today the postman dropped off a package from HMV Japan and I've been here listening to loud music for several hours now. Not sure yet which of the new songs on Hello World are my clear favorites, but I don't think I really dislike any or hate any of the songs so far. Although the weird sound level imbalances and flubs in Oyasumi kind of take me out of the song here and there. While I probably wouldn't consider this best body of work, I don't really have any major complaints so far.

spacecadet wrote:Given that they always seem to end up at around the same final number, that implies that their fan base grew with their early albums and those same people then began preordering or buying first week on subsequent albums.

Perhaps, but I don't think so, especially as final sales is not as similar as you think (IMO)

Comparing 3 sets of numbers from TB to HW (I'm excluding BS cos it looked like there was a spike in fans between BS and TB likely due to Shoujo S and Shunkan, so BS kinds of screws the pattern up altogether)
1st Week Sales: TB: 35K, BA: 38K, QAT: 35K, STD: 43K, HW: 36K
2nd Week Sales: TB: 10K, BA: 7.5K, QAT 5.6K, STD: 5.4K, HW: 4.8K)
Final Sales Number: TB: 60K, BA: 56K, QAT: 50K, STD: 57K)

STANDARD aside, their 1st week sales are relatively constant, but their final sales numbers actually dropped from TB to QAT. So while I assume that decreasing 2nd week sales can be attributed to movement of buyers from 2nd week to 1st week, the fact that 1st week sales are not increasing can mean old fans are leaving at the same rate as new fans are coming in, which I think is pretty likely, since not everyone is hardcore enough like us to be supporting them for so many years, just look at the number of ex-regulars here in SH who have stopped appearing (I actually randomly do check up the profiles of a few ex-regulars every once in a while to see when was the last time they appeared here lol). At the same time, the decrease in overall sales numbers could mean a decrease in casual buyers (i.e. buyers who buy for the music and not because they are fans, or also fans without as much spending power as others) as well.

I know just 3 to 5 numbers are not really good enough for analysis, but it does paint a pretty OK story IMO.

STANDARD is really an anomaly which I can't really find an argument for, but hey, it's a great album in its own right (not that it's my favourite, but that's beside the point), so I won't really say much for that.

As much as everyone would like to think STANDARD would have been a springboard for greater things to come, it now looks to be more like a one-off kind of thing, cos current figures seem to point towards a return to the trend from TB to QAT, which is actually kind of disappointing.

That said, I wonder if STANDARD is kinda like SCANDAL's 'Black Album'?

PS: For those not in the know, it's a Metallica reference.

For me HW is nevertheless an important record due to the girls having more creative input. I just hope they'd go from strength to strength. I also hope that the suits in Sony/Epic won't get the girls to devolve to having outside writers again if they think the sales are not good enough.