Date released: 16.7.2008.
Track list
1. Prelude
2. Aristocrat's Symphony [PV]
3. Antique in the Future
4. Second Fear-Another Descendant-
5. zombie
6. After Cloudia
7. windress
8. The Revenant Choir [PV]
9. To The Chaos Inside
10. SUZERAIN
11. History of The Other Side
12. Episode
It was just a matter of time before the Visual-metal legends Versailles release their first full-length album. The band was pompously announced as a Visual kei megaband consisting of members from various notable Visual kei metal bands and similar. You might even consider that everything done by Versailles from sound to image is a bit pompous.
Listening to NOBLE is like watching an opera: it all looks grand and fascinating, the performance is even exciting on a few parts, but most of the time you're bored, looking at the clock wondering when they are going to finish, and you understand nothing from it.
The dramatic orchestral and choral PRELUDE makes way for the compositionally rich but rather over-the-top speed-symphony metal firework Aristocrat's Symphony. I was right in the last issue of Baku when I have recommended the Noble was born in Chaos single as a warm up for the album Noble because all three songs from the single have managed to get on the album, including Aristocrat's Symphony.
I really liked Antique in the Future or at least it's awesome heavy metal intro with balls!!! which was, as I could have thought, soon followed by some overly-dramatic symphony-metalness in Versailles way and matter. Shame actually, I was kinda hoping for some extravagance and not their typical thwack-thwack-as-fast-as-you-can-with-orchestra-behind. Second fear is actually interesting, fierce with a lot of fast harpsycode-playing-riff and Kamijo's English singing sounding muted, hoarse, actually cool (as if you are listening to some cool foreign metal band), though as same as Antique in the future, this song is only partially awesome though pretty cool as whole.
We come then to zombie, my all-time favorite Versailles song primary because it doesn't sound like your average pompous Versailles song. You just have to love the trashy D-production horror movie sound to zombie, most closely sounding like how you would feel if you had 10 of the equally named cocktails. Ah the genius, love it, makes me want to paint my skin green and devour the brain of the person next to me.
After Cloudia comes as a hangover after zombie, average, boring, similar to The Revenant Choir, telling you that you're listening to the Versailles, though it surprises with Kamijo's pretty intense singing, like he's singing for the first time right out of his chest and not being somewhere in between mumbling and singing as usual.
Windress is for Noble what the dying of a fat lead lady is for opera: a dramatic and stretched out bore. There is this short hard-rock part in the middle that draws the attention and really sounds great, but what would have been a great riff for some crazy moshing/banging tune turns to 17 seconds of showing off and checking if somebody is still listening.
We come then to the lyrics-wise laugh number The Revenant Choir, luckily without the boring lady speaking part, still being a X-Japan hommage ala Versailles, fast, long, quite uninteresting. Length-wise some songs on the album are simply too long, making you forget what was the catch at the beginning, making you circle with your finger above the skip button coming near the end.
Following The Revenant Choir is the melodic death metal resembling To the Chaos Inside which is quite a fierce song, with grinding riffs, evil sound to it and even an interesting chorus. And Hizaki's solo's melt faces. Period. Due to death metalness (though I really don't know why I am so attracted to death metal) To the Chaos Inside wins me. As a great complementary to To the Chaos Inside comes SUZERAIN, an already released speed-metal track with elegance, great riffs and solos and not so flashy as some other Versailles songs. Moderate and great.
The album reaches its grand finale with History of the Other Side, which is not bad, has got some really good and impressive parts but sounds as if you have thrown several different songs into one mixer and left them mixing for over nine minutes. I like the end of the song particularly because of the echoing, dimmed, distorted riffs.
One of the jewels of the album is the last song Episode being a duet of Kamijo and a piano. Gentle, beautiful, emotional with the probably most perfect vocal performance by Kamijo I have ever heard. Honestly your rarely hear so refined and profound ballads, without them sounding pathetic or over-the-top. Episode did left me speachless, gotta admit that and I will surely count it to my Versailles favorites.
Have I expected a lot of this album? No. Was it predictable? Well, mostly yeah. Is it good or bad? I wouldn't call it bad, nor particularly overwhelming, but it's decent and it does have a few song that break the monotony, but this album is the one only Versailles fans will enjoy the fullest as well fans of Visual kei bands with a metal sound. Versailles have got their specific sound and approach which you may like or not. But like them or not they're still better than any other Visual kei band sounding metal around.