Saidan – Fangdriller: Scars Beneath Memory’s Wrist
Release Date: 19th June 2026
Label: Avantgarde Music
Bandcamp
Genre: Epic Raw Black Metal, Visual Kei.
FFO: Fell Omen, X Japan, Misery Miser, AFI, Immortal, Hellripper, Motörhead.
Review By: Malte Brigge
Dear Saidan,
Your guitar solo on Visual Kill’s “Sick Abducted Purity” inspired the greatest Bandcamp comment of all time. I was too shy, too in awe of your effortless riffing and the way rapid, epic changes flow like breath through your songs, to dare speak to you. Your raw, blackened, wall-of-riff combined with uplifting power metal glory, X Japan-level musicianship, the slightest dashes of 80s glam showmanship wrapped in visual kei, enamored me. I’d never heard anyone like you. I told myself it was for the best if I never saw you again. Nothing good could come of what I was on the edge of feeling. I tried to walk away, to forget. But that sound, it kept calling, just one more listen. Then Fangdriller: Scars Beneath Memory’s Wrist showed its face in the promo bin, daring me, taunting me… seducing me. Saidan, I think you’ve stopped my heart. I can barely walk, I’m all jelly. I’m done for. I’m yours.
Dear Saidan,
You have a wild, almost reckless vision, but the chops to make it seem easy. That mural of thick, overdriven blast riffs would have been enough, but you had to layer onto it sparkling, synthy melodies that are almost, dare I say, poppy, though unusually nuanced, captivating rather than simplistically catchy. Bloody Dusk and Her Embrace-esque vocals tear out any thought of sweetness and my heart. Guitar melodies drip with dark honey; punk riffs muscle me over. Immortal-y rhythms build to refrains I could dance to, flowing to a roof-raising vamp-to-cue. That’s just opener Razorblade Temptation, and already I can’t look away. I could live a thousand lifetimes and not have my fill of you, Saidan. How is everyone else going about their lives as if anything mattered but to hear Fangdriller?
Dear Saidan,
Razorblade Temptation weakened my SotY restraint. Those gracenote bridges, Emperor-esque symphonic structuring and catchy choruses on Kara no Bara faltered me. Ethereal Blood’s crushing, post-tension rifleshot riff ended care. The central epic Stained Glass Sin / Fangdriller…oh, Stained Glass Sin. You so light me up my wife thinks I’m having an affair. How can you be so… so sinuous, so seamless? You had me at the haunting, slow piano-cello duet and wispy, glammy lead. You gripped me when the whole band crashed in, blythe harmonies and Hundosai’s octo-drumming all. That hawkish guitar scream and minor key synth that bleeds with the rhythmic vocal attack also bleeds me. What’s not here? A Sails-era AFI punk attack birthing new melodic themes that air out into a hard, galloping riff. A ride cymbal doing the work of the entire kit. A bouncy groove, but pitch black. Some clean chord picking that tightens tension and then—oh! My skin dances electric with anticipation just thinking about what happens next! As if a Randy Rhoads solo had a baby with a Dragonforce solo! My god, Saidan! This solo….does things to me. How is it you exist, so enticing, so perfect? So impossible?
Dear Saidan,
The way the album turns from a J-rock/black metal/punk/glam seduction story to a brutal ritualized killing shouldn’t be so entrancing. The symphonic force, the octo-blast drums, driving guitars and melodic leads all flow into one mellifluous inevitability. Passionate, pained vocals, sick sick guitar cues, quick palm-muted bridges and droning layered breaths, sometimes aerial, sometimes underwater, sometimes down the distance of a dark, dingy corridor, all crashing towards the murderriff of Beat to Death, concluding, haltingly, with the clean, acoustic closer. If I was weakened before, here, Saidan, you break me. Not only is Mortuary similar in style, structure and length to Visual Kill’s closer “suffer”, it’s in the same key and progression. I’m positive if you could line up the vocals, they would harmonize, or counterpoint. On “suffer”, she is asking not to be left alone after her murder, while on Mortuary, he is at the morgue, leaving her with one last kiss. How you’ve tied these songs together is heartbreaking but also mind-bending. They aren’t simply related; they are one song playing at the same time on two different albums. One cannot be understood without the other. It’s goddamn genius.
Fangdriller is beautiful, brutal totality. It destroys me. I’m not the man I was. I can never be the same again. There was life before Fangdriller, but what’s after I cannot say. Look what you’ve made me do, Saidan. Look what I’ve become. Here, take my heart. It belongs to you now; I don’t need it anymore.
(5 / 5)
