About our volunteer reviewer
	Nickname: Edward Location: CA Favourite BACK-ON song(s): Rain, Hate Naki Michi E, Chain, Flower, Blaze line Other favourite artists: Uver-world How did you find out about BACK-ON? I first heard their song in Air gear Mini Introduction: I am fourteen years old and I live in Maple Ridge Canada. i am a major BACK-ON fan and I am from Taiwan

The Review:

BACK-ON’s new album, “Yes!!!” is a great collection of their best selling hits like Flower, Sands of time, Blaze line and Chain. I personally like how BACK-ON’s music contains a huge variety of music with a lot of different backgrounds.

From the holy church of “Hate Naki Michi E” to the foot-ball field in “Blaze line” and the tempo ranging from soft rock to hard rocks and rap. The new L.A. mixes have more background sounds and have more echoes.

My favorite re-mix is the one for “Flower” because the background noises, reverbs and echoes work a lot better than the original and the only bad thing abut it is that the violin’s sound has been changed.

I really like how BACK-ON uses a lot of different instruments and how a lot of their songs have deep meanings behind them. Overall this album is majorly awesome and is a must have, I feel lucky to have been chosen to write this review.

Hope you enjoyed reading Edward‘s review! A big thank you to him for taking the time to evaluate their album and send us his thoughts. Our aim is to encourage as many people as possible to listen to BACK-ON‘s music, and hopefully featuring different styles of reviews is one of the right steps to promote their work to others! Please let us know what you think in the comments or on our Forums. :)

p/s: You can now listen to the new songs from YES!!! in full by visiting our Music page and scrolling to the bottom for the player. Unfortunately the latest Flash update has meant that the player currently does not work in Firefox (as far as I know) but does work in Internet Explorer.

However, what Back-on have done is to package everything into an .exe file so if you viewed the CD content itself, all you see is:

So what does the interface look like? :) The background is literally Back-on‘s flower single cover, then on the top left of the screen is a video player with orange control buttons along the bottom. To the right is first Back-on‘s new logo (in orange) followed by the text flower, BLAZE LINE and a day dreaming… directly below it. These are clickable, so you would click on them to choose the video.

Having said all that, it’s probably better to show a screenshot, since a picture *is* worth a thousand words, so have a look at the thumbnail of the screenshot below!

The auction was held in association with Bidders.jp, which I understand to be a Japanese auction company, and featured one of Back-on‘s latest special t-shirts (previously modelled Icchan) autographed by all the band members, in addition to a signed copy of the single BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming… The band also donated issues #1~21 of all(?) the Eyeshield 21 manga, so I’m sure you’d agree that it was definitely a particularly generous donation! (given that some celebrities just donate e.g. lip gloss)

You can visit the (now closed) auction directly by clicking on the picture above, but for those wanting the low down, 33 different price bids were made for the items above, with a mini-bidding war between two users 19920628 and kameya_online towards the end, and the final price was ¥ 8000, which is about $70 USD or GBP £ 35!

So congratulations to 19920628 (I have no idea who this is either) for winning the auction and picking up the prize booty! :D We’ve included some more pictures of the auction items below, so do have a look if you’re free!

And one more – focusing on the t-shirt:

The first is called flower and was originally scheduled for release on August 27th 2007 according to 3rd-party websites, but the release date has been pushed back, perhaps to coincide with the release of Butterfly, the second single.

The band have released the tracklistings of both singles, and in summary, each single will feature 3 songs, and flower will feature extra bonus promotional video music clips of flower, a day dreaming… and BLAZE LINE! You can find the tracklistings below, or on the updated Discography page in more detail.

flower

1. flower (ED 6 of Eyeshield 21)
2. ZERO
3. Colors (theme tune for the programme ‘Tokyo Mayokara’)

Butterfly

1. Butterfly (theme tune for the new drama series ‘Shinjuku Swan’)
2. Spark
3. DRIVE (Remix)

The CD covers haven’t been made available yet, and this is something that I am personally very much anticipating! However, we maybe able to derive some idea from the latest website theme featuring Back-on with a new style!

However, my favourite part of the new website has to be the content header that you can see below, particularly kenji03, who looks like a model imho! :D

So, anyway, whilst feasting your eyes on this new summer look, don’t forget to mark down September 19th 2007 in your diary/calendar/PDA, which is, again a Wednesday, true to the Back-0n tradition of Wednesday single and album releases!

p/s: For a preview of flower, you can now check out Back-on’s Myspace and listen to the track! We’ll also write a bit more at a later date about where you can purchase the singles!

Our main focus is on the T-shirts (Merchandise) that were announced at the end of last month, because the latest news post features Icchan and the T-shirts! Yup, he models all 4 colours of the latest design, and looks so sweet when he smiles. :) Take a look below, especially at the pink t-shirt, as the website says it is particularly recommended by Icchan!

If you want to see how the t-shirt fares under colourful spotlights, Back-on.com also provides a photo of Shu with the new-t-shirt as well~

It seems that the band have also made an executive decision to reprint the New World t-shirt that was apparently sold at Anime Matsuri 2007, since it was so popular! If you haven’t already seen it before, Icchan models it again:

I have to say I really like the design for this shirt, since the skulls/chains/guns combo does seem quite morbid, but I do love the 2017-2018 venue list at the back of the new shirt! All the shirts are set to retail at ¥2,500, which is about £10 GBP or $20 USD. Except, I’m not sure where. >_< If you do know, please get in touch!

Back-on‘s other news updates involve new dates for their live gigs (August and September), which we’ve updated on the band’s Schedule page. Their diary looks very packed, and to highlight one gig: They will be performing with bands from both Japan (such as Uzumaki and Yamaarashi) and the US (Phunk Junkeez and Supe) on September 2nd 2007 at Club Asia in Shibuya. However, the most significant date is probably their second solo live gig Code002 “flower” on October 13th 2007 at BOXX in Shibuya! :)

p/s: We haven’t forgotten about Back-on‘s debut solo gig Code001 “BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming…” on July 4th 2007. It’s taking a little time to collate info for the news post, so please do check back again for the full report.

In this particular update, the featured radio playlist is BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming…, Back-on‘s latest single release. This means you can listen to the two title tracks, their TV-size versions as well as EYES!

With regards to the featured downloads, nearly 45% of the 270 voters wanted BLAZE LINE (Eyeshield 21 OP), whilst 30% voted for the all-time favourite, Chain (Air Gear OP!) We’ve also had a special request for Hikari Sasuhou (Survive ver.) and Drive, so to show our appreciation to the kind supporters of Back-on Online, both these songs are now available for download for one week!

Please do continue to vote for your favourite songs, but please remember, if you LIKE the songs, try and support Back-on by buying their CDs/attending their concerts!

Even if you can’t do so at the moment, seriously don’t worry, you can also help the band by spreading the word about their music! So please try and name-drop Back-on to your friends, family and the internet! :D

This is actually sort of in-conjunction with Sowon‘s Back-on Music Competition on the Forums, where each time, participants have to sing one particular song (TV size version) from Back-on‘s repetoire. (Please consider entering the competition, minna! :D) Usually, it does help to ‘record’ with the song in question playing in the background, which brings me to the main topic:

where can I find TV size mp3s of Back-on‘s songs?

It would probably be helpful to first provide a list of the songs, so without further ado in the order of Anime Title | Type | Song Title :

Aside from Chain, most of the mp3s are available for download somewhere on Back-on Online, and since this is a summary post, you can find the direct-links to the posts in question below:

• ヒカリサスホウ Hikari Sasuhou (FK Metal ver.)
• BLAZE LINE
• a day dreaming…

But where can you find Chain? This only happens to be one of the most popular Back-on songs ever. The answer is simple: visit Japtard.com. Or more specifically,

view the post Air Gear OST – What a Groovy Trick!

You can the entire OST available for download (at 320kbps) – either as a zip file, or individual mp3 files. Chain (TV Size) is the first song on the 34-track album. The download has kindly been provided by Frox, who has credited Nipponsei for the original release.

Hopefully this post will be helpful to those searching for ‘that’ opening/ending theme by Back-on. Almost every single one so far also has their corresponding lyrics posted on the site somewhere, so take a look at the Lyrics section if you’re interested, particularly if you’d like to participate in the competition!

Out of all the songs on the single, BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming…, BLAZE LINE probably uses the most English (particularly for the rap part sung by TEEDA) and it’s obvious that it was written for the American-football anime, Eyeshield 21, evident from the lyrics as well as the interlude with cheerleaders.

The song also features an interesting bridge where Kenji03 actually sings along with TEEDA in ENGLISH! This probably has happened before, but I was particularly struck by this one! All in all, BLAZE LINE is a great song, and imho, the TV size OP just do it justice, although the opening credits are pretty good!

As always, if you spot any mistakes, please let me know either by commenting below or via the contact form. If you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please link back to this page. :)

JAPANESE (Kanji)

[Verse 1]
うまく飛び出せない
そんな時は
感じるままに羽を広げ
途切れそうな 想いを
この空に映して

[Rap]
Clash & dash! x2 強敵を撃破！
I lock the next target like the guerilla!
目瞬きしてる間に in your area!
黃色い声 援まるで sweet vanilla
Spotlight 浴び 確かに chance 掴み
You gotta bump it! (YEAH!!)
First battle is in count down 3 2 1
Watch out! x2 I’m about a touch down!

[Chorus]
どんな時でも
支えてくれるキミがいるから
何度だって立ち上がって
あの光が導く
場所へ行こう

[Interlude]
B-A-C-K-O-N Come on! x2

[Verse 2]
Hey cheer leaders!! Shake your ass shake your tits for me!
Keep on attackin’ so ねじ伏せろ！
Don’t be afraid you gotta break the scarecrows
I can see the 栄光 掴んだ映像！！
Pass 回しても 即 intercept!
This game 余裕です！
Cuz we got a tech! no time x2 you better check 時計！
No doubt on the victory and the game is set!!

Repeat [Chorus]

[Bridge]
You gotta break the scarecrows
Bump x3 即 intercept!
High voltage 振り切って red zone !!
We gonna get the 栄光

Repeat [Bridge]

Repeat [Chorus]

[Chorus 2]
こんな僕でも
支えてくれるキミがいるから
不安を蹴って 希望を掴んで
翼広げ 飛び立つ今
明日を描こう

skull+guns+chains at the front, and a ‘Back-on Space Tour 2017-2018‘ at the back!

Talk about looking far ahead into the future (a whole decade)! But here’s the picture preview from Back-on.com)

The t-shirts come in 3 different colours (as per the news update):
Black x silver (logo)
White x Purple (logo)
Pink x Yellow (logo)

This is the design that will be given away on the day of their debut solo gig (July 4th) at Shibuya O-Crest to the first 100 people through the door with the coupon/voucher. In case I haven’t mentioned this already, (and I think I forgot) the BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming… CD actually comes with one of these special square ticket/coupons that you can use to claim the t-shirts! (if you’re one of the first 100)

The news update mentions something about a special colour only being available on July 4th, but I’m not sure if this means one of the 3 above or another colour design. If you do know the answer to this, please do let us know!

It would be interesting to find out what the list at the back shows ^^ Perhaps a list of places or venues Back-on have played/would like to play at