Starstorm Record
Release: 7 November 2025
Line Up:
Kai — vocals, guitar, bass, synthesizer, piano, production (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
Takeshi Tokunaga — guitar, bass, synthesizer, production (Tracks 5 & 6)
Jan-Vincent Velazco — drums (All tracks except 1 & 7)
John Hutchins — mixing, mastering (All tracks except track 7)
Tracklist:
Tempus
Chronos
Shadow of Time
Quetzalcoatl
Silver Leaf
Stardust
Machina
Lost Horizon
Broken Mirror
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Like A Phoenix
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Esprit D’Air carries an almost existential quality. There are moments when it feels like you’re hearing echoes of legendary musicians whose spirits have come back to create the kind of epic metal that Esprit D’Air executes so effectively.
The word ‘haunting’ appears in the band’s own descriptions of their sound, and given that ‘Aeons’ explores themes of time—how it imprisons us, challenges us, and drives us to our limits—it makes sense that we’d want to escape reality while absorbing it all. Looking at today’s world, one that seems progressively more unstable, where our lives are defined by conflict, division, and turmoil, there’s no shortage of subject matter. Rather than dwelling on negativity, the band cuts through the shadows to demonstrate that resilience, hope, and the chance to start over still exist.
You have two paths for listening to and grasping the lyrics. First, simply sing along using your best attempt at Japanese and see what happens (my go-to method for immediate enjoyment), or second, keep a live translation app ready alongside the press release that offers deeper insight into the music. The second approach really allows the band to reveal itself to you, with both Kai and Yusuke discussing how time controls all our actions, how humanity continues repeating identical errors without learning. The lyrics examine transforming despair into hope, escaping our restraints, the journey we experience when feeling imprisoned, stuck in perpetual conflict, and songs centered on resilience and the power to break away and begin anew. Epic musicianship wraps it all together, with strings, keys, and additional layers built over the guitars, drums, and vocals.
What you get is as epic as the band has trained us to expect through the years, and while the genre label I’ve assigned could just as easily include electronicore, gothic metal, power metal, and industrial metal, the epic metal descriptor encompasses all of it because this truly is quite epic.
Ratings: 9/10
Reviewed by Adrian Hextall
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