Up Hold - Engine digipak

Admittedly, I'm still reeling a bit from the disappointed tone of yesterday's article, a piece on Up Hold's disappointing final album Deepness Of Disorder. Let's lighten things up a bit by posting a variant! Engine. If you're a dedicated reader to this blog, you know it, and you know I love it. There was also this thick hard-cased digipak version.

Now, I don't know if this had an obi or not, but from what I've seen of other, similarly made digipaks, perhaps not? It has a barcode on there, which obis usually have, but Limited Records didn't print a barcode on the obi for the jewel case edition, so I wouldn't know. If any readers can confirm, I'd like to know!

There isn't much else to say, other than, I guess, read the original article here! It's a great album.

It may look it but trust me, the jewel case version doesn't fit in the digipak. Although that would be really cool.

Up Hold - Engine

The second album by Up Hold, their first full album on Hell Hornet/Limited Records, has the band setting more comfortably in their nu metal direction, while still having the intensity their older work contained. While the instrumentalism was simpling town a little more, Tatsuya Igarashi's English lyrics were getting stronger, still maintaining that "writing music in your second or third language" abstractness but thematically becoming as uplifting as the band's name might have implied. While I haven't heard anything from their final album Deepness Of Disorder yet, to say that this is the crowning achievement of the band at this point in their career is an understatement.

As with Water, this album was simultaneously released in 12" vinyl format, but since I generally don't collect vinyls of stuff I can't get on CD, I don't have that version in my collection. There is also a digipak version of this release, and I have one coming from the lot I purchased my second copy of The Unbleached in, but it doesn't look like it has an obi. For all I know, it never had one to begin with. No matter what format you find it in, though, do get this album. I doubt you'll be disappointed with it, especially if you've followed the band this far.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Sight

2. Creep

3. D

4. To Be Myself

5. Thorny Path

6. Fork

7. Hue

8. The Risk

9. Rise By

10. Inside

Up Hold - Fork

As we carry on to the second section of covering Up Hold's discography, I should mention that in none of that time did I grab the missing pieces of their collection (those being the snap-pack single/VHS combo pack of their single for Sight, the single/EP to Intersect Of Light & Dark, or their final album Deepness Of Disorder)...yet, but in that time, I did get another CD copy of The Unbleached that actually comes with the obi. As a result, it'll be a while after tomorrow's coverage of Engine that I'll be able to finish covering Up Hold, but I guarantee that it will be done eventually.

Anyway, onto this release... this is Up Hold's first release under Hell Hornet Records, a sublabel of now-defunct Japanese label Limited Records. It was issued on June 3rd, 1999, a good eleven months before the release of their sophomore album Engine, although the titular track would become the only one to actually make the final cut of that album. The 12" release of this features an alternate version of the cover that is similar in intent, but far, far different in execution.

As such, the material here is the first indication that Up Hold's sound had spectacularly changed after changing record labels. They were adopting a more nu-metal sound than they had when they were still on Slam Records, the new inclusion of clean vocals being one major indicator. To their credit, they still had enough hardcore punk essence and melodic integrity to make their brand of nu metal stand far above a lot of the newer blood the nu metal scene was taking in at the time. The second track on this EP, Out Of The Way, features guest vocals from Cocobat vocalist Hideki, and I can't help but wonder why this song didn't make the final cut of Engine.

I can see how older fans of them would be apprehensive about the different direction the band was taking, but on its own terms, it's a nice little collection of hardcore punk-infused nu metal, and in the grand scheme of the band's sound, it's a great harbinger of what is to come with Engine.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Fork

2. Out Of The Way

3. Recollect

4. Answer (a newly re-recorded version)