01. Distinctive Territory 

02. Quintessence Voyage

03.  if...reminiscence

04. bouquet

05. Phantom to the Past

06. Atmosphere

"Distinctive Territory" is a fast paced rock song and a great introduction to this mini-album. The main guitar riff reminds me of the predominate guitar melody in "Distrust Labyrinth," and even has a similar drum introduction. The vocals for the start of the song are all clean and tame up until the chorus of the song. Unfortunately, Sui does some more of the vocal out bursts that were a problem in "Oath-Cross of Eternity-," namely the crescendo swells that he does a bit too well. Props for trying, but I think it hurts a bit more than helps in this instance. The song follows a format of verse --> chorus --> verse --> chorus --> bridge, then guitar solo. The guitar solo is a typical Megaromania one, lots of fingering and scale runs, mixed with really high pitched and accented notes. The breakdown of the song is soft and gentle to counter the rather unwieldy nature of the rest of the song. Although this song is on the shorter side, it is a nice and lively addition to Megaromania's repertoire even if kind of "Distrust Labyrinth v. 2.0. "

"Quintessence Voyage" is the title track of the cd. It starts off with a drum intro and then some syncopated and heavily accented guitar chords, followed by some aggressive guitar riffs accompanied loud drumming emphasizing each beat, followed by the same pattern again with the drumming at twice the speed. There is a brief resolution, followed by a glissando scale before the true introduction of the song starts. This section is marked by low steady vocals cruising on top of a well orchestrated support melody by the guitar and bass. Thus far QV has proven to be a much more mature composition made by the band, and actually written as a joint effort of Sui and Misery. After the first verse is a small bridge where Sui's voice gets a bit airy over the rising and falling of the guitar and bass lines. The chorus of the song is rather pop-rock sounding: catchy melody, singable, uses keyboard to fill in the chords that guitars don't quite cover, and has very little Megaromania's metallic aspect to it until the end of the chorus, which thus begins another turbulent phrase that was introduced at the start of this voyage. The guitar solo of this song is very short and is quickly cut off by a piano / acapella section before melting into a sort-of-chorus-but-still-the-verse section. Unfortunately, the end of this song is pretty bad: a couple faux-goth elements were thrown in, like church bells and low register guitars, and Sui begins to scream like an injured dog only to be answered by not so manly gang vocals. Also, thank goodness I kept listening, the actual last note is so short: probably a 16th note in length. That leaves exactly no room for any sort of cadence whatsoever and annoys me to no end. Completely out of touch with the rest of the song and could have been an easily avoided musical iceberg. QV brings a lot of new elements into Megaromania's music and makes for a much better title track than other recent releases, namely "Aurora," even though that was written by Sui as well. Also unlike a lot of their releases, the CD does have a music video for a song that wasn't released 8 months ago.

"if...reminiscence" follows in the footsteps of "Punishment for Pain." Actually, it's a mixture of that song and "Amethyst." Those are two of my favorite Megaromania songs, but do they actually sound good when shaken together in a tight container? Well, better than one might actually think, actually. There are a lot of nice piano parts in this song as well as some operatic singing that wasn't actually done by Sui: two big elements from the songs I previously compared it to. The verse of the song is sang over relatively tame guitar and bass lines with operatic wailing in the background. What I liked about the music in this song is that it switches from section to section very well, tame to aggressive, and makes for a pleasant listening experience. The chorus was actually the weakest part of the song for me: I feel like Sui had literally no range at all in this part of the song and just hovered around the same 6 notes which all happen to be in the range that makes him sound pretty nasally. Aside from that section, I really liked this song because it reminds me of Malice Mizer's "麗しき仮面の招待状" a bit. This might become a favorite in the future because there a lot of beautiful sections to it.

Next up is "bouquet," which a lot of people liked for it's kote-kei elements. The song starts off with the main vocal melody being sang on a fake record player, brittle and poppy noises and all. The real face of the song contains a lot of fast paced and low register guitar, daunting keyboard parts, and vocals that sound distraught. Somehow, the chorus remains to sound similar to what I just described yet still have a pirate feel to it because of the 6/8 time change. The guitar solo of the song sounds extremely random: I'm not sure how to describe it, but it really doesn't sound like the rest of the song at all both in timbre and in melody, but it later corrects itself and blends back into the song. I guess you could say that "bouquet" is the 2011 version of "End of Vengeance," just with more expensive synth. This honestly wasn't my favorite song on the CD, not because it was bad, but I really can't help but feel neutral about it. The faded vocal parts do sound really cool though.

"Phantom to the Past" quickly became my favorite song from this release. It starts off with a symphonic (canned) introduction, then a very Misery opening guitar riff with lots of arpeggios and fake baroque elements. The verse of the song is fast paced and lively with low guitar and bass parts as well as ornate string parts popping in here and there. Like other songs, "Phantom to the Past" uses both harpsichord and gang-vocals: two things I do really like when used properly. The merge from the verse to chorus is seamless: I love how the mood changes from dark and brooding to happy and confident within a few very well placed notes. Again, this is a sign of the band's maturity. As I implied, the main melody of this song is playful and whimsical, yet confident and flirty. The guitar solo is introduced by a fake baroque string solo (love it!), followed by a guitar solo that mimics the same melody and then expands upon it. Hyoga's part in this song is actually audible, which is something I'd like to note. After I actually paid attention to this song, I really really started to like it. There are so many good elements going on in here. I'm not sure how to exactly compare it to their earlier works though: I guess calling it "Apocalypse v. 3.0" would be pretty accurate, but I think saying "Apocalypse" . "Oblivious" (that's php's way of concatenation,  by the way) would be more appropriate. Regardless of not really necessary comparisons, I am very happy that the band re-released this song. Originally it was released as a live distributed song and only a few people that I know of were able to hear it (including someone who doesn't even like this band. Why would you share rarez with people who don't even truly want them?) . Lately this band has been releasing a lot of live-distributed songs, including one called "Wail of Crested," and a couple "tribute songs" (cover songs) that will be released towards the end of September. Too bad they'll be ridiculously expensive, driving people to have a need to pirate them.

The last song on the release is "Atmosphere." It starts off with really brittle guitar and vocals that sound legitimately upset about something. The verse of the song sounds so familiar to me. At first I thought it sounded like -OZ-'s "Butterfly," but that doesn't seem to be the case after listening to both. Like "Phantom to the Past," there are a lot of symphonic elements in this song, including the same fake horns used in Juka's "Saint Croix." Similar to "bouquet," as well, there is a small distorted record-sounding section, albeit a bit brief. All in all, "Atmosphere" isn't really all that atmosphere-y in musical terms; rather, it is pretty heavy and intense. A definite misnomer, but a good listen.

Personally, I think the new costumes are great. They're starting to live up to their creative aestetics theme by actually using costumes that are creative and look different from everyone else / their own other costume sets. Although the mini-album wasn't nearly as nautical as I had hoped for (I wanted some Pirate-kei-core :( ) , they definitely look the part. As InArtistic (leader of the We Love UCP community, found here or through the butterfly logo on the side) said, their costumes finally look well fitted for each member. No more baggy Misery, less awkward Hyouga hair, and Chikage doesn't look like he wants to murder my loved ones.