Princess Ghibli by Imaginary Flying Machines (Review)

If the thought of a band likely decked out in leather, chains, spikes and/or corpse paint ripping through the theme to My Neighbor Totoro fills you with delight, then this is the album for you.
Princess Ghibli, Imaginary Flying Machines

On the one hand, you’ve got the films of Studio Ghibli, arguably some of the most beloved films in all of cinema. Gorgeous artwork and animation, compelling mythologies, and well-drawn (npi) characters aside, I’m convinced that one of the reasons for Studio Ghibli’s success is their soundtracks, many of them composed by Joe Hisaishi, whose exotic melodies and sweeping arrangements are the very definition of inimitable.

On the other hand, you have the Italian metal label Coroner Records, home to artists including Blood Stain Child, Destrage, Breach the Void, and Disarmonia Mundi.

On the surface, these two things have nothing in common, and any attempt to bring them together would be like combining matter and antimatter, i.e., mutual annihilation. And yet, the universe is a strange, strange place and sometimes, these combinations work out in ways that no one could have ever foreseen. Which brings us to Princess Ghibli, where Imaginary Flying Machines’ collaborative project turns in death metal covers of some of the most beloved songs in the Studio Ghibli catalog.

No doubt this will raise the eyebrows, and perhaps even the hackles, of many Studio Ghibli fans. For them, blast beats and shredding guitar riffs coming anywhere near My Neighbor Totoro’s theme may seem well nigh blasphemous. However, I imagine Princess Ghibli might be pretty eye-opening for metalheads, too. The album’s twelve tracks are hardly what you’d call “traditional” metal, even with all of the distorted guitars, double bass, and guttural vocals. Synthesizers and trance-like electronics make frequent appearances, especially on Blood Stain Child’s contributions. What’s more, the guitars and growling do nothing to mask the charm of Hisaishi et al.‘s original melodies, which remain sublime, wonder-inducing, and, well, heartwarming even in a metal context.

All that being said, I simply can’t get enough of the album. You could dismiss it out of hand as a novelty album, and there is no doubt a great deal of novelty, and even whimsy, here. Indeed, one can imagine that the album’s concept began as some sort of inside joke and grew from there. But the sheer amount of disparity — the sheer amount of “this just should not work”-edness — on display in every second of every track is what makes Princess Ghibli so fascinating… and rocking. Or, to put it another way, the thought of some band likely decked out in leather, chains, spikes and/or corpse paint ripping through “Tonari No Totoro”, the happy-go-lucky theme to one of the world’s greatest childrens’ films, fills me with an almost absurd amount of delight.

It doesn’t all work, though. Blood Stain Child’s use of dance-house electronics is interesting at times, but their rendition of Spirited Away’s “Itsumo Nandodemo” ultimately sounds like something Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric) might compose were he more influenced by Cradle of Filth than Erasure and Kraftwerk. Which, on an album that already strains disbelief, is a thought that breaks the camel’s back. And there are brief moments in tracks like “Yasashisa Ni Tsutsumaretanara” (Kiki’s Delivery Service) and “Toki niwa Mukashi no hanashio” (Porco Rosso) where the already tenuous mix of Ghibli and metal becomes uneven and threatens to unravel.

But most of the album’s tracks do a fantastic job of walking that ultra-thin line, resulting in songs that are by turns head-scratching and head-banging. Disarmonia Mundi’s aforementioned cover of “Tonari No Totoro” is a definite highlight, and the duo’s thunderous take on “Kimi Wo Nosete” (Laputa: Castle In The Sky) is quite spell-binding, especially when those blast beats collide with Yoko Hallelujah’s lovely voice on the chorus. Destrage’s blues-y version of “Gake No Ue No Ponyo” (Ponyo) is the album’s silliest track, and I mean that in a good way, especially when they rip and stomp through the song’s chorus. (For what it’s worth, I much prefer Destrage’s version to the Frankie Jonas/Noah Cyrus version the accompanied the film’s North American release.)

Disarmonia Mundi’s version of “Arrietty’s Song” (from Studio Ghibli’s most recent film, The Borrower Arrietty) achieves a sweeping, almost majestic tone thanks to Sophia Aslanidou’s angelic voice, which contrasts nicely with the duo’s growling and slashing guitars. Living Corpse’s rendition of My Neighbor Totoro’s “Sanpo” conjures up the album’s heaviest, darkest moment in the extended breakdown, which collapses into distorted industrial rubble — which is actually a nice change of sonic tone and pace. Finally, Neroargento closes the album with a stirring, operatic industrial/neo-classical version of Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind’s “Nausicaa requiem”.

Princess Ghibli is predicated on a gimmick, no doubt about that. But it’s a very intriguing gimmick and it’s one that executed with such skill, tenacity, and passion — I don’t doubt for a moment that the bands involved are Studio Ghibli fans themselves — that the word “gimmick” seems too dismissive and ceases to be accurate. So I’m going to go with “awesome” and leave it at that. Some may scoff at Princess Ghibli for being silly, frivolous, an example of extreme nerdery and/or lame metal, or something else entirely. I’ll be too busy head-banging and throwing up the horns with Totoro, Porco Rosso, et al. to notice or to care.

The album announcement teaser.
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