Kalafina: sprinter/ARIA

1. sprinter

2. ARIA

3. Oblivious – Instrumental –

spinter/ARIA is Kalafina’s second single, released on August 30th, 2008. It reached #9 on Oricon and has sold 23 309 copies. ARIA was used as the theme song for the fourth installment of Kara no Kyoukai (boundary of emptiness).

sprinter is a very powerful track to say least, even more powerful than Oblivious. It makes wonderful use of powerful guitar riffs during pretty much all of the song, but they are really striking during the chorus. The combination of a powerful voice and a chorus of smaller voices ad-libbing in the background creates a great effect, but toward the end of the chorus, there is a vocal canon which I really didn’t like. It also includes a sort of annoying false ending in the middle, which was a really nice touch.

The second A-Side, ARIA, isn’t as overwhelming. It opens with Latin (maybe) chants in the back and bleeps of synth as it has become their trademark, and then just good low-key for the first verse, which is nice, but not exactly what I was expecting from a song called ARIA. The chorus is better and manages to save the song, and focuses on very powerful vocals and drums. Not as good as sprinter, but good.