PHANTOMIME

Phantomime is an album that finally sees Mori Calliope finding her lane with music more than ever. That kind of rap/nu-metal angle that she's been toying with a bit ever since Jigoku 6 came out is out in full force for parts of this record, with Overkill and Cult Following (produced by UK band WARGASM) being some of the best songs Calli has ever put out. The addition of Lotus Juice on the remix of SNEAKING, one of the worst songs Calli's put out honestly in a while, alongside the changing into a driving rap rock cut honestly redeems the song a lot. While there are people who do this a lot better out there, I'll point to Stand Atlantic's song Criminals and Redhook's track Cannibal, this is clearly her best lane. There's also the ballad skeleton which is pretty strong for the back half of the album.
However, I think there are still elements where Calli's propensity for swapping genres a bunch hurts this album, namely she's still not amazingly suited for ballads, she's trying to do these really pretty tracks but her vocals don't quite have the power behind them, or the vibrato or any techniques, and it leads to the weakest songs here where they used to be the best on early records. Notably, Last Days sees Calli straining her voice to get the pitch she wants and resulting in a really unpleasant chorus and the biggest outright dud on the record. Go-Getters is also honestly not my favourite track either, it feels like this is on the better end of k-pop./j-pop EN VTuber music, it doesn't feel like Imagine Dragons sneezed all over the production and feels like it was actually handled by a decent producer for the style, but it's still overblown out the ass and it doesn't have as strong a groove as it should for a big pop number.

This is Calli's best record, no questions asked. She has direction as a musician which she's only gotten stronger at since Jigoku 6 but she really really needs to either cut back on the ballads or get a stronger voice on that end of the spectrum.