Here's a little change of pace from the orchestral music genre. Some years back, while looking for some new game music, I started browsing alphabetically through a huge list of albums. The first one on the list was called "1st GIG #Awake" by a band named MintJam. This was my introduction to the sub-genre called doujin.
The word "doujin" means something like "fanclub" or "society", but in common usage it refers to independently published works of fiction, art, or in this case, music. The "fan" part comes from the fact that many of these works are inspired by commercial works of art, but not all. Doujin music, for example, are often arrangements of game and anime music, but are also interspersed with original pieces.
Amateur arrangements of game music certainly exist here in the States (and I'll be posting them), but the practice in Japan is much more widespread and more commercialized. Doujin music tends to be of the heavy metal variety, since guitars and other garage band staples are less expensive to acquire and perform on, relatively speaking. This song is the first track on MintJam's first album. It is their arrangement (including their own vocals) of the opening theme to a fighting game called "Melty Blood", which itself was a product of the doujin community, before achieving mainstream success with a port to the PS2. The original vocal theme to the game is of noticeably lower quality, and MintJam's version is definitely a very enjoyable improvement.
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