What better way to celebrate a crystal anniversary than with a new EP? Tokyo’s MAN WITH A MISSION seem to agree and they kick off the festivities in some style with the aptly-titled XV. Featuring four brand spanking new studio cuts along with eight tracks recorded live in Mexico on last year’s Kizuna no Kiseki North America tour, this is a release that simultaneously toasts the past whilst signposting a very bright future.
Proving that MAN WITH A MISSION are very much on an urgent assignment, opening track ‘Vertigo’ doesn’t waste time on fancy introductions and elongated introductions. There’s no feints or rabbit punches with which to soften the listener up, there’s just an insanely catchy beat that hits us directly between the eyes and then the band are off, doing what they do best and delivering an infectious beat that’s guaranteed to get feet moving and heads banging. It’s a track that seems tailor made for the live environment and you can almost see an arena-sized crowd erupting as the band open a set with this song. The groove is humongous and swings with wrecking ball force and is given momentum by some seriously sublime scratching from DJ Santa Monica who spins those discs with such severity that it does indeed give us a dose of vertigo.
MAN WITH A MISSION are a band with a lot of style (chances are you’ve seen them performing behind wolf costumes), but there’s plenty of substance bubbling beneath and if proof were needed you only need to lend an ear to these four studio songs. Each of these four cuts inhabit their own sonic space; the aforementioned ‘Vertigo’ is a stadium filler, ‘Circles’ is a song to tug the heartstrings, ‘REACHING FOR THE SKY’ is one for your gym playlist, whilst ‘whispers of the fake’ is just waiting to be included over the credits of some über cool anime.
The veterans of some seven studio albums, five compilations and ten EP’s, something always missing from the MAN WITH A MISSION discography has always been a live album and going some way to fill that gap are the eight live tracks included here. As all live recordings should, they capture some of the magic that the band generate in the live environment; from the tension building ‘INTO THE DEEP’ to the riotous cornucopia of sound in closer ‘Kizuna no Kiseki’, these live tracks encapsulate the sheer effervescence that MAN ON A MISSION bring to a concert and is probably the next best thing to actually being there.
A neat milestone on an amazing journey, and one that suggests there’s much more to come.
- XV is released via Century Media/Sony Music on 12th March 2025.
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Track List:
1. Vertigo
2. Circles
3. REACHING FOR THE SKY
4. whispers of the fake
5. INTO THE DEEP *
6. Merry-Go-Round *
7. Seven Deadly Sins *
8. blaze (Acoustic Version) *
9. Dark Crow *
10. Dead End in Tokyo *
11. My Hero *
12. Kizuna no Kiseki *
* North America Tour 2024 “Kizuna no Kiseki” in Mexico
