ALBUM REVIEW: ONE OK ROCK – ‘DETOX’

Back in October, ONE OK ROCK played a one-off headline show at Wembley Arena, and the mind still boggles about it to this day. Back home, they could knock something out like that on a lazy afternoon—like every Japanese band ever, they’re inexorably huge in their homeland—but anywhere else? From an outside perspective, it looked like ONE OK ROCK just decided that they were international crossover smashes, and it was made so.

That actually goes back a few years to 2019 and the release of Eye Of The Storm, the album intended as their star-maker for the rest of the world, and a total embarrassment from front to back. These were all the rage in the late-2010s—‘alt’-pop pivots that displaced their creators from entrenched, often fruitful pop-rock and pop-punk lanes for a bit more dough and a slight chance for extra airplay, because it worked for Fall Out Boy and pretty much no one else. But for as quick as most of those acts were to backpedal and return to normalcy as soon as the very next album, they at least feigned enthusiasm for this ‘new creative impetus’. ONE OK ROCK, meanwhile, have effectively said that Eye Of The Storm was made to facilitate an American crossover, and its powerless presentation, weak-as-piss production and a sewing together of clichés to masquerade as lyrics feel all the more craven.

But here’s the bigger picture—if you look at the throughline between Eye Of The Storm and the Wembley show, the two still don’t connect cleanly. Outside of media outlets who’ll sell themselves out just as hard if it means seeming ahead of the curve, ONE OK ROCK have never been portrayed as that big a deal. The inroads they made allowed them to develop friendships with Ed Sheeran and 5 Seconds Of Summer, and that’s about the extent of what they’ve achieved. If you really want to zero in on what ONE OK ROCK are well-known for, it’s releasing Eye Of The Storm and humiliating themselves for no adequate reason. Hell, even they probably believe that; the follow-up Luxury Disease went back to pop-rock and J-rock, and really had no significant footprint when what came before seems to have poisoned their perception so thoroughly.

DETOX as a title almost seems perfect in its deliberacy—any negative looks can be flushed out, and ONE OK ROCK can finally get back on track again. Even if recent history would suggest that’s unjustifiably optimistic, it’s a good start right away that there’s acknowledgement of what went wrong. At least the intent of a return to equilibrium is there. And d’you know what? ONE OK ROCK kind of get there. DETOX is easily the best they’ve sounded since 35xxxv in 2015, and at a level of enjoyment that’s actually appropriate for a band now in their 20th year. Granted, the natural ceiling of ONE OK ROCK is still in play, but at least it’s not an inch off the floor anymore; there’s room to move beneath it.

That does mean, however, that their existing shortcomings still need to be addressed. The most pertinent is Taka Moriuchi as a vocalist, and how he’s not exactly the greatest representative for what ONE OK ROCK want to be. Here’s a band staked down as a halfway house between zingier J-rock and the comparatively milder, familiar flavours of western pop-rock, and a frontman so caught in his own over-earnestness and self-seriousness isn’t doing much to facilitate that. It’s not as bad as it has been—the spectre of a hyper-emotive “I want the cause of my death / To be amazing sex” is like a sleep paralysis demon to this day—but it’s still noteworthy. Opener NASTY is the first instance, where Taka’s meek little bleat can sell nowhere convincingly enough that he’s “too damn nasty”. At least it’s funnier on Tropical Therapy, a song bestowed with such soul-tugging seriousness that’s about, for all intents and purposes, wanting to go on holiday.

Fortunately on DETOX, these are razzable offences rather than chronic, crushing blows at every turn. It’s actually quite nice to have these humble flaws not morph and metastasise far beyond their bounds. For instance, C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. is a mess of track with its rap verse and Middle Eastern passages (though Paledusk do feature, so it’s not like a non-connective, off-the-wall decision is out of character), but at least it’s just one song. And at least it’s interesting. It’s unequivocally a good thing that ONE OK ROCK feel like they can be a little riskier, and not antisepticise themselves to scrape together a few extra pennies. It actually leads to the album’s biggest shock in This Can’t Be Us, not only for its surprisingly textured pastiche of a ‘70s glam-rock ballad, but having its piano and strings tastefully—and restrainedly—implemented instead of just caking on the bombast.

Granted, DETOX is still a 2020s pop-rock album, so expecting that level of behind-the-scenes detail as more than a one-off is pushing it. It comes with the territory at this point—slicked-back, faultlessly clean, and free of even the most minute blemish, let alone a hairline fault to be picked at. However, if ONE OK ROCK insist on keeping that up, it’s good that they’ve gone all in on the oomph like with Dystopia, or the lift and swell given to +Matter and its glistening chorus. Get a bit further down that line and you’ll come to Party’s Over, a throwback to the band’s J-rock of yore with a great zipping pace and even a touch of screaming again, held together in a razor-tight package. It’s only Tiny Pieces that’s a definite flub of their pop-rock leverage, beginning with the sickly guitar loop that was like the town bike for pop songs in the early 2010s, and only growing from there into another slab of empty calories.

The inconsistencies continue when ONE OK ROCK try to get heavier, where DETOX has the hardest time with coming into its own. As stated earlier, C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. is a blatant mess, but NASTY’s blasé alt-metal lurch throws out an area of weakness even among a more straightforward composition. (Also, the punctuating women’s moans—why?) From there, there are moments that are unexceptional but not precisely objectionable. For its lack of flavour or exciting instrumental presence, Delusion:All is far from as bad as it could’ve been, saved by its admirable grandeur. Puppets Can’t Control Us (with its adorably nonsensical, English-not-as-a-first-language title) is largely the same, save for a surprisingly effective turn from drummer Tomo Kanki that, out of the blue, lifts it up a notch or two.

A few years ago, something like that from ONE OK ROCK would’ve seemed unthinkable. If you actually listen to Eye Of The Storm again, you’d struggle to pick out where the band are, there’s so little presence. So even if DETOX has its issues and its discrepancies that fall out of line, it’s just nice to find components worthy of praise. Even some singing in Japanese is back, as if to serve as its own shorthand for rewinding some of the more egregious selling-out. Perhaps this is where ONE OK ROCK find their feet again, then; it realistically could be. On the whole, this is a solid listen with more than a handful of qualities that, coming from this band, feel legitimately impressive, and approximately a few parsecs ahead of where they were just half a decade ago. That being said, Wembley isn’t begging them for a return just yet; the road to a full detox isn’t over with the first signs of success. To compare the ONE OK ROCKs of then and now, though, the difference for the better is astonishing.

For fans of: Sleeping With Sirens, Pierce The Veil, Hands Like Houses

‘DETOX’ by ONE OK ROCK is out now on Fueled By Ramen.

Words by Luke Nuttall