Track By Tracks: Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship - 2D Complex (2026)

LYRICALLY:

2D Complex pretty much sums it up. For me, this is just how I live.

We moved away from pure gore this time to focus more on anime culture, the hikikomori life, and my own mental state. To be blunt, these Otaku memes are just a shell. What’s actually inside is my pain, my hatred, and a genuine urge for self-destruction.

MUSICALLY:

Imagine a car crash in Akihabara, that’s our music in a nutshell.

To be honest, we’ve never been a ‘textbook’ Slam band. Ever since we started heavily sampling LoveLive! in our earlier stuff, our style has always been a bit…weird? For this album, we wanted to lean even harder into the Otaku memes and use Slam as the heaviest possible way to package all these different musical elements.

You’re going to hear pure, neck-snapping Slam riffs, but we also threw in a lot of our own private stashes, everything from J-pop and Blackgaze to Japanese folk. We brought in friends from all over the world to help us finish this, and I want every track to be something that sticks with you. Bottom line: this is an album that refuses to be boring.

Track by Track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):

1. Lucky☆Slam The album’s intro, a tribute to my favorite anime, Lucky☆Star. It kicks off with a Black Metal riff and slams into a massive breakdown. I thought it’d be a cool way to tell everyone: get ready, I’m going to lose control

2. Slamonogatari This one’s about Nadeko Sengoku from Monogatari. That twisted darkness hidden behind a cute face fits Slam perfectly. The highlight is the melodic Heavy Metal solo from Andrew Lee at the end—honestly, my favorite part of the track.

3. Brutal Panzer Standard Slam, a Brutal Death themed after Girls und Panzer. Just imagine cute girls in tanks crushing everything on the battlefield. Musically, it’s the same vibe; this track was built for the pit.

4. Twisted Light We played around with a lot of glitch sounds and long pig squeals here. We got Akihiro Muto from Agent 0 for a guest spot; his gutturals are absolutely sick. I really want people to feel that “Twisted” vibe through this song.

5. 苦痛昇天 The title of this song means “Ascension in Agony”. A bit of a risky one. We added clean vocals, and it sounds like an anime opening, but the lyrics are actually about self-destruction and pill addiction. Huge thanks to Yui from Earthists. His vocals took this song to a whole new level.

6. Song of the Neet Our 2024 single, written for all the “home guards” (hikikomori) who reject society. Tons of guitar harmonics, plus Yanchi’s spoken word and Matt Yakesh’s screams—this is a true Otaku anthem.

7. Utsushiyo The intro for the next track, “Yomi.” We used a full piano piece to set the atmosphere.

8. Yomi featuring Alan Grnja from the Dutch deathcore heavyweights Distant. We blended in Japanese folk elements here. It’s solemn yet fierce—I think you guys are going to love it.

9. 約束 The title of this song means “promise”.This is the track I put the most heart into. I tried to fit Slam riffs into a Blackgaze/Screamo framework. NIIK (from Pale) killed it with the spoken word, and combined with the atmospheric synths, it’s the final chapter of farewell and self-destruction.

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