Review by Lumina on June 10, 2026.

Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, Saidan plays a strange but distinctive style of melodic/raw black metal infused with punk and J-rock influences. Discovering Saidan was a complete accident. A month or two ago, I was unfortunately forced to use a streaming service, and it happened to autoplay a track from their debut album. Ever since that day, this record in particular has become one of my favorite albums of all time.

And to get this topic out of the way now—because it will come up indirectly later—no, I do not care that the main force behind Saidan is a bit of an edgelord. This is black metal; everyone is an edgelord, and there is certainly no shortage of scumbags people seem perfectly happy to listen to. Sure, the guy might also be a bit of a weeb, but Saidan's focus on Japanese folklore is executed surprisingly well and never feels forced or awkward, which is a nice bonus in my book.

Now for an album rundown, because every track here has something worth talking about.

Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal opens with "Kissed by Lunar's Silvery Gleam", a track that perfectly encapsulates the Saidan experience. It's highly melodic and contains some of my favorite riffs the band has ever written. The intro in particular feels direct and vicious before eventually transitioning into the more melodic passages. Splatterpvnk's vocals during the chorus become surprisingly sorrowful as well, which provides a nice contrast to his usual "evil" vocal style.

The follow-up track, "Queen of the Haunted Dell", is a complete 180 from its predecessor thanks to a mosh-worthy breakdown that likely stems from Splatterpvnk's roots in the metalcore scene. It's a simple idea, but it goes hard as hell. I always appreciate when bands incorporate elements like that into black metal without worrying about what genre purists might think.

"Girl Hell 1999" follows by returning to the atmosphere of the opening track, though it begins with a sample that I assume comes from the film of the same name—more on that later. This is also the most emotional song on the album. The passages in the middle and especially near the end rank among the record's absolute highlights for me.

The album's lone interlude, "Kate", is noteworthy both for its acoustic guitar work and for featuring Splatterpvnk's clean vocals. It also does a great deal to improve the album's pacing. With "Pale Imitation", the record returns to its overly melodic approach and abundance of memorable riffs. The lyrics are also worth discussing, which I'll get to later. There are a few more mosh-worthy moments scattered throughout the track, helping it stand apart from the others.

"Yuki Onna" features some of Splatterpvnk's strongest vocal performances on the entire album. While it could initially seem like a track designed to pad out the runtime, it more than justifies its place through its memorable riffs and strong atmosphere. The acoustic-driven ending also serves as another welcome pacing shift.

The closing track, "I Am the Witch", begins with a slow-burning buildup that sounds noticeably more sinister than much of the rest of the album. That buildup continues for quite some time before giving way to my favorite chorus on the record—an incredibly melodic section that transitions into another breakdown-esque passage before circling back to the introductory riffs. Additional lead guitar work eventually brings the song back to the chorus and then once again to the opening motif. After a brief pause, Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal concludes with one of its most emotionally powerful moments, featuring some beautifully executed shrieks from Splatterpvnk.

The production is also worth discussing, as it differs significantly from both traditional black metal and Saidan's earlier releases. Surprisingly, it's quite clean. Not overproduced, sterile, or polished to the point of losing character, but clean enough that every element has room to breathe. It occupies a strange middle ground between modern production values and the rawness expected from black metal. The drums are clear and punchy, while the guitars are massive and expansive, creating an almost comforting wall of sound. The bass is present as well, though it takes a bit of concentration to fully pick out. That's hardly a deal-breaker, however, considering that's often the case in black metal.

As previously mentioned, the lyrics largely revolve around Japanese folklore, horror media, ghosts, and other themes one might expect from a band like this. One example is the sixth track, "Yuki Onna". Yuki-onna is a yūrei or yōkai in Japanese folklore, often depicted throughout literature, film, and animation. Another example is "Girl Hell 1999". To be honest, I had never heard of the film before discovering Saidan, but it proves to be a fitting subject for the album. The movie itself appears to be a deeply unsettling piece of work. From what I've gathered, it centers around Misaki and her sister following a car accident, with their father subsequently committing horrific acts against the latter. The film seems particularly preoccupied with sexual violence, and the lyrics reflect that disturbing subject matter quite closely.

That track aside, noteworthy lyrics can be found throughout the album, though I have to specifically mention "Pale Imitation". The line, "Nazi cucks, incel bastards, fragile elite obsessed with me. I'm here controversial, all hail the mockery," honestly reminds me of when Decapitated ended up singing about 4chan on Cancer Culture back in 2022. Splatterpvnk generally appears to have good intentions, though his approach to expressing them can be a little unconventional. It doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the album at all, but it is worth mentioning.

From what I can tell, the track serves as a response to the criticism Saidan received early on—and, to some extent, still receives—from black metal elitists. That criticism certainly included Nazis, so I can't really fault the wording. It may also be connected to one of his more infamous stunts from a few years ago, when he publicly stated that he wanted to drive Nazis out of black metal. I wholeheartedly agree that Nazis have no place in music—or anywhere else, for that matter—but the backlash wasn't exactly surprising given how fragile the egos of both black metal elitists and Nazis can sometimes be.

Of course, lyrics are only part of the equation. The vocals need to be compelling as well, and thankfully, Splatterpvnk possesses one of my favorite voices in modern black metal. His finest performances appear on both "Kissed by Lunar's Silvery Gleam" and "I Am the Witch". His clean vocals on "Kate" are also excellent and contribute greatly to the track's atmosphere. In fact, that song somewhat reminds me of material from Sovngarde Awaits by Ysgramor US.

Some albums I consider 10/10 masterpieces still have minor flaws—not enough to affect the score, but flaws nonetheless. Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal is not one of those albums. It is, in my view, genuinely perfect. As a result, there are no standout tracks here because I love every single one of them.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Review by Vladimir on January 2, 2023.

When it comes to black metal bands, even in the US scene, there are plenty of fish in the sea, but there are some fish that are quite distinct in their own way. Case and point are the two-piece band Saidan from Nashville, Tennessee, spearheaded by Splatterpvnk and Hundosai. This band was recommended to me by a friend and fellow colleague, and although I usually skip on any recommendations either due to a lack of time or just general disinterest, this actually piqued my interest. If somebody mentioned to me that these two gentlemen blend black metal music with themes of Japanese horror and ghost stories, one might feel a bit skeptical about the overall execution and believe that this is just a work of people, or perhaps weeaboos who “unironically” watch generic anime and read manga with a very stretched plot, while listening to some obscure black metal. At first, I did feel a bit like that because I think that there’s just far too much weird stuff going on with this subgenre that it just keeps getting weirder and far less attractive, but I figured “what the hell, I’ll give it a chance, what have I got to lose?”. Their second full-length album Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal will be the topic of today’s review, which was released on Jems Label on April 15th 2022. So, what is the supposed “love product” of Japanese horror and black metal?

Another thing that had me worried was that this would be some blackened metalcore/deathcore band like Lorna Shore, because that has become a very frequent feature in the US metal scene nowadays, which would definitely not be my cup of tea. Luckily, not only was I wrong, I was actually quite surprised and impressed with the true nature of Saidan, and I learned my lesson again that a book should never be judged by its cover. This is actually pretty oldschool black metal, with very raw tremolo guitar riffs, beautiful guitar melodies and solos, double-bass drums, synths and shrieking vocals. Tracks 'Queen Of The Haunted Dell' and 'Girl Hell 1999' have some catchy mid-tempo riffing and drumming going on, but I have to mention that on the second track 'Queen Of The Haunted Dell', there is also a very punk riff with d-beat drumming that switches to an unexpected thrash metal-like breakdown that goes back to punk and d-beat. The fourth track 'Kate' is an acoustic interlude with calm clean singing which bridges the gap in the middle, before continuing to slice and dice everything with black metal. Another thing that should be mentioned is that the fifth track 'Pale Imitation' has some interesting and very direct lyrics of mockery which you should definitely read with a dose of morbid curiosity. The sixth track 'Yuki Onna' has an awesome tremolo riff with traditional sounding Japanese melodies, which has interesting conceptual lyrics about Yuki Onna (Japanese for “snow woman”), the famous spirit in Japanese folklore. The cover art for Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal, which is beautiful by the way, was that one key visual aspect that had me worried at first which made me misjudge the band before actually listening to the music, and I have to say that the songwriting and the visual representation do go together quite well. The sound production has very primitive and raw guitar tone, shrieking vocals with added vocal distortion and very atmospheric synths that in fact work with the general aesthetics and themes, even with Japanese traditional instruments on the track 'Yuki Onna'.

I clearly got off the wrong foot when I wanted to give this band a try, but I was fortunate enough to have finally heard it. I’d usually prefer Japanese folklore and black metal in the case of actual Japanese bands since I do like a few of them, but in the case of Saidan I do think that they did everything with brilliance and clear conscience, what made me realize in the end that it didn’t turn out to be a bunch of pretentious musicians trying to express their personal tastes and interests in foreign legends and cultures like some clueless teenagers. This album deserves all the love it needs, especially from those who like black metal and Japanese horror and ghost stories. Check it out!

Rating: 9.1 out of 10