DECIDE

ASTERISM announced DECIDE on 15 September 2023, and SME Records released it on CD on 1 November 2023 as SECL-2912, a single disc in a paper sleeve priced at 3,000 yen including tax. The third full album gathers the ten songs of the fourth EP, ASIDE, and the fifth EP, BESIDE, both released digitally earlier that year, and adds the bonus track "Shooting Star", eleven songs in all; the band calls it its first vocal collection. Because the two EPs had been digital only, DECIDE became the band's first CD on SME Records; its major debut on the label had been ASIDE in March. The running order reshuffles the two EPs, opening with "STARDOM" and closing with "Shooting Star". HAL-CA wrote the lyrics of all eleven songs. HAL-CA said the band had gathered these vocal songs as one more way of bringing its world to more people, and felt that an instrumental band that sings has to surpass its own past songs. MIYU called it an important album in the band's history because every song on it has vocals, and MIO noted that some of the songs had been started in 2020, during the pandemic, and that the album had been made over a long time and chosen with care. On the day of release "Shooting Star" also came out on its own as a download, and on 8 November its video appeared, built from behind-the-scenes footage of the band's US tour in July. The release tour, ASTERISM "DECIDE" Release Tour 2023 -THE DECISION-, visited four cities: RAD SEVEN in Sakae, Nagoya, on 4 November, BRONZE in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, on the 5th, LIVE HOUSE CB in Fukuoka on the 12th and SHIBUYA CYCLONE in Tokyo on the 23rd. The recording of the Tokyo concert was released digitally in March 2024 as the band's first live album, THE DECISION (Live in Tokyo 23.11.2023).