OVERALL IMPRESSIONS : 8/10
I must admit that I made a grave mistake by listening to Aya’s Kinjirareta uta before listening to this album.  Because Kinjirareta uta is so freaking good, I pretty much set that as the standard for Aya and now listening to her debut album, it doesn’t quite measure up.  Nevertheless, Senjou no Hana is a rocking, full album and a great intro to what Aya is all about.

HOOK FACTOR : 9/10
The "Hook Factor" is how many songs on the album that make me want to rock out and start head banging. I listen to the most music in my car (which has a rocking stereo system in it) and I’d be proud to roll down my windows and blast Senjou no Hana for everyone to hear.  Definitely lots of rocking beats on this album.

CD Artwork/Packaging : 4/10
Just the cover and one photo of a side of Aya’s face? Very below average for a Japanese released album...well, at least we got lyrics.

VOCALS : 7.5/10
I realize this is Aya’s debut album, so I’m not going to go on about how she sounds compared to her latter Kinjirareta uta, but you can tell that she is less “rooted” in her sound here than in her latter album (naturally of course). It seems to me that she is feeling her way around this album with her voice, never really “letting go” so to speak.  There are some moments where her emotion starts to leak out, but it is mostly contained here.

MIXING : 7.5/10
The mixing of Aya’s voice with the background instruments is pretty good here, but not as good as Kinjirareta uta. One thing that I didn’t like about this album that I took points off for was how they really focused on the lead guitar. The lead guitar gets a LOT of solo time in almost every song, and seems like Aya’s voice and the guitar are fighting for the spotlight.  One other thing that was interesting to me was that in about 1/3 of the songs, Aya doesn’t start singing until almost a minute into the song. In fact, there is over 5 minutes of just lead guitar in the intro to the songs alone.

One other thing I wanted to mention (not a bad thing) but for those who know the Japanese artist Hitomi, pay particular attention to the beginning of track 6.  The way they mix Aya’s voice sounds almost exactly like Hitomi (in her recent albums).