Buck-Tick - Darker Than Darkness -Style 93-

 

Buck-Tick - Darker Than Darkness -Style 93-
Release Date - 6/23/1993
Country of Origin - Japan
Number of Tracks - 10

Evolution is something that is a reoccurring factor in life. It is what made us who were and will continue to morph us to what is needed to survive and keep going. This is a fact that carries over from the environment and life (human, animal, etc) to entertainment. Everything is always changing in the entertainment industry; what’s in, what’s out? What’s doing well and what’s faring poorly? Along with changing to try and be more successful sometimes things will change just because somebody wants to change, experiment. Some do it just to try out different things, just take a look at guys like Beck or Marilyn Manson who would change the sound of their albums just to make it stand out from their previous one. Some even take this as a way to show off their maturing or becoming better as a creator.

I bring this all up because once more we’re looking at Buck-Tick, a band that will always have my love and respect. The love is rather obviously due to my enjoyment of their music. The respect comes in their willingness to change and showcase new things and their maturity. They are a band that got better as the years passed. This isn’t to say that their early music is bad, in fact it’s rather good. But it is simple and while the lyrics have meaning to them, they have a sense of being written to be cool about them, something which the lead vocalist and main lyricist Atsushi Sakurai has even admitted. Buck-Tick slowly got better, they beginning to mature in the Taboo album, and as stated in the review of it, Aku no Hana saw them fully embrace their new more serious image. However even those albums, while showcasing new things, still have simpleness to them. Many would argue and agree that it wasn’t until their sixth album Kurutta Taiyou that the band finally began to get really serious (perhaps a review for another day, meaning whenever I can buy a copy). I haven’t heard the full album, but of the material I have I agree with that statement.

But if there is one defining point to the band’s career, an album in which everybody would agree that drastically changed things, something that set the new status queue, then it would be their seventh album Darker Than Darkness -Style 93-, it released (rather clearly) in 1993. Since its release many people have heralded it as being their best work. It’s made critic’s top lists and is a favorite among many fans. The pedigree this album has is a rather big one. It’s a critical and audience darling after all.

Yet even if something seems unanimous it doesn’t mean it always is. People can claim that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time, and a lot may agree, but there will always be those who think others. The point of all that blabbering being that Darker Than Darkness is on the table for today’s review. The regular album reviewing setup is in effect, and you all know the rest of the spiel. Is the album as great as it is said to be? We won’t know until we listen, so let us now do so.

Tracklisting

1. キラメキの中で... (Kirameki no Naka de…)

2. Deep Slow

3. 誘惑 (Yuuwaku)

4. 青の世界 (Ao no Sekai)

5. 神風 (Kamikaze)

6. Zero

7. ドレス (Dress)

8. Lion

9. Madman Blues -ミナシ児ノ憂鬱- (Madman Blues -Minashigo no Yuuutsu-)

10. Die

When we last looked at Buck-Tick we saw their sound beginning to mature, grow heavier and more complex. Darker Than Darkness continues the band’s growth into a more complex, mature, and heavy style, but takes an extreme dive into experimentation. Whereas Aku no Hana was more of a hard rock album, DTD is a trip into the world of electronic and industrial music. This change is evident right from the opening track and while there are songs that feature more emphasis on their traditional rock sound it is the more noise like style that is present throughout the record. They do use it for some nice experimentation quite often, my favorite instance of this being Yuuwaku, which is a very swing sounding song, but with a soft industrial composition (it is a bit tainted however with how muddy it sounds and is a bit too distorted). Accompanying this is a record which in fact sounds terrific, with every note and noise audible to the listener. I will admit though that while everything is easy to hear, perhaps it’s all a little loud. Even on a lower volume setting the entire album is pretty loud, and industrial and electronic music is something that if too loud can really stun and hurt the ears, so I suggest to any potential listeners that you don’t blare this and make sure it’s loud enough to hear everything, but not too loud. However there is some softness in all of this, the standout song being the main instance, that song being the masterpiece that is Dress. All in all, Darker Than Darkness features some more nice sounding music and features some fun experimentation, but suffers from being just too loud.

Moving into the composition section I can report that it is well done for the most part. The band definitely went to town with the new sound direction, and it’s pretty evident from the composition. Everything is a bit more complex than most of their previous work and works fairly well. By this point you’re noticing that I’m saying it’s all good, but not really good. Unfortunately DTD features the same problem of being too loud here as well. There are a couple of songs that just sound like they threw too much into them both in composing music and in adding the noises. I like industrial rock, but this just goes into excess a little too much at times. There’s no one song that is really bad, but almost every song features at least one part where it needed be tuned down. There is one constant source of greatness here, and that would be the marvelous singing of Atsushi Sakurai. This album marks when he began to use a more baritone style of singing compared to his lighter (but still rocky) style of the past. It isn’t as deep as later material and is a very clear transition point. Overall I like it and his entire performance on the record. I just wish I could say for the same for the instrumentation.

Finally we have the lyrics. Darker Than Darkness is when Sakurai really started to write some utterly deep and fantastic stuff. Previous lyrics are good and great and can go into some pretty deep territory. But as many have put it DTD is when everything became pretty poetic. The material roams all over the place to be perfectly honest, but most of it tends to deal with that of romance of varying forms and degrees. In the end the lyrics are on the up and up and good, they featuring some nicely deep and poetic substance to them.

Poe’s Favorites

Kirameki no Naka de…

Ao no Sekai

Dress

When you get down to it Darker Than Darkness is definitely one of the band’s best albums to date. It features one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever heard (Dress) and features quite a few other good to great tracks. It contains some of their best lyrics and a lot of the songs have a catchy sound to them. So it is certainly a good album. But is it a perfect album and their best work? I’m going to say no. There are just a few too many songs where it’s nothing but excess in noise and it really muddles a lot of the album. Some songs start off really nice but just dive into insanity. I may be the only one who thinks this but to me it is a problem when I can feel my ears hurting from all of the noise. Plus there is the previously mentioned distortion of Yuuwaku which really kinda ruins the song to a degree. I think it’s puzzling how the lyrics are pretty much perfect but yet the actual music is iffy. Again, could just be more though.

So just how much do those cons hurt the album? It is hard to say since somebody may not have a problem with the distortion or find some of the music too loud. But since I am the one writing the review and thus go by my ear when reviewing music, I think it brings it down to a degree. Really if the loudness and few weird composition bits were fixed this album could be perfect. As it stands however Darker Than Darkness comes close, but its experimentation just impairs it and prevents it from hitting a homerun.

A

Buck-Tick in 1993