Buck-Tick - 悪の華 (Aku no Hana)

 

Buck-Tick - 悪の華 (Aku no Hana)
Release Date - 2/1/1990
Country of Origin - Japan
Number of Tracks - 10

Within the realm of the Japanese rock scene, many would argue that Buck-Tick is one of the greatest bands in it. Many fans definitely share this statement. I love the band, though I don’t know if I’d consider them the best. Simply put, Buck-Tick is regarded as one of the best bands around in Japan, they having a loyal fanbase since their debut in 1983. Along with being noted as one of the best in the Japanese music industry they’ve influenced many other bands, Buck-Tick being stated as one of the pioneers in the visual kei movement along with X-Japan.

Buck-Tick now

The journey of Buck-Tick has certainly been an interesting one, from teased up hair, to their guitarist Hisashi Imai being sent to prison on drug charges, to multiple projects outside of the band. Perhaps one of the more noticeable changes over the years (aside from the changing of how they visually presented themselves) is how many genres they’ve played within. While the core has always been rock, the type has changed or been fused with over the years, such genres including punk, electronic, gothic, and dark wave. The last in particular along with the punk and straight rock aspect have been with them for a long time, each one showing a bit more in the years passed. Slowly as the band progressed in their career they sank into the more dark and serious side of music, something which, at the time, the Japanese critics weren’t all too welcoming of. The transition into more musical maturity began in 1989 with their album Taboo, but it wasn’t until the following year with their fifth album 悪の華(Aku no Hana) that the band dived fully into the dark and gothic style that has stayed with them.

Today we’ll be taking a look at Aku no Hana in all of its musical fun. I’ll examine the straight up musical side of the album as well as the lyrical side, with an obvious verdict coming at the end. Unlike my movie introductions I have no funny quips to present here, so I think it’s time we get down to business.

Track listing
1. National Media Boys
2. 幻の都(Maboroshi no Miyako)
3. Love Me
4. Pleasure Land
5. Misty Blue
6. Dizzy Moon
7. Sabbat
8. The World Is Yours
9. 悪の華(Aku no Hana)
10. Kiss Me Good-Bye

Starting with the music side of things I can easily report that Aku no Hana sounds wonderful. The album continues the dive into more serious and darker themes that started on Taboo, but fully swims in the pool of it and rejoices in it. It’s definitely a product of dark wave and gothic rock through and through, even if it starts out a little happy sounding. But it slowly blooms into the Buck-Tick we’ve all come to love. As stated the album is nothing more than a great child of dark wave and goth, however while that is the main theme of the album there is more to it. To compliment the heavier and rougher sound of some tracks there are some more melodic ones such as Love Me, Pleasure Land, and Kiss Me Good-Bye. In the opening track (National Media Boys) there’s a bit of surf rock sound to in parts, to me it coming out the most in the guitar solo. Of course heavy plays a good role in the album with Dizzy Moon and the title track providing it in grand fashion. Regardless of how the songs sound everything is draped in goth, with Maboroshi no Miyako, Misty Blue, Sabbat, and The World Is Yours highlighting it.

When it comes to the actual instrumentation of the album there’s more greatness to be found. Everything comes out crisp and clean, meaning in short blunt terms that you can hear all of the instruments, sound effects, and the vocals. The actual composition of the album does come at an awkward phase though, as it still maintains a lot of the simple composure of the bands earlier work while combining it with some of the composition they’d use later on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as nothing comes off as clunky and out place, it’s simply easy to tell that this was when the new was coming in and the old was on its way out. When you compare it to the album previous to this (Taboo) and the following album (Kurutta Taiyou) the differences are clear as night in day, Aku no Hana as stated showing off both the old and the new pretty well. So in terms of the composition, the album is really good. And the vocals? Aku no Hana features vocalist Atsushi Sakurai at his typical level of greatness. His voice on the album can be best described as soothing heaviness since he does a marvelous job at being soft and melodic and heavy and (a little) screamy. You can practically hear and feel the emotion on the songs, especially in Misty Blue and Kiss Me Good-Bye. To be fair though not everything is perfect. While the composition is good some songs could use a little tightening up. Pleasure Land in particular could have used more work, as well as an actual ending as the song just trails off into nowhere. Yet even with that and some other songs needing a bit more tightening up (Love Me is the only other one that I think really needs it) the musical composition for Aku no Hana is good, and I’d say great too. Nothing perfect, but nothing fully terrible, just a few smudges.

But the dark feel of the album isn’t just in the way the music sounds; it’s seeped into the lyrics. This is where the dark erotic goth sound truly comes out, which isn’t too surprising considering the album shares similar themes to Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, which is what Aku no Hana literally translates to). The lyrics paint portraits of romance of both erotic and lost nature, self destruction, a pagan festival, and good old insanity. All 10 songs lyrically showcase perfectly who Buck-Tick is. The instrumentation may be a little in the middle (though it does lean more to the good) in terms of quality, but the lyrics are just outright great.

Poe’s Favorites
Misty Blue
Dizzy Moon
悪の華(Aku no Hana)
Kiss Me Good-Bye

I’ll come right out and say it, I love Aku no Hana and it is a great album from a great band.Buck-Tick has always been one of my favorite Japanese bands (second favorite to be exact) and I’m happy to finally be highlighting them with one of their best releases. Does the album have problems? Well aside from Pleasure Land and Love Me needing to be written better (Pleasure Land especially) and a feel that the other songs could maybe use a bit more tightening up, no, not really. The album is a great piece of music and I highly suggest it to any fan of Buck-Tick, Japanese rock, Japanese music, visual kei, dark wave, and gothic rock. I could gush for hours but I won’t. Buck-Tick’s Aku no Hana is great and started a trend where their albums kept getting better and better. Pick this album up, listen to it, enjoy it, bathe in it’s dark gothic goodness.

A

Buck-Tick in 1990