Into the Light of the 13 Dark Night - Balzac

Deep Blue: Chaos from Darkism, Vol. II - Balzac

the customary intro is stranger than ever, and (#2) is just plain odd. Japanese Chaos is really short, fast and aggressive as is the tendency for Balzac s shorter offerings, and by contrast, songs towards the end such as (#1) and I Can t Stand It Anymore are slower and softer, but only comparatively speaking; this never deviates from its core punk sound. The best song here is The Scare, which stands as one of the best songs Balzac has recorded and a defining example of their horror punk style, but the majority of the album fails to stand out in the same way. Even their cover of David Bowie s classic Ziggy Stardust is disappointingly similar to the original ...

Terrifying! Art of Dying - Balzac

Just when I thought Balzac s career may be on the rise as a serious punk outfit, they release the disappointing Terrifying! Art of Dying, coupled up with their debut album as an excuse to avoid writing much new material. While the first album has an excuse to be lacklustre due to the band s age at that point, Terrifying! comes in the wake of several experimental releases that saw Balzac trying various punk styles and evidently failing to come up with any definitive conclusions. After two wasted minutes of an introduction, Out of the Blue comes out of the blue with a classic punk guitar sound and the resurgence of Misfits-style backing vocals to reveal a Balzac more ...

13 Stairway: The Children of the Night - Balzac

because there s not a lot to it. Seriously, eight songs and only twenty-three minutes for a full-length release? That s just plain lazy. The good news is that Balzac is continuing to move its sound forwards, even when the direction doesn t end up working that well, and as well as being their overly jovial album, this is also their most industrial, thanks to the distorted riffs of opener Atomic-Age and particularly Legacy II with its programmed techno drums and overall headache-inducing fuzz. This will likely make the album more accessible to the Japanese mainstream, as will Hirosuke Nishiyama s piercing singing, but anyone who approaches this band as the ...