BUCK-TICK – darker than darkness -style 93- (1993): Review
By 1993, BUCK-TICK had already cemented their status as Visual Kei pioneers, but darker than darkness -style 93- stands as a turning point—the moment when the band’s experimental restlessness crystallized into something genuinely prophetic. This album isn’t just a landmark in the band’s own trajectory; it’s a crucial document of Visual Kei’s maturation as a scene, capturing a moment when Japanese rock was shedding its 1980s excess and embracing darker, more intellectually demanding sonic territories.
Released a decade after their formation, darker than darkness -style 93- strips away some of the theatrical grandeur that had defined BUCK-TICK’s earlier work, replacing it with a brooding, industrial-inflected aesthetic that presaged the band’s continued evolution. Atsushi Sakurai’s vocal performance here is masterfully controlled—less about histrionics and more about textural precision. His voice becomes another instrument, processed and layered to create an almost disembodied presence floating above the mechanized landscape below. This restraint is more unsettling than any theatrical wailing could be.
The production style is deliberately cold and synthetic, with Hisashi Imai’s guitar work fragmenting into angular, almost atonal passages that refuse traditional song structure. Tracks like “Victims of Love” exemplify this approach: the guitar scratches and writhes rather than soars, while the rhythm section—Yutaka Higuchi’s bass and Toll Yagami’s drums—locks into metronomic precision. This isn’t punk’s visceral energy nor metal’s bombast; it’s something more cerebral and deeply unsettling. The album breathes with the paranoia and urban alienation of industrial rock’s greatest practitioners, yet filtered through a distinctly Japanese sensibility.
Standout tracks reveal the album’s thematic coherence. “Victims of Love” establishes the album’s mission statement: deconstructed romance through a cyberpunk lens. The title track, “darker than darkness -style 93-,” is a masterpiece of controlled intensity, with Sakurai’s vocals cutting through cascading synthesizers and distorted guitars like a blade through fog. “Kaminari” demonstrates the band’s capacity for raw power within their new aesthetic framework, while slower pieces create breathing room without sacrificing the album’s pervasive sense of dread.
What makes darker than darkness -style 93- historically significant is its prescience. In 1993, much of Visual Kei was still tethered to the glam-influenced aesthetics of the 1980s. BUCK-TICK instead looked toward industrial rock, electronic experimentation, and post-punk’s intellectual rigor. The album effectively announced that the scene had matured beyond surface-level visual spectacle; substance and sonic innovation were now the priority. This album influenced countless Japanese bands throughout the 1990s and beyond, encouraging experimentation with darker, more conceptual territory.
Within BUCK-TICK’s own discography, this album represents a crucial bridge between their earlier work and their later industrial-tinged explorations. It’s more accessible than some of their subsequent experimental phases, yet uncompromising in its vision. The band would continue pushing further into abstraction and genre-blending, but darker than darkness -style 93- remains their most perfectly calibrated statement of artistic intent during this transformative era.
For new listeners, this album is essential Visual Kei history—a sobering, intelligent record that rewards deep listening. It challenges the assumption that Visual Kei is merely aesthetic window-dressing; BUCK-TICK prove here that the movement’s most important artists were serious musicians asking serious questions. Essential.
Rating: 9/10