εpsilon

Before I start my review I would like to state that I cannot stand techno by itself, or most everything else that comes out of Japan for that matter. By itself, hearing techno is like knives going into my ears, and hearing about anime and the supposed amazing horror movies Japan has to offer makes me wish harm inflicted upon the vast majority of weeaboos in the United States.

That being said and out of the way, something magical happened to my ears with this album. Alone techno sounds like a bunch of annoying sounds crudely meshed together by a zit-faced nerd sitting at his computer, but combined with my favorite thing in the world; metal, it somehow becomes far more than tolerable, it becomes what I can only describe as "electric ear crack". Though this feeling is not new to me, Blood Stain Child's previous album, "Mozaiq" gave me the same feeling, but not nearly as much.

"Mozaiq" was the runt of the BSC album litter, mostly due to the absence of Ryo's death vocals (which have thankfully returned on this release) and secondly, due to their change to more or less "metalcore with trance elements". "εpsilon" is to me, a mesh of everything BSC was before "Mozaiq" and after. The sections with Ryo's vocals bring you right back to "Idolator", and while you may be disappointed that his vocals are merely secondary and are in no way lead here, they are used to such great effect, you can't help but be pleased to hear it. New singer Sophia replaces Sadew (or "Japanders" as I have nicknamed him, for his eerily similar vocal style to Anders of In Flames) on this release and while her voice is quite amazing, I can't help but have mixed feelings about the album as a whole. On one hand, the songs are for the most part, all very catchy, and this is due to Sophia's clean vocals and the very pop/techno oriented sound. On the other hand, it does not feel much like Blood Stain Child any more, except where Ryo is growling, which is rare, sadly.

Also, without knowing before hand that this is more a techno album than a metal album, you could be tricked into an album you won't like (If you can't justify techno with the addition of guitars, and death vocals like I can). By this I mean, the first two tracks of the album "Sirius VI" and "Forever Free" give you a false message; that message being that this is a half-and-half type deal, with both vocalists giving equal performance. After these two tracks the albums vocal duties are mostly dominated by Sophia. This is were many metalheads might give up on the album; and I really don't blame them for doing so, being tricked isn't very fun is it?

Instrumentally, this album still borderlines between melodic death metal and metalcore. Some of the songs are heavier, some are not heavy at all (And then there's the track "SAI-KA-NO" which contains no metal influence and is almost always skipped when I played through this album). Any one seeking true "heavy" music should give "Moon Light Wave" and "Sirius VI" a listen. My complaint about "Mozaiq" was mostly that the guitar was very downplayed to the trance, which has been somewhat fixed on "εpsilon", while they still don't dominate every song, they are more audible and the solos are far better on this release than the ones found in "Mozaiq". Now, I explained earlier that I am no fan of techno, and while this album contains a lot of trance, it isn't really overdone... You know, like flooding my ears with unnecessary noises. It is tastefully done and I actually enjoy hearing it on this album, and it's predecessor.

Another complaint I had about "Mozaiq" that has been fixed on this release is structure. On the aforementioned album, the death and clean vocals were terribly meshed together and almost colliding with each other. On this album, they have fixed this by using Ryo's vocals mostly to back up Sophia's. If they are both singing at the same time, Ryo's voice is played down, which to me, amplifies the feeling of Sophia's singing. Another time this album gave me chill is on the song "MERRY-GO-ROUND", when the verses are very slow and pop sounding, then the metal just kicks in with Ryo's screaming, creating the most epic change of sound I've ever heard.

To summarize my feelings of this album, I would have to say that this is the trance album for metalheads, or that... this is a metal album for weeaboos. I like the first summary better. As I finished up this review, I looked and saw that every song on this album (Minus the terrible "SAI-KA-NO") have over 60 plays each on my Winamp, leading me to believe this album is truly laced with LSD and injected into my ears.