Status: Disbanded (2009~2011)

Genre: Rock

Style: Visual-kei
OHP

Ballad, written as "バラッド," by the band, were a very small visual indies band on the Livquer record label. Most people will probably consider them to be dismissible indies crap, which they were for the most part, but something about them kept me interested in their music. What probably did it for me the most was that the picture above vaguely reminded me of Metis Gretel from the hair colors. Their music sounds nothing like them and バラッド looks absolutely nothing like them, but that small association got me to try them out. To be honest, they're much more similar to Nega, with a very small bit of Mar'derayla, than Metis Gretel, especially since their vocalist sounds like almost exactly like 儿 with less "I'm having a seizure" tongue spasms. Like most bands of this nature, バラッド did not release all that much material: 2 singles, 1 song on an omnibus, and one untitled live-distributed song. They disbanded towards the end of 2011 when their bassist decided he was going to leave the band.

Vocals: Riku

Guitar: Luca

Guitar: Kiyo

Drums: Showta

Ex-Bass: Saki

04. 堕落と切望

01. タイトル募集 (This song doesn't have a title, but I have it tagged as this)

01. Cradle

02. 白蓮‐hakuren‐

03. Cruel.

I honestly don't remember where I first found out about them. I think it was looking at some picture related to the STAND UP SONIC release, thus making me curious about trying out. It could have also been that I listened to them on that CD and then looked into them a bit further. Both versions of the song "堕落と切望" are exactly the same, so I won't bother talking about the omnibus.

As a whole, 色彩モノクロis a pretty decent starter single. It starts off with an electronic and piano instrumental, "THE END." Really nothing special here: just a sort of Luzmelt-esque instrumental CD filler that goes on for a bit too long. Seriously, 3 minutes of the same piano phrase over and over again can get a bit boring even if it does have a rather nice atmosphere to it. The song that follows, "堕落と切望," is what the band is actually like.

"堕落と切望" starts off with a rather Westernized sound, similar to a lot of hard rock I've heard. However, shortly after there is cheap synth added to it and it kind of ruins the Western atmosphere. While the synth is being added, the potentially amazing music gradually begins to decay into visual-kei normalcy. Thankfully some of the original spark is retained while the song gets off the ground, but the opening line is very misleading. To start, the vocals are semi-distorted. Once the chorus hits, Riku belts it out without any electronic help in a range that's just a bit out of his comfort range. This is where I start to feel like he sounds a lot like Nega's guy, except I kind of like how it sounds here. After the first chorus is a strange 6/8 over 4/4 time signature break down, followed by a change  in tune to a completely different melodic pattern, then another melody change to the rush-song-esque section with growled "oi"'s that reared it's head just a few moments ago. Although this song is alright, there is a clear problem on inconsistency. This song has at least 4 different themes to it that don't really blend well, making it an awkward tapestry of seemingly good and seemingly play it safe ideas. I do give them credit for trying though: the effort of wanting to be progressive is apparent and that's a lot more than most bands these days put in.

"錯乱恋情" has a faster tempo than "堕落と切望," as well as a much more focused melody. It can be characterized by it's heavy use of "Ai yai yai yai"'s in between each major lyrical line for most of the verses. Unlike the prior song, there isn't any vocal distortion in this song, so Riku's voice is as clear as it's going to get. While this is trying to be the band's up-beat and fun song, that attempt gets kind of lost. It could be that the tempo isn't fast enough, and it could be the random sections of growling and uninteresting drumming. As I'm probably indirectly implying, track two of this single shows that this band had some potential while track three really wasn't worth paying that much attention to unless you absolutely love what you've heard so far.

Just like their first single, Domestic Color starts off with an instrumental song "Cradle." This has a similar atmosphere to the first song, just with a lot of fake and twangy bass instead of an ambient bass line. 

When I first heard the samples for Domestic Color, they were pretty grim. However, it actually didn't end up being that bad. The first real song, "白蓮‐hakuren‐" has a very nice flow to it: a playful melody, synth harpsichord that compliments the song instead of detracts from it, and less melody fluctuation. There are still growly screamy breakdowns that seem out of place, but the nice guitar solo that follows overshadows it. Sometimes the vocals have way too much forced vibrato, but that's what's to love about VK! I apologize for not having much to say about this song other than it has a playful and kind of catchy melody, but I would like to point out that there is a drastic improvement in this single.

"Cruel.," as the name would imply, is the heavier of the two songs. It's not actually heavy, but there is a lot more drum filler than the first song, which yields ""heavy."" The first vocal line in this song is kind of whisper with radio friendly alt-rock soft guitar. Once again, there are awful growls here and there and kind of a weak chorus. I cannot decide if the goodness of the verses can cancel out the not goodness of the chorus, so it's kind of a battle of good and evil gushing into your ears. Still better than their first single, but far from streamably good.

If I remember correctly, I think I liked their untitled song the best out of all of their releases. What's different about it is that it has a kind of jazzy visual-kei main guitar riff and that Riku's vocals work really well with the exposed parts, as well as a much nicer chorus. Unlike some of their other songs, this song's chorus is repeated twice, making it a very nice length, and it has a very mature melody to it to show that they have had some improvement in their composing ability. The random growled breakdowns return again, but it is quickly smothered by another chorus. This is definitely their strongest song, but for some reason they didn't release it again before they broke up.

All in all, バラッド were a guilty pleasure. They're far from being the VK band of the year and I wouldn't really recommend them to anyone unless I know they're really into current visual indies bands. They did have a few glimmers of hope here and there, but they ended it before those could go anywhere.

Rather typical visual-kei costumes of today, except they actually used brightly colored hair instead of naturally colored ones. I can't really tell what they look like from below the shoulders, so there's not much to talk about aside from their choice of hair color. Shame they couldn't be around for longer and broaden their costume selection.