Review by JD on June 23, 2016.

People who know me… one of my guilty pleasures is J-Metal. I admit that I am huge fan of such acts as Gargoyles, Sex Machineguns, 44 MAGNUM and of course X Japan. Don’t know what it is, but I am fascinated by how Japan approaches metal and they seem to have no boundaries in some respects. That is why I am sort of excited to review Gyze.

Gyze is a three piece act that is an amalgamation of different styles, wrapped up in the ingenuity of Japan’s scene. There is melodic death metal, visual kei, power metal and a small dose of the traditional styles of metal. Think of Children Of Bodom with more power and the keyboards doing the supportive roll (the way it should be), some Gamma Ray with all the visual kei stuff and injected with a hint of old school metal at times. Ahh… very interesting.

I went through the album many times, enjoying the 12 tracks more and more with each play. I was blown away by the ferocity of it all, and yet it still had melody throughout the album. Both the title track and 'Winter Breath' stuck out as the stars of the album… a feat hard to do considering the songs tallied on the disk. They were the most melodic that still came at you with heaviness that most never could ever produce. There are a few weak spots on the disk, but nothing really considering the band is so damned good… has to do with the recording of it, but it never takes away from it either.

Long story short, this band shows bands like COB that you can use keyboards in death metal… just use them as accents and not the main instrument. They are as uncompromising as they are odd and that suits me fine. Good bands need good press, so here is mine- and it comes with a very cool rating. I can’t make you buy the album but I will urge you to.

Rating: 9 out of 10