Steve Baltes and Lucian ZÄyn are truly an international duo, Baltes hailing from Germany near Cologne, and ZÄyn from Manila in the Philippines, their mutual love anime, science fiction and horror drew them together and inspired this concept album based on "Neon Genesis:Evangelion," "Lovecraft Country" and Kaiju (giant Japanese monsters, like Godzilla) vs. Frankenstein (the monster, not the doctor, I'm guessing). This may all seem a little hinky-dinky, but somehow they manage to pull it off...sort of. I'm guessing that ZÄyn is the vocalist and Baltes handles all the instrumental stuff excepting the guest instrumentalists (of which there are quite a few) and as long as you enjoy Lucian's vocals, you will probably really like this album. I had mixed feelings on his voice; I found the vibrato a little off-putting but he sings in a clear melodic manner, although the accent is definitely of someone who has English as a second language and sounds more 'Eurovision pop' than the Tech Noir Electro tag given them by Echozone. Not that the music isn't techno-electro synthpop inspired, it certainly is. Of course, this is a "concept album" and as such, requires story-telling, but unless you're a particularly gifted songwriter, the wordiness can be off-putting to song accessibility, even with strong melodic content. These are certainly factors that weigh heavily on 'Blue Sunset.'

Some songs like the first two- "Godshatter" and "Apocalyptech" (both of which have done very well in the Deuteche Alternative Charts) stand very well on their own, but others such as "Back! Back! Kaiju Attack!," "Orithya Blue Shines Along the Diamond Frontier," "Wonder Woman Dee" and “Christina and Her Eternity of Firsts" prioritize serving the story and concept rather than the listener. It tends to get very wordy over the atmospherics. Such is the problem with concept albums. Granted, this is an appealing modern concept we have here and it is not entirely unsuccessful with some really good songs like my favorite - "The Colour Out of Space," (with very cool use of theremin) but "The Lights of Castle Frankenstein" was just a bit too ludicrous for my taste. I'm not writing this debut off as there is a lot to like about it, but there are caveats.