Saishu

It's gonna be sugary jpop. Calling it now.

Isnt Sukekiyo recording a new album right now anyway?

Well. Those are songs.

Did we forget this was a thing? i got my copy yesterday, and after two listens I'm a little disappointed. It's definitely the more experimental side of Morrie, and you're not going to get any traditional rockers like "Dream Caller" or "Paradise". The closest thing is probably "Eden Made", which sounds like the sister song to "Rakuen e". Which is fine! But the problem I'm having is that nothing is really standing out at the moment. This could mean that it's going to grow on me, or maybe I'm just still high on Phantoms, which i still rock on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the biggest offender is the last track, which meanders for nine minutes and never really seems to make its point. So, I mean, hype is down at the moment, but I'll give it more time to grow on me.

They played Aoi Tsuki during the Gauze tour. That's the closest you're gonna get.

It really doesn't matter because the problem isn't the quality of the files, it's the way the album was mastered. The drums in particular sound horrendous. Since we now know the band didn't have a sound engineer on board and they pretty much winged it themselves, let's hope they learned their lesson.

The fact that "Malice Mizer kami Suicide" returns nothing in Google makes me think it's absolute bullshit.

Isn't Kai supposed to be the "leader"?

Even worse, they listened back after all was said and done and were like, "yeah, kick it out the door. It's fine."

To be fair, it's only 10 seconds longer. It just seems a lot longer because it doesn't fade out.

Some of the songs are definitely a bit slower, especially Reila and Shiroki Yuuutsu. And I can't even say this is making the original songs "hi def" because they all have that awful production that every rock album has now where everything is brick walled into oblivion. No dynamics, all the parts just bleed into each other. And the drums sound terrible! Were they recorded in a bathroom? I guess I'm the weirdo that loves Shiroki Yuutsu, and I hate the way it sounds here. It's too harsh, too mechanical. The DIM version has this gentle airy feel to it, and the string section is more prominent in the mix. The other problem is this is a tough album to get thru. 70 minutes. Almost every track is 5 or 6 minutes each. All ballads (except Taion. Never considered that a ballad at all). I don't know, it's just like... I love Gazette, but goddamn I hate them so much sometimes.

I didn't realize that. I'll have to check that DVD out. But my main point was they just shouldn't play Cassis.

Pretty sick set list aside from Cassis being thrown in there. Reminding the guys that if they wanted to play a ballad, Hana Kotoba says hi.

Okay so they actually DID give Reila a proper ending this time! It's just... man, I know the band is older now, but it sounds like it's being played by an older band. The tempo is slower and the performance is polished to the point of "perfection" so that it sounds like they didn't enjoy doing this at all.

Stop posting song titles in Japanese goddamn.

Oh. It's on iTunes. Okay.

But they already had a guitar album cover for the Gerbera single!

Did I miss some huge conspiracy theory behind Kami's death? I've never heard anything different.

We know why Kami died. Brain hemorrhage.

Ruki takes himself too seriously, that's what I take away from his fixing the Engrish. Kyo didn't even do that when he reused English lyrics for the remakes of old material, and he comes across as too serious most of the time.

I would have left during the second Yoshiki piano solo. What a self-absorbed dick.

There are legitimate reasons to not speak positively of Yoshiki and Kisaki. It's more about their questionable business practices than the music they make, but Yoshiki is especially deserving of criticism. As for The Thirteen, maybe it's because I'm 40 years old and getting jaded, but there's nothing redeeming about this stuff. Their first album was one of the worst things I heard last year between all the annoying filters on Mao's voice, the uninspired songwriting, and the overall poor production that made everything a wash of white noise. Honestly, I'm more interested in why people like this. This sounds like a ton of other VK bands, and that's the problem. Kazu aligning himself with this project just makes it more befuddling. I feel like this band is just an elaborate troll.

Just realized all the youthful energy and emotion is completely missing from Reila. Kai sounds especially lifeless in that one. Fuck this is making me mad.

A little while back I said it would have been cool if Gazette had rerecorded Disorder. After hearing what they did here, I'm glad that didn't happen. Also, I'm still lost on why they decided on a collection of ballads. Is it because they've only released heavy material since Dogma? From the Dark Age to the Dull Age.

I would have been more impressed if they just banged these out in a day live in the studio. Do we really need more polished studio versions of these? Especially if they pretty much just played them straight instead of going the "deconstructed" route DEG took with older tracks a few years ago.