Saishu

Have you seen the Macabre performance that's on the DVD that came with Sustain the Untruth? Die alternates between a 7 string, 6 string, and an acoustic. It was amusing because Kaoru stuck with a 7 string the whole time.

The slapping doesn't bother me, I just didn't like his tone in Amon. Sounded like an amplified fart.

The Amon bass line seriously pisses me off. He laid that down, then everyone listened back to it and said "yeah, that sounds awesome!" It doesn't. Toshiya's playing does seem less prominent lately, and it makes me wonder why he bothered to switch to a 5 string when he doesn't really make full use of it. I will say that one of my favorite moments on Arche is the bass solo in the middle of Tousei. He totally carries that section with a fantastic melody you would expect from a guitar solo. Tons of feeling in an already emotional moment. My emotionless doll comment comes from me thinking that there's a stiffness to Shinya's playing. I don't feel like he's giving it his all because he's trying so hard to keep up an image. Listen to a live version of Kiri to Mayu (2012); all those fast fills are sloppy and lack power, almost like he's just tickling the drums and not putting any weight behind his strikes. I guess I give him props for standing behind his performance and not using triggers, but I'd prefer if he just wrote material that didn't extend beyond his capabilities.

Shinya is a great drummer when he's not being forced to play "extreme metal." He can't play blast beats and he has no foot speed. This goes in like with Kaoru saying that Shinya will refuse to do something he doesn't like. I don't think Shinya particularly enjoys that type of drumming, so there's no desire to improve on it. During the DSS/Unraveling tours, Shinya did an interview where he said sometimes he loses the passion to play. Ten to one its because he's sick of playing Different Sense and Hageshisa.

I think he'd be a better metal drummer if he stopped trying to look like an emotionless doll while playing.

When I heard those two huge, fast drum fills in the new versions of Kiri to Mayu and Karma, I knew something was up too. Shinya can't even come close to matching them live, it's actually a little embarrassing. I don't think it's a matter of practice, he's just not really cut out for intricate metal drumming. He always sounds so off when playing songs like Different Sense and Hageshisa.

I always seek out the release that contains the song that caught my attention.

Yeah, I read that interview where they admitted to all being in the same room, writing music on their laptops and just sending shit back and forth instead of actually going into a rehearsal space and jamming out the actual ideas. This is what hurt the DSS and Unraveling material in a live setting, because once they went to actually play the songs together, they had a hard time figuring out how to get it to work (no thanks to all the overdubbing, no doubt). I think this same series of interviews had the damning comment from Toshiya where he said that Shinya would program drum parts on the computer that he couldn't consistently replicate himself, but that's a WHOLE different discussion altogether. So supposedly that changed with ARCHE, and I think it's pretty evident with the relatively straightforward songwriting. Rinkaku being the one exception probably because it was 2 years old by the time ARCHE was done, and they were in a different place at the time. I personally haven't noticed anything indicating Kyo is getting tired of DEG, but considering he has another outlet with Sukekiyo it wouldn't surprise me. But Kyo has always seemed withdrawn and guarded in every interview I've seen/read.

I was always under the impression that Shinya was dragged kicking and screaming into the band's "non-VK" phase, which is why he kind of always maintained his feminine look. But then Toshiya started wearing skirts/kilts. And then the promo pics for ARCHE came out and it seemed like the band was sort of dipping their toes back into the visual pool again. I read a rumor that Shinya wanted to leave the band when they decided to be less VK, and Kaoru saying that Shinya is the most stubborn when it comes to ideas being presented to him makes me think it's true.

Just watched the Average Psycho 2 DVD and honestly can't figure out what was cut out from Agitated Screams of Maggots and Unraveling. And there's still blurred out stuff at the end of Revelation of Mankind, so...

Well, no, I'm not offended or anything. I just get a little lost halfway thru Pretzels' posts.

I know I'm new here, but maybe your point would come across better if you were less obtuse.

No idea, just saying that Japan isn't very forgiving with censorship. Though how they had more of a problem with one word in Mazohyst than the entire lyrical content of Tsumi to Batsu is beyond me.

I just checked the performance on the Osaka-jo Hall DVD; Kyo sings "kikeiji". Apparently it's really not a nice word, and since it was DEG's first major label release, Sony probably made the decision to censor it. Let's not forget they had to spell "hypodermic syringe" backwards. And then the whole "Tsumi to Kisei" debacle.

Okay, I posed this question to another group and this was the answer I got. "I think it's "kikeiji" 「奇形児」 if I'm spelling that correctly, which is a nasty word for "freak baby" that appears in lots of VK songs."

I remember knowing what word they bleeped out, now I forget.

Diabolos could have been better if Shinya's playing wasn't so pedestrian and empty during the heavy parts. He makes it boring. If you remove the heavy parts Diabolos is actually a beautiful song. And as far as the new Macabre, I'm not sure why people are so down on it. They pretty much play it the original way for the first 9 minutes or so, then the new part comes in. I like how the final lines from the original are incorporated into the new section. I like the addition of the acoustic guitars, and the back and forth guitar solos are great too. In terms of production, well, yeah it could be better, but I think the way it was reworked makes sense within the context of what DEG is right now.

Mazohyst's lyrics are written from the perspective of a fetus being aborted. Obscure is about abortion as well. Whether or not Kyo is pro-life, who knows.

Rinkaku was such a huge relief after Dum Spiro Spero.

I like the abridged version they started playing live a couple years back. I believe there's a performance of it on the Sustain the Untruth DVD.

I have a hard time getting thru Gekisei because of the production. Merry went thru this phase of tinny, treble-y recordings for several albums until (I think) Beautiful Freaks. It ends up sounding like white noise, especially when the band gets fast/thrashy. And half the song sounds like a song they had already recorded: Calling. The new Macabre has one major flaw, and it's that the new section isn't properly introduced. They play the song pretty much straight like the original, then stop and drop the new section out of the blue. But the new part is still composed well, I think. It's self-indulgent, yeah, especially with the big dramatic ending with the church organ, but I think this was DEG getting that last little bit of prog pretentiousness out before more or less getting back to basics for Arche. Kuchiki no Tou is a great example, as is Ray. But Luna Sea also made a clunker with Forever and Ever, smack dab in the middle of an otherwise perfect album. I just feel like the song is boring and goes nowhere (though I should point out my slight bias against songs written strictly in 6/8. No I don't know why). And then there's ACE's Elementa Alchemica, which was clearly just four songs glued together.

Being new, I'm slowly creeping around the forums and finding myself wanting to comment on a lot of things that no one is discussing anymore. But I wanted to go back a bit and talk about DEG not having any long songs on ARCHE. Most j-rock/VK bands fail at the "epic" song, and DEG hasn't always been successful. Vinushka is great, and I personally love both iterations of Macabre. The Blossoming Beelzebub works for me because it's a slow crawl forward and doesn't repeat a section once is over. That's progressive to me, not taking verses and chorus and repeating them ad nauseum for 9+ minutes. Diabolos peaks with the guitar solo in the first half, peters off after the heavy section, then just falls flat for the rest. A good example of how much better Diabolos would have been if it had been half as long would be Behind a Vacant Image. It condenses Diabolos' song structure into 5 minutes. It works. But yeah, a lot of songs don't need to be these sprawling epics because the songwriting can't meet the needs. Does Reila need to be almost 8 minutes when the song ends on a repeated section that just fades out slowly? Merry's Gekisei? Ugh.

Well, "Rinkaku" was released as a single back in 2012...

Going back to touch on Gazette ripping off other bands' songs, what immediately comes to mind is "RUTHLESS DEED" being somewhat of a "DIFFERENT SENSE" ripoff, and the riff in the beginning of "RAGE" is similar to the riff after the break in "Reiketsu Nariseba." Which, to be honest, was clearly stolen from Slipknot's "People = Shit" anyway. The bigger problem is that Gazette continuously rip themselves off, cutting bits and pieces of their own songs and pasting them into new ones. "A MOTH UNDER THE SKIN" and "SUICIDE CIRCUS" both have the same breakdowns. I hear the chorus in "DEUX" and it reminds me of the chorus from "LEECH." And I swear "Zakurogata no Yuuutsu", "SHIVER", and "Ibitsu" are all cut from the same cloth. But what's truly befuddling are the people that think DOGMA is some huge shift in sound for the Gazette. Even if you've only been a fan for five or less years you know there's nothing new going on here. Yeah, it's heavy. So was "HEADACHE MAN" and "OGRE" and "PSYCHOPATH." This album is full of that with the only really deviation being the intro track and "OMINOUS." Just straight up disappointing.

I more or less joined the forums just to post my thoughts on this album, which says a lot for this release, though not exactly in a positive way. Honestly, I was really excited to hear DOGMA, especially after I had seen the PVs for the title tracks and "OMINOUS." I was under the impression that Gazette waiting two years instead of dropping a fourth full length in four years had worked to their advantage. The title track had an interesting structure; more about forward movement up a hill and then suddenly dropping down without looking back. It's not your typical "verse chorus verse" affair, in fact, it's hard to even say the song has verses and choruses since it's just one new section after another. Tempo and meter changes abound. It's, dare I say, rather progressive, and I like how they utilized the female background vocals in a haunting manner towards the end. Then here comes "RAGE." I admit I like this track on an instrumental level, but Ruki's goofy ass English lyrics pull me out of my enjoyment a little bit. After that I just sort of space out and the rest of the album melds into this mass of generic, heavy riffing and absence of melody until we reach the end with "OMINOUS". Hell, even DUM SPIRO SPERO, Dir en grey's heaviest record, has melody all over the place. Name a song from DSS and I can sing you the chorus (except for "DECAYED CROW" because fuck that song). As has already been mentioned here, are Uruha and Aoi both still in the band? Because I can't tell! Where's Reita? I love the heaviest of heavy music and I dig the dark theme, but it's just not executed very well here. And really, this isn't an evolution of the band in any way, shape, or form; this is the same damn thing they've been doing since TOXIC, just with down tuned guitars. I guess I'm happy they shook things up a little bit (because lord knows I still can't believe they tried to pass "SHIVER" and "Ibitsu" off as two different songs), but this is still just more undercooked music from Gazette. Seems like DIM was the creative peak. But, MAN! "DOGMA" is such a great track, though! What happened? I feel like it was the first song they wrote for the album and they KNEW it was gold, so they decided to run with the idea of an album full of heavier, darker tracks. But the well had already run dry. They blew their load. It's a shame...