Saishu

Midwife is pretty bad. It bothers me a LOT when they throw those weird, skronky, almost atonal riffs in the heavier material. It just makes everything sound goofy. It happens in Bugaboo and practically everything in Withering to death. 

ORZ has been cooking up a topic that a good bunch of you would find very interesting but it is not ready yet.
 
Visual en grey had a lot of good moments, but their early albums also have a lot of weak moments. MACABRE is the most consistent of the visual trifecta and has the least amount of filler, which is why a lot of fans hold that album up in particular as a favorite. GAUZE has the biggest collection of listenable tracks, with a side of help from YOSHIKI when he was still relevant, but it also has it's fair share of tracks that I wouldn't listen to more than once. "MASK", "Mazohyst", and the "Mode of.." tracks are examples of things that drag out the experience and add nothing. Kisou ... should have been an EP. I can go on and on about just how bad that album is, starting with the inconsistent track list, the recycled B-sides, literally filler instrumentals, and too much of an effort to be vulgar and provocative, but I won't. Even then, that had its good moments. But regardless, what it comes down to for me is that I prefer to listen to certain tracks over going through an album from start to finish, and this holds up for a lot more of their albums than I would care to admit. I liked Vestige of Scratches precisely because they cut out a ton of their filler tracks and distilled all of the things I liked about Visual en grey into 80 minutes.
 
Dark en grey suffers from its own unique set of problems. For as much as the fans shat on six Ugly when it came out, it's the most consistent release they've had with zero filler tracks IMO. VULGAR was playing it safe, trying to show their visual fans that the sound may change but the core of the band is still intact, but in exchange there aren't a lot of stand out moments. Nothing good, nothing too unlistenable, nothing really memorable not named OBSCURE. And "Child prey" is a lazy single. Withering to death. sounds like a rebellious teenager proving that they can be metvl with the rest of the older Western sempai bands that shamed them for their interpretation of alt-metal on their previous albums. It starts strong and ends strong, but the entire middle of that album is the most forgettable Dark en grey experience ever released. TMOAB is even more of the rebellious phase, going all in on the metalcore, and it's okay, but it still feels like the band was trying too  hard to not be visual when the only people they were really trying to convince were themselves. UROBOROS feels like the band discovered Tool & prog metal & could begin embracing their roots again without having to look effeminate and go all in on the leather straps and thigh high boots like they used to. It's no surprise that this is the period when they begin re-recording their old tracks again. DSS just feels like they went too hard in the prog metal direction, biting off more than they could chew and ultimately crumbling under the weight of their own ambitions. Both of these albums has pretty questionable mixing decisions, and UROBOROS was exposed with that R&E version which pushed all the flaws to the center and sounded even worse. DSS had that farting bass which was a cool experiment but became really annoying by the end of the album, and it really lacked ballads to break up the pace, which is funny because Dir en grey at their visual days were best at ballads and failed at almost anything else. ARCHE is them trying to find a happy medium for themselves, but in the process didn't create an album with any engaging moments, just like VULGAR.
 
Ultimately, I feel that the band's albums would be much better received if they axed the four weakest tracks off each album.

There’s Dir en grey and DIR EN GREY. 

Shit like this pisses me off. I also hear “you can’t even sing along to it”, as if being able to dance and sing along are the only things that qualify music as music. 

To be honest, for most of the time spent loving this band, I’ve never understood the praise for Gauze. Now, mind you, I got into DEG when Vulgar was the newest album. I went backwards from there and everything still sort of made sense. So naturally I got super excited about Withering to death and preordered it and everything. What I got, to my American ears that were new to jrock, was a bunch of dudes that didn’t know how to play metal. I hated it, and to this day it’s still my least played DEG album. I went thru my own little revolt and would only listen to the first three albums for a while. 
 
But Gauze. Gauze is held in this lofty position of being some great cornerstone of VK. Why? Once you dig deeper into VK you realize that tons of bands were already doing what DEG had done on Gauze. What makes it so special compared to anything Luna Sea and Kuroyume did? There are people that say Gauze is their best album. Are they serious? Is this coming from Yoshiki fans? 
 
I dont get it. 

Not to mention they’ve been touring what seems like non-stop. And just because we haven’t heard anything new doesn’t mean they haven’t been writing and recording. Adding in the fact that three of these guys have projects outside of DEG, you can’t say they aren’t productive. 

It’s definitely Sony Music Japan. I had two copyright strikes from them on my old YouTube account, and it was because I uploaded Gazette and MUCC songs. And it just doesn’t make any sense. You can’t watch some PVs on YouTube, but you can buy the music on US iTunes. 

It’s definitely Sony Music Japan. I had two copyright strikes from them on my old YouTube account, and it was because I uploaded Gazette and MUCC songs. And it just doesn’t make any sense. You can’t watch some PVs on YouTube, but you can buy the music on US iTunes. 

Unknown...despair...G was """"new"""" and I don't think 虜 was previously released.

Thinking the same thing. We’ll probably get another slightly altered Arche track and a burps and farts remix of Utafumi. 

Since this is new Dir en grey Material, I wont say that i'm excited for it in fear that I'ma be passive aggressively attacked with a long ass post with how im wrong for doing so.
 
 
I ain't dumb. I'm trying to stay outta trouble in these parts. 

Thinking the same thing. We’ll probably get another slightly altered Arche track and a burps and farts remix of Utafumi. 

Not to mention they’ve been touring what seems like non-stop. And just because we haven’t heard anything new doesn’t mean they haven’t been writing and recording. Adding in the fact that three of these guys have projects outside of DEG, you can’t say they aren’t productive. 

Not to mention they’ve been touring what seems like non-stop. And just because we haven’t heard anything new doesn’t mean they haven’t been writing and recording. Adding in the fact that three of these guys have projects outside of DEG, you can’t say they aren’t productive. 

Not to mention they’ve been touring what seems like non-stop. And just because we haven’t heard anything new doesn’t mean they haven’t been writing and recording. Adding in the fact that three of these guys have projects outside of DEG, you can’t say they aren’t productive. 

from this thread 

I said new single before the summer was out. You can thank me. 
 
It’s ningen wo kaburu ain’t it?

Adoratio and the full Anima single are now up on US iTunes. 
 
Lol and for some reason you can’t buy Hakudaku by itself. 

Adoratio and the full Anima single are now up on US iTunes. 
 
Lol and for some reason you can’t buy Hakudaku by itself. 

This is what happens when DEG doesn’t release any new material in 18 months. 
 
Unless you count the D’erlanger cover. That was pretty sweet. 

It’s up there, and probably the first song I’d use to introduce the band to someone. It’s their entire career condensed into one song. 
 
An abridged Arche, I guess. 

This is what happens when DEG doesn’t release any new material in 18 months. 
 
Unless you count the D’erlanger cover. That was pretty sweet. 

There’s also a wah in The Pledge which, honestly, is a far better example of a sister song to Tousei. 
 
I also did not connect Revelation of Mankind to Saku on a musical level at all. 

I’m almost certain the band didn’t approach the “origins” concept with the intentions of retreading old songs. If anything it’s more like they used their entire discography as an inspiration. You could probably place each song on Arche on a past album and have them fit. And the reason I think that is because during the Mode of lives they chose specific Arche songs to place in each set list. 
 
Which reminds me, does anyone know if they played Cause of Fickleness during the Mode of Withering to Death tour? 

Tell that to Tool, haha.