Licio123

I'll admit that I too was a bit disappointed on my first listen to DOGMA; it's not a lie that on first impression a large chunk of the album seems to blur together, and through perhaps a combination of poor track ordering and little compositional and stylistic variation, a lot of these bland metalcore efforts are sadly forgettable. However, determined to give this album a chance and a fair judgment, I've been listening to it a lot lately and I have to say it's grown on me. There's still several tracks that are so average I decide to skip over them, but some of the mid-album haze begins to show redeeming qualities if you give it the time to.
 
First the songs I really like: the dramatic and atmospheric atmosphere of OMINOUS easily places it as my favourite track here (much like TO DAZZLING DARKNESS provided an awesome outro to BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY before it). Certainly had this album followed up on the promise OMINOUS showed as a teaser with more moody, thematic compositions then this could have been one of the GazettE's best releases to date.
 
Next is probably DERACINE. Toning down the over the top chugging and focusing on powerful and memorable vocals (yes, this is Ruki) makes DERACINE a track well worth repeating in my opinion. Maybe it's partly an effect of this track dividing up other more forgettable songs, but personally I love this one.
 
While I'm unsure of its positioning in the overall album, BLEMISH is another great track for me. It's energetic with a catchy chorus and I'm sure this will work well towards the end of a concert. As it is, it's a very enjoyable listen in its own right without letting the metalcore influences weigh it down.
 
Finally honorable mentions go to the two promotional songs DOGMA and DEUX, which are both solid works, and INCUBUS has been growing on me too thanks to the blend of female vox and screams that leads into the chorus.
 
As for the other (more than) half of this album, unfortunately most of it is fairly average and sadly forgettable. Had the pacing been better considered, with more variety and at least a ballad or something to lighten up the oppressive chugging, this could have been a great release. Ultimately the most disappointing thing about DOGMA for me is that it didn't follow up on the promise the excellent marketing teased us with. I hope the GazettE take a moment now to pause and remember what's important in putting together an album made of entirely new material. If they can find a happy balance between the atmospheric tracks they do so well and more upbeat, energetic songs, I think their next effort will be awesome.

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...

Yeah, what a bummer. Was anxiously waiting for that...

Where is South America my boys ?

holy sht. this is going to be nice !

As a big Papa Roach fan, I'm excited to hear track 8, hopefully they put up pre order bundles soon!

Yoshiki buying last.fm = soon.fm

lmao @ the title changes of this thread

I don't understand why people are deleting their accounts. I don't think Last.fm as a whole cares what users are doing - deleting accounts and bitching in their community. To me Last.fm is all about my past scrobbling. To keep track of all the music i've listened to for the past 12 years. It's an interesting thing to me and as long as I can continue to scrobble and see what i've listened to years ago, I do not care what they do.

I'm also too addicted to my stats to jump ship just yet.  Though, if they don't give me back my 100+ artists that they deleted from my library, Idkkkkkkk. :<<

I too will stay. Despite the shit last.fm have pulled off with this half arsed action. But I really like my stats and couldn't dare to close my account. I rather let it die with the site. And call me crazy, but I still have some tiny little hope left for the site (or an alternative), even if it's just really small. But I really needed last.fm's huge database on bands no one has ever heard of except for maybe 1 or 2 people. And there is really no replasement for that yet. And it was really nice to go through others scrobbels to find new bands.
 
The band picture issue is a shame though, because I also like how last.fm was a nice place to collect bandpics.
 
Also I am glad that I have bookmarked all the bands (and their bandpages) I am interested in, instead of tagging them. Though it could be that the 0 plays artists might return, once they have re-installed the tags.

Too addicted to my stats to close my account, lol

https://userstyles.org/users/155937
Here is a script that may improve usability for now.

well shit.
 

Last.fm has been going cuckoo these days. I am just glad they don't mess up on my MusicBee in last 24 hours. What I can suggest is only to be patient. It's probably part of their transition to their whole new system (new site and such)

*shreek*

I think it should just be made fact that this is Last.fm's problem. It has likely happened to anyone who uses their client at least once or twice, and currently there's no discreet hotfix for this. Perhaps when they will release the beta from its current state worldwide will it be resolved.

In some day of 2101 XD

It's their problem. I read on a topic created there that they will only fix this when the beta version is stabilized. So, maybe in 2101 we can stop deleting multiple scrobbles! 
 
Oddly enough, when I scrobble through my smartphone, this never happens.

Yeah, same problem here, lots of double or triple scrobbles lately...

I using Foobar, and I have still the same problem ! Memory cache and tracks appears in double.

I think we can just wait of the fixing problem by last.fm ... I guess in two or three century...
 
Edit 17h35 :
I have uninstall scrobbler of my computer et re-install properly it, problem still working xD !
 
I have read on internet, if the track was put in the memory cache, it's because scrobbler isn't connect to last.fm, do you confirm this ?
 
18h00 : Apparently, after uninstall and re-install and use only one account on the scrobbler, it's working good, for the moment but still making double. I will check if it's good working the rest of the day, and week end.

There's nothing wrong with your scrobbling devices or music players, it's just last.fm's scrobble detection server (or whatever you call it) is messing up (disconnecting?) frequently.
 
The continuously on/off switching of your scrobbler happens because if it can't find the last.fm server it switches off and saves the scrobble in memory to scrobble later. But if it scrobbles a song then switches off after scrobbling but switches back on before the song is actually finished, it may scrobble another time because it doesn't remember it already scrobbled before it had trouble finding the last.fm headquarters.
 
Or it has something to do with the percentages of a song listened before scrobbling. I think the default setting is at 50%. Meaning that once the 50% bar of the song length is reached, it scrobbles. If it disconnects after reaching 50% but reconnects before 100%, it may scrobble again.
 
If you're using the external last.fm scrobbler you should be able to mess with the settings and tell it to scrobble only at 100% of the song listened instead. If this works you should be able to get rid of double scrobbles at the risk of not scrobbling anything at all. If you're using a scrobbler that's a built-in feature on a music player then I don't think you can change this setting.
 
Pay attention to longer songs: higher odds that they scrobble double, triple... quadriple even!

Artist: アルルカン (Arlequin) Single: 道化ノ華 (Douke no Hana) 1. 道化ノ華 (Douke no Hana) 2. 身を知る雨 (Mi wo Shiru Ame) 3. 人形-ヒトガタ- (Hitogata)
Rating: | A perfect example of when reversing the track list would have had much better results.
 
アルルカン is that band with promise and growing pains. If they haven't already, they are on the verge of becoming one of the next top indie bands of the scene. What keeps them from becoming a serious force is their inconsistency: their choices from composing music to presenting it aren't always the greatest. This is what kept their first full-length album "ニア・イコール" from being anything more than a fun, but ultimately shallow debut release. This single continues right along in that vein with some good ideas, some bad ideas, and ultimately a feeling that the single wasn't as satisfying as one had hoped.

This issue would go away if the track list was reversed. As the most dull song of the batch, I do not think "道化ノ華" makes for a good single. The intro is deceiving, bursting forth with aggressive chugging and their trademark electronic influences, only to melt away into a melodic chorus that tapers off as the song progresses. The metalcore and rock sections don't gel as well as they do on some other songs, but it is passable. Vocalist 暁-aki- dominates the majority of the song with a vocal melody that doesn't reach it's climax and has about as much impact as a BB gun: you'll remember it, but you won't catch yourself humming it anytime soon.
This is a problem because 暁-aki- is the centerpiece of the band. He's the one with the sweeping melodies and when he's on fire, the songs feel much more alive. To an extent, this holds back the next track "身を知る雨" as well. Contemplative piano keys give way to their trademark electronic chugging souffle which actually makes a nice atmosphere, but another uninspiring chorus and a misplaced breakdown halfway through the song moves the song into a direction it doesn't quite recover from. The chorus is at least better this time around and the breakdown isn't bad enough to ruin the whole song. It deserves a listen or two but it's not their Sunday best.

The oddball of the single, "人形-ヒトガタ-", has all the elements which go into making an effective title track. But much like their last single, Dilemma, the best track lacks the attention it deserves. Similar to "imp", this should be the single. It is here where アルルカン finds their groove with melodic, catchy riffs and a chorus guaranteed to get stuck in your head. While the previous two tracks were a mixed bag of good and bad ideas, this track isn't. The build-up to the chorus features the type of growth I was expecting and the chorus is killer. It's no coincidence that the best track of the single is the one where 暁-aki- puts the most energy into singing.

I took a long break from this band after their disappointing debut but I'm pleased to find that this band isn't completely out of ideas yet. アルルカン needs a lot of help in understanding where the music they play and the way we perceive it intersect. This band would have much more effective singles if they focused on catchy, energetic rock or aggressive metalcore and less on power ballads with riffs that vaguely resemble Versailles' "zombie". If the track list were reversed, and "人形-ヒトガタ-" placed first and "道化ノ華" placed last, this would have easily gotten a whole star higher. It would have also signaled good things about their next full album.

It's not as awesome as 墓穴, but it will do.


Support the band! Purchase Type A
Purchase Type B

a bubbly chap.
 
think I get what you mean.
 

Jurassic World, such a lovely mosasaurus. I want one in an aquarium, I would call it Momo and will feed and play all day long. Best pet ever ♡