FINALLY!
Dir en grey - GAUZE
It's time for some fresh views on essential pieces of VK/J-rock (sry) history! And what do we have here:
The (major) debut album of DEG - and pretty much their most popular album in the scene...or WAS at least (I didn't research much about popularity amongst certain J-releases).
Either way, the most atypical thing I am going to do here is "a goal" (which most reviews are not in a need for tbqh) - to knock on cliched claims concerning GAUZE that have passed
from one generation to another (as in "older j-rock fans" (~2006) to "newer ones" (2006~)), for eg. "the poppiest DEG album ever", "the safest DEG album ever" etc. So get prepared!
The first thing to mention is the fact that how they emphasize their members' skills in a whole album - there's room for guitarists their rhytmic co-operation
and jamming ("Raison Detre", "Mask"), bassist with powerful bass tone and complex riffing ("Yokan", "Cage", "304") and of course a small spotlight for band's drummer ("304"). I think this is a good way
to introduce a whole band's talent to newcomer in minutes or so - and I dare to say that this is unfortunately the only DEG album where this trait is "emphasized"
(for instance, "WtD" almost isolated rhythmic players out of the mix). Thumbs up!
"Poppy" is an adjective that tarnishes listeners' expectations and lets GAUZE stay quite overlooked in most occasions - and for no reason. Like most people, who were involved with DEG for years, I am very aware
of the fact that DEG was always "abrasive" albeit constantly changing. For eg. The combo of Intro and "Schwein no Isu", "Mazohyst" and "Zan" are not "contextless tracks" at all, no -
those and other non-single tracks are, in fact, the *actual* "main content" (= the sound that the album is supposed to revolve around). To support this statement, let's check out on album's build:
*MC = "Main Content"
intro - MC - breather - MC - MC - breather - MC - MC - breather - MC - MC - breather/finale - outro
Of course, as you can hear it in certain MCs and breathers - "radio-friendly" accessibility is highly noticeable.It's accessible album if we rush a bit with my former comments, yes -
but as I pointed it out already, GAUZE's main focus is not on the breathers at all, but on the dirty, old school vk rock worshiping, frantic rock sound with various influences thrown in
(Kuroyume, Luna Sea, Vasalla - to name a few) instead. Take a note of songs they play off this album post-Blitz 5 days, and you will notice what I am talking about.
Rambling aside, my actual views: thanks to its simple build - and figureable concept, or "the main content", I found myself liking and listening to this album more than to other releases. Many songs might
feel quite apart to each other style-wise (newcomers hardly won't even try to tie such songs like "Mask" or "Akuro no Oka" into the same album), but they sure knew what to do with the flow -
and kudos to them! I like how daring experiments were handled along the way, without radically weirding out on listener - cases in point, varying signatures role-wise in "Raison" and "MASK" +
probably "intentional" offbeat/offkey frenzy in "Zan". Breathers are not bad either and should not be excluded due to bland "poppy"/"safe" statements - I might not be respecting the guy's deeds these days,
but Yoshiki sure deserves a good pat on his shoulder for taking boys' musical influences and interests into account and "paving a way to the airwaves" without making them turn into total sellouts. It's no
wonder that his productions ended up as instant J-rock classics though - radio-hits, but with a taste! And of course, the high nostalgia value of album's sound (to quote myself: "the dirty, old school vk rock worshiping, frantic rock sound with various influences thrown in") deserves an honorable mention; no wonder that people here and there
suggest newbies to go with GAUZE whenever it's about "being introduced to old school vk" !
Low points of this album in my case would be the small amount of "daringness" in "304" and "Mazohyst" for the most part; the latter is of course supposed to gloom and give some sort of "taboo shock value",
but nine minutes of Kyo screaming over requiem-y minors is just too much. Thankfully they placed the most accessible song of theirs ("Yokan") after abortfest to give a proper breathing pause, Phew. This is just nitpicking though.
Final thoughts: some might assume that "I haven't even reached my goal" or so on - if you read carefully, you should have noticed through my instances that instant genre/mood-spewing is too risky here:
give a few more listens, take a look at my "build scale" I wrote above and think more...don't let the singles fool you when it comes to realizing the actual content. Apply this to some of your classic favorites,
and see it for yourself...
Some big favs worth mentioning and a rating, go:
- Yurameki: the poppy instance of Kaoru and Die's classic, fantastic ways of co-operation (which they don't unfortunately utilize these days)
- Raison detre: interesting rhythmic approach and tasteful ways of using electronics
- Tsumi to Batsu: the bastard child of glam rock reject and noise-y maniac banging? Yes!
- Yokan: very accessible, but at the same time one of the loveliest, hummable songs DEG has ever done
- MASK: odd but cool way to approach ska punk sound + that jam ending
- Zan: something what you might think as a "lousy attempt at thrash metal" suddenly ends up as something ingenious
| It'd be quite dumb to round up "4,75" (minuses for Mazohyst - nitpicking again, I know), so let's make it go that way. Brilliant, classic Japanese music release - a total must for those who want to have "their own bite" on old skwl
