kuyashii

Uroboros > Vulgar > DSS > Gauze > Arche > WtD > Marrow > Macabre > Either Kisou or TIW
I already wore my protection and have a wooden club by my side if necessary.
 
Not sure what I'd place on the bottom place but I dislike both deeply  I'd have to listen to Kisou again in order to compare it to TIW but I haven't heard it in years and I'm not willing to rn.

Ricko doesn't write the lyrics, Sena does. Jiluka's music is 100% written by Sena.
 
As for my opinion about the album, it's pretty meh imo. I'm of a similar opinion as 123Sandman321. Everything sounds like copy/paste to me. Sena is a really talented guy but I'm disappointed by the lack of diversity, yet at the same time I'm not too surprised that I didn't like the album since I haven't really liked anything they've put out for a while. I've also stopped going to their lives cause they never change their set lists. Everything about them is so futsuu these days imo.

I'm so disappointed by Jiluka's new album. Every song has the same structure and even sounds the same the whole album around. Ricko's harsh vocals have never been stellar and it shows here, combined with his lacking english during the clean parts...it's one of his worst performances. While Sena is technically a brilliant guitarist, he doesn't seem to have any imagination beyond super fast sweep-picking and the same fucking breakdown they've been using for years. Also, it would be kinda nice if Zyean did more than constant blast beats, but considering the songs that Sena presented, I suppose it didn't leave much room to breathe, creatively. (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he does most of the songwriting)
 
Maybe I expected too much of this record, considering they've released so many gems in the past (while innovating with every release), but damn, I'm so fucking salty now. It's still quality stuff that I like, but with the standard I held them to...this album just didn't cut it.
 
It's like Far East Dizain all over again...

Comparing vanitas with Ranunculus is a sin

Will people hate me for saying that this is the worst DeG album to date?

I think some people are confusing fans’ interpretations of interviews (that post from earlier today) with direct quotes from the band. That was an analysis a fan made based on a bunch of different sources plus the author’s own feelings on the record, not any single interview. Also Kaoru didn’t say it would sound like Marrow, again that was the takeaway from interviews and pre-release reviews saying it would be simpler and rawer and more aggressive.

He looked cool when he had a TV for a head. 

Kyo needs to realize he looks awful when he shaves his head.

I honestly think the exhausting wall of nonsensical screaming noise is the whole point of the first half of the album. It’s basically a concept album about Kyo’s mental state and that’s why it ends with the most hopeful song musically and lyrically. At least that’s how I’ve interpreted it since he said in an interview that the order was deliberate.
 
I agree about the production though.

On initial listen: This is a bad album.
 
I'm that person who praises DEG almost all the time (I still skip audrey, though). I enjoy songs like The inferno and Midwife. However, I simply cannot defend this dumpster-fire.
 
I haven't really ever had a problem with the mix and master on any previous album, with the exception of the poor album version of Hageshisa and the constant torrent of Madsenverb which has plagued the last few releases (which I like but gets stale after hearing it for four albums in a row).
However, here, the production, mixing, mastering are unforgivable. I know many bedroom producers who can make a better sounding album than this. Hell, even I  can make something that sounds better than this. The guitar tone in particular is fucking horrendous. The whole thing is so compressed that it actually hurts to listen to. This is probably the worst album I have ever heard in terms of brickwalling. It's so loud that it's completely flat, with no dynamics whatsoever.
 
The first 6 songs on the album are a blur of noise, Kyo screaming nonsensically accompanied by a solid wall of distortion. Aside from the singles, I couldn't hear anything in here which resembled a song. It's exhausting, impenetrable, and boring. From Aka onwards, I somewhat enjoyed what I was hearing. There were a few tracks which sounded very similar to previous ones. I heard a Rinkaku pt2, DREAMBOX pt2, LIE BURIED pt2. Seems lazy, but okay. Just sort of mediocre.
 
Overall, I felt there were no stand-out tracks whatsoever.
 
The worst thing is, song-wise, this is the album I wanted. Something raw, angry, and fun, like MARROW. But I didn't want it to sound like this! Perhaps there are good songs here. It's going to take a while for me to digest what's going on and get over the fact that it sounds so terrible. I really want to like this. Again, I'm the fan who enjoys almost every song from this band with very few exceptions.
 
Since they did such a piss-poor job with this one, from everything about the audio to the packaging (misspellings, missing translations, etc), I predict that we'll see a remaster in the vein of UROBOROS within the next few years.

0:50 on that teaser lol what was that

I put my thoughs inside a spoiler box because it's A LOT of stuff. 
 
inb4 this is my "forum-suicide"

I put my thoughs inside a spoiler box because it's A LOT of stuff. 
 
inb4 this is my "forum-suicide"

Real talk, Devote My Life is borderline unlistenable. 

Unpopular opinion: I  think I'm the only person here who isn't blown away by the new album. Maybe it'll take more listens but barely any of the tracks are grabbing me at the moment. On first impressions it's like a bland Dum Spiro Spero, and I'm not a huge fan of that album.
 
Ranunculus is the stand out track to me. 赫, Followers, and 谿壑の欲 interested me the most I think. The rest just washed over me. I think it's the first time one of their albums hasn't immediately grabbed me unfortunately. 
 
I cannot stand the new vocals on 詩踏み, they sound like a half-arsed live version in comparison to the original vocals. I find it akin to the album version of 激しさ. Ew. 
 
Anyone else agree? No? I'll just sit down
 
Glad to see so many people having fun in the lead up to, and the release of, the new album though! Happy listening everyone! ^^
 

The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids.

“Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is.
 


There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor.
 



Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.”
 
Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.”
 


Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise.

Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else.
 



Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei.


Or was it???


Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz.
 


Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.

I was about to say “they should grab the guy who mastered Adoratio” but it turns out that’s just Tue Madsen too. Huh. 

Sound is amazing but lately , I want understand more about music industry.
I'm not sure why all these bands / solo artists uses always so  similar symbology:
 
or what about this? (English audio only )
 

values of madness sounds like a very bad machiavellism reconstruct.
new utafumi is bad, new kigan is awful, I'm not feeling any of the heavy tracks at all, 赫 is a nice blend of WTD and rinkaku styles.
 
I like that 谿壑の欲 and 絶縁体 sort of aim for a macabre/kisou-era feeling (flopping band desperately trying to pull their legacy stans back again?).
 

 
I hope Kaoru is proud that this is the state of their western fanbase he's p much created single-handedly* x
 
*no ableist puns intended!!

my dad is friends with kyo

DSS has my favorite production out of all DEG’s albums. Everything sounds really tight and I like the “dry” texture of everything. 

https://youtu.be/3AvGJgpRj9s?t=1m24s

"The Inferno" is "Decayed Crow"'s poor cousin

https://youtu.be/3AvGJgpRj9s?t=1m24s