kuyashii

It took me a while to think of what it reminded me of, but I realized today that I also noticed the Tool vibe. 
The album cover is definitely upsetting. Much like the pink monkey man, I'm not looking forward to it coming up on my phone's shuffle.
 
My girlfriend calls the new art "the pineapple man" tho, so that makes him a little more hilarious than scary.
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Also, I guess that Renunculus music clip was a public event. They're not putting it online just yet? Seems like they're not doing much hype for this new album. It's a month away. 😫

Very nice. Gallows Gallery are by far the best heavy/power metal album ever, and easily the most underrated metal album ever. Such a unique and catchy album.

When I was first getting into Dir en grey (and Mucc too for that matter), something that really appealed to me was that they don't stick to a single or genre in any of their works. Sure, each album tends to have its own tone but the tracks themselves are by no means homogenized. 
If you're trying to tag and organize your music library, sure it sucks. But I'd rather not be able to categorize them so easily.

no x 

Ninth was pretty cool IMO though

I ctrl+F'd this page and it had no Juri (ex-DELUHI)
 
SMH guys. One of the best, least nasal vk-core vocalists right there.

almost reminds me of one of those deep fried memes

The whole band's name is hinting at their preference for older gay men to take them:
 
Dad aroma 

yesn't

That’s what I’m saying. Something this goddamn ugly needs to do some crazy Tool shit like a lenticular cover or have stereoscopic 3D glasses built into the packaging. 
 
Years of dark, muted colors to this. It almost looks like a CGI render of the Glass Skin cover. 

That album cover is almost worse than Sustain the Untruth’s cover. 

I absolutely despise StU. It's the most overplayed, yet most boring song in their entire catalogue and for reasons beyond my understanding, they feel the need to include it on nearly every release.
It's three times on ANDROGYNOS, once on ARCHE, three times on ARCHE AT NIPPON BUDOKAN, twice on DSS AT NIPPON BUDOKAN, once on the MTV live, once on the SUSTAIN THE UNTRUTH single, once on TOUR14, once on TOUR16-17 TMOAB, of course once on VESTIGE OF SCRATCHES and again on ARCHE as a remix.
I have it 15 times in my discography and 200 scrobbles on last.fm .__.
But apparently they've performed it only ~172 times, which is nothing compared to the ~535 times OBSCURE was performed.

Arche has some great songs but it’s not very fun to listen to all the way through. There are too many songs that are neither fast and heavy nor melodic and emotional so they just end up in a really boring middle ground. I love songs like Rinkaku, Behind a Vacant Image, Kaishun and Tousei, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, songs like Midwife, Revelation of Mankind, Uroko and The Inferno. But, like, does anyone really like Soshaku that much? Or Sustain the Untruth? Some of the songs just felt like filler. 

'Conceived Sorrow' is one of my favourite opening tracks ever, and one of my favourites by the band. I really love the piano, the smooth bassline and the dramatism. 'Ware, Yami Tote...' is like 'Conceived Sorrow' but on stereoids! I like the drumming and the crescendo in Kyo's performance (those screams at 05:20 - 05:26 are soul crushing).
 
I enjoy 'Vanitas' a lot too. The guitar solo is one of Kaoru and Die's finest moment, especially the tremolo harmonies and everything that follows that section. A moment of calmness amidst Dum Spiro Spero's bipolar violence. Regarding 'ARCHE', I love 'Kukoku no Kyon', possibly my favourite track on the whole album. They really nailed the acoustic guitar sound, and that synth (or is it an e-bowed guitar?!) creates a really melancholic atmosphere. The Utafumi version with Sugizo on violin takes the song to a whole other level: the chorus hits really hard.
 
Seelentau, could you describe Ranunculus? I imagine it as a mix of the dark and gloomy vibe of 'Conceived Sorrow' with the piano driven and ethereal beauty of 'Rinkaku' (without the doom and technical riffing, of course).

*Immature comment saying "La Puta" is spanish for "the whore"*

Okay so I knew something 'interesting' or 'ridiculous' was bound to happen while I was without proper internet for a week but this... 
 
Don't even know what to say.

Die at least has varying hair lengths and dyes it red once in a while. Shinya has had the same Yoshiki hair cut for as long as I can remember. 

@Rosner I really like drum panning too! DSS does that specially well, you can actually "set up" the drums in your head (as if you were sitting on the stool) from the sound of each individual piece of the kit. I think my description doesn't make much sense though :P. I don't recall that effect on Arche tough, but I haven't listened to that album in a good while, even less while wearing headphones.

I agree! I remembered about this:
 
 
Personally I wouldn't do it (for me, reverb on distorted guitars is a no-no, excpet when working on black metal or shoegaze), but every producer has it's own style and sometimes their unorthodox methods surprisingly work. When it comes to music and mixing, there are no writteng rules (except for a couple of obvious ones). 
 
By the way, I just noticed Arche was mixed and mastered by Tue Madsen! Wouldn't have guessed it: it sounds over-processed but has an unpolished sound that I've never heard on any of Tue Madsen most recent works.
 
I also checked out who mixed/mastered the 'Utafumi' and 'Ningen...' singles out of curiosity: it coul give a hint on the sound 'The Insulated World' may have. 'Utafumi' was mixed by Madsen, but it was mastered by Tsubasa Yamazaki (seems like a frequent collaborator of the band, mostly on live releases). Can't find any good info on 'Ningen...', though its Japanese wikipedia entry seems to have some interesting info about it's composition. Too bad Google translate is not very good... but for what I understand, it was mixed either by Dan Lancaster or Jay Ruston and mastered by Brian Gardner (interesting choice!).

Reading all your posts about the original UROBOROS, I really, really need to throw that thing on again. I haven't listened to it since the remaster.
 
One thing about Tue Madsen's mixing that hasn't been mentioned is that he seems to love throwing reverb over absolutely everything. That may contribute to the 'muddy' mix people are talking about. UROBOROS Remastered, DSS, and THE UNRAVELING all suffer from this. It does add to the depth of the music but it all just ends up sounding very similar as a result (at least, in my opinion).

I think the track that suffered the most with the remaster was "Stuck Man". I'm suspicious to say that because I actually like the original mix, but the messy sound and the St. Anger snare actually work pretty well on that one and it helps achieving that weird Mr. Bungle/Fantômas-ish sound.

I haven’t listened to the original mix of Uroboros in years, and I’m doing that right now. I can say that what Tue Madsen seemed to concentrate on was pushing Kyo more to the front, but he also removed a lot of the low end of everything else. He kind of nerfed Toshiya’s bass tone, and the hard planning of Kaoru’s and Die’s guitars seems to be less prominent. In the end he somehow managed to make a cleaner mix that sounds messier. Props for bringing out that extra percussion in Ware, Yami Tote though?
 
But fuck that  snare sound in the original mix of Red Soil. Sounds like Shinya is smacking tin foil. 

*Immature comment saying "La Puta" is spanish for "the whore"*

*Immature comment saying "La Puta" is spanish for "the whore"*

Man, this makes me really angry. I always thought those "modes of" tour didn't have any purpose other than take money from the rabid fans and make Kyo shreds his throat even more. I know, he's old, the amount of abuse he put his voice through in the past is just immense and it's hard to sound good when you run like a maniac, but honestly, watching live footage from Kyo is just depressing nowadays and IIRC the last time I watched a full DVD by them was the DSS at. I know he never was a consistent live performance but until early 2015 or so, he still tried (and even after it, every once in a while he would nail a something really difficult like "Tousei" from the 2nd day at Budokan).
 
I've been following him since 2011, and while it was cool to witness his vocal habilities at their very best (which peaked in 2013 IMO, The Unraveling has sick vocals and he could actually replicate it live almost perfectly - the Tabula Rasa tour was his best, even that DVD that comes with Sustain the Untruth, which was of a performance Kyo did while going through fever and amigdalitis had some very good stuff).
 
You can actually pinpoint the time where he (and the whole band as well) started bringing back the visual elements to live performances and started exploring other stuff besides music - which was all after the 2012 break they took before releasing Rinkaku. In addition to the poetry books, the photography stuff, the goods designs, he really started going. It was kinda cool at first, but nowadays I just get the impression he doesn't even care about the musical aspect of their live shows, as long as he prances around with corpse-paint wearing monk hoods or doing SM shit while dressed like a naughty nun he seems to be satisfied.
 
And most of all, there's a quote from Kyo himself that goes like "if you want perfection, go listen to the studio albums". That's what I do nowadays, but even then, the studio stuff isn't that good anymore and if you ask me, he sounds like absolute crap on Adoratio. His high register is almost gone, he lost the support to hit the high notes and he mostly sound like he's gagging. There's a reason people who absolutely shredded their voices don't try their old stuff anymore (think Nina Hagen, Phil Anselmo, etc.). Kyo just so self-absorbed with this "i'm expressing myself" thing that just insists on doing stuff he can't do anymore instead of revamping his vocal style.
 
He still has done some of the most batshit insane vocal performances I ever heard in my life though and I thank him for that. I just don't have any hope when it comes to his future