Zeus

On 7/26/2018 at 3:26 AM, Disposable said:

To me it's all the fucking same too. It might be the most SADS influenced with a certain effort in having lamestream appeal, but you know that's a side of the gazette that was always there, if not present then lying dormant. DIVISION is the one I think has gotten the most unjust treatment as it really is in the continuum of the latest albums from the first song to last. I understand not being into some of their albums if your relationship to gazette is lukewarm anyway, but having a hard-on for any post-DIM album while despising another is just silly. 

So what if you liked DIM, disliked TOXIC and DIVISION, was lukewarm towards BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY, kinda liked DOGMA, and like NINTH? 

I guess I can't consider that a hard-on...

1 hour ago, Saishu said:

It’s interesting that Deity is on the Decade collection. Even more interesting that they cut out the intro. 

Because even they realized that the first minute and a half is excessive. The cut down version lacks a lot of the atmosphere of the original, which I've come to enjoy, but I don't think the song needs 90 seconds to get started. A 30 second introduction would do just fine, I think. And I also don't think that the 90 second introduction of Deity makes up for the bits that were cut from Myaku (both could have been included because there is barely enough room for it).

1 hour ago, Saishu said:

Take back what you said about Hotarubi. 

It's a fine song, just boring. And considering how long MACABRE is, sometimes it's the first road bump in the album when listening to the whole album in one sit. For the record, I'd take Hotarubi over the last two tracks any day of the week.

10 hours ago, saiko said:

Please, do it!😍

This is not an exhaustive list of grievances, but it should do.

MACABRE
 

• Why release one of the best ballads of your career in Ain't Afraid to Die, and then not include it on the album?
• Why does the album end with Zakuro and Taiyou no Ao, two of the most resident sleeper songs on the whole album?
• Wake is basically Luna Sea's Hurt.
• Why does the country bop Audrey get sandwiched between the prog behemoth of MACABRE and the thrash Rasetsukoku?
• Why is Deity four minutes long, and why does that minute and a half intro mean that Myaku has no intro or outro?
• Hotarubi is just boring.
• Where is children and why is it nowhere to be found on the album when that deep cut is better than most of the tracks I've mentioned?

KISOU

• Why is the production paper thin?
• THREE instrumentals? Really? It's there to hide how disjointed the whole album feels and it doesn't do a good job.
• PINK KILLER is a terrible way to end the album. And it's not even the song that's bad, just the shoddy execution of it.
• tfw Zomboid's remix is better than whatever shit stain placed second on the album. 
• embryo is snoozeville. I don't care how egregious the lyrics are, the rest of it is about as exciting as sleeping in a broken washing machine.
• Why are the best non-single tracks on the album not called Bottom of the death valley (24 Cylinders, Gyakujoutannou Keloid Milk) B-sides of the previously released singles?
• JESSICA comes out of nowhere and doesn't belong on an album so vulgar.
• The Domestic Fucker Family is just foochin' terrible and I don't think a re-recording could save that song, even if they went all in on the doom direction.

I can go on and on with some other albums, but I think you get the idea.

Drink lots of water and stay cool man, you deserve it.

I am so glad you posted this. This is a hilarious take on visual kei music videos that actually makes me want to watch it once.

3 minutes ago, Kelrya said:

I read some Japanese fan reports of their most recent live show.

Here is the info I could gather on new songs.

 

- The 理由 remake has a shortened intro and a rougher guitar tone reminiscent of MoaB. There is some shouting at the end now.

 

- One of the new songs that they just started playing has harsh vocals (they said デスボ in Japanese which means “death voice.” I don’t know if this is for all/most of the song or not as the description was unclear) and a blastbeat.

 

- The song that was played on the Mode of DSS tour is most likely titled “Celebrate Empty Howls.”

 

I have some more questions about 理由 remake. Maybe you have/can find the answers:

• Is the solo still the same?
• Is the melody the same? I remember complaints about plagiarism from some Kuroyume song, but for the life of me I can't remember what song it is.
• It's shorter I'm guessing because of the shortened intro.
• Is the guitar tone close to "Ryoujoku no ame"?

My honest guess is that they will hold out on re-recording GARDEN until they announce disbandment, and that will be a parting gift. No proof, just a gut feeling.

32 minutes ago, NICKT said:

Stupid names aren't going to keep off people wanting to hear the latest releases from a pretty big name in the community, what were you expecting, people to not expose themselves to media so that they can then formulate a further opinion?

I was expecting people to not be so damn negative. This topic is six pages of snarky comments and it's exhausting to read. Dir en grey is not the world's most perfect band, but we could all do with more positivity.

and yet despite all the negativity most of you are going to listen to it anyway x

It would be easier to rank if you chose what you thought was the best song for each band (I know this is very subjective). I'm not sure what the criteria is.

I've listened to XIII a few times and can confirm that this isn't a new low in lynch.'s career. It's not a new high either. It's hard to do new things when your livelihood revolves around doing the same thing in a new way in perpetuity. With no immediate flaws that demand attention, It's not the stinker that GALLOWS was on first listen. I do have a lot of nitpicks about certain songs and choices made, which work together to take the album down a few pegs. I haven't listened to lynch.'s new material seriously in a year and a half because I got tired of the monotony of their heavier sound, but respected that willingness to push in new directions, fail a few times, and learn from those experiences. They've walked back on that experimentation here for the most part and in many ways have regressed to SHADOWS-era songwriting capability, but they walked it so far back I don't sense any of the lessons learned in the final product. I say "for the most part" because a large part of my burnout comes from how one-dimensional their heavier tracks are, and that is still front and center. XIII gets good when the band lets songs like "RENATUS" and "SENSE OF EMPTINESS" do all of the talking, and makes me realize how much I'd kill for a ballad mini-album from them. There are other deep cuts in XIII which indicate that effort was spent on the album; the guitar melody at the end of "GROTESQUE" is an easy example of new ideas put into production. Songs like "JOKER" illustrate there are still visual-kei motifs they haven't exhausted yet (although I feel like that carnival/jazz take on rock was done better on "GHOST"). But dear god, the amount of times I was listening to a new song and thought I was listening to something else entirely is too damn high, much like rent. And having two one minute interludes on the album to bulk up a track list that would otherwise look anemic is a personal pet peeve. There's not much left to say except that it's another album from lynch., it's at least better than half of their previous albums, and it's not doing anything to turn old fans away or to bring new fans into the fold.

I have an iPod to solve that problem.

Even though you said that I introduced you to Arlequin, I've fallen off of them after "near equal" disappointed me. This topic gave me the inspiration to go back and try them out again. With a mix of old and new stuff I'm sure I'll find a way to fall in love with them all over again. This is exactly what I needed and I didn't even know it. Thanks @emmny!

2 hours ago, Saishu said:

There’s probably another section there, but it starts too soon for them to do a slower fade out. 

I was going to say that they sometimes record a 90 second version of the song just for this purpose, but then I remembered we were talking about X JAPAN here and them recording and releasing anything is an accomplishment in itself.

Go ahead and create one then @BrenGun

If this was intentional, then perhaps I will be eating my words in a few week and saying it's better than I gave it credit for. One little quibble I have is that the song fades out too fast before it cuts to the title card and the rest of the episode, as if the song faded out naturally and then someone added another fade out on top of it.  I'll revisit my feelings at the end of the season and see where I stand on it.

Eh, the song is okay but that's just distraction from the album that's still not here. I could give a rat's ass if the song is good or not, because we're only going to hear 30 seconds of it and most of us stop watching the anime as soon as the ending theme starts. It could be worse, it could be better.

@nekkichi i just updated the forum software. let me know if you still have The Bug.

I swear @nekkichi, you are MH's favorite or something. You get all the fun bugs.

What you see there are posts that we've hidden. I don't know why you could see them at that moment because you aren't supposed to be able to. You can't see them now when I checked again. It's probably a forum bug.

12 hours ago, cvltic said:

big ol reminder that i'm not writing this as an insider or anything but as a nerd who reads a lot of tanuki rumors

[...]
 

Daisuke and Kyo are probably the ones you'll read the most about. A lot of the stories seem to indicate the old vertical hierarchy/roadie culture (e.g. Kyo bosses around Daisuke, who bosses around Byou) which seems to have died somewhat with the idolification of visual kei in the last 10 or so years. There are threads specifically about Harcon but I don't really know how I feel about translating them because they have some fairly serious allegations...
 

You definitely should because I guarantee 80% of the forum has never heard of this, and posts on the internet have a habit of disappearing. Of course, we will all keep in mind that these are rumors and should be treated as such until we get official proof (IF we ever get official proof).

I'm looking forward to this. He started sounding really good near the end of SCREW, so if he finds a band that's more complimentary to his vocals it can actually be good.

On 6/30/2018 at 2:40 AM, Shaolan974 said:

So what is the next step ? 30 people think it's a good idea  

The next step would be to start one and see if it's something that you wouldn't mind doing every day, and  if its useful or not.

On 6/30/2018 at 2:44 AM, chemicalpictures said:

 

I think muddy is not the best term to describe it.

 

Are you familiar with what people calls Loudness War? It's the idea that modern producers try to make everything so loud that it end up compressing it up and making every instrument sounds like one giant thing. The drums and bass gets heavily compressed and lose their "punch". Using TWO OF A KIND as an example, the bass is so drowned, it sounds so flat that if you remove it in the mixing table, I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't even notice. Yeah, you can find it in the whole song, but that's not how a bassline should fulfill it's role in a song, neither how it should sound... Even the cymbals you mentioned, Kai is banging it like a motherfucker, and compared to everything else, it barely shows up.

 

Of course it's not gazette exclusivity, it may even be intentional, as it is a modern thing, but it's certainly there

The loudness I do hear. When I was doing comparisons, I was using DIVISION as my reference album and it struck me how much louder NINTH was. I would be willing to give people that criticism because its true, but it hasn't affected my enjoyment of the album any.

On 7/9/2018 at 9:34 AM, masa0922 said:

Where would you put this album in a ranking with DIM and Stacked Rubbish?

Probably on par with DIM, definitely above Stacked Rubbish.

9 hours ago, inartistic said:

Thanks for the interesting responses!

 

It really does seem like the only "foolproof" way to know is to ask people who attended lives of each band, which is obviously not possible on a large scale. But for now, I think I'll keep the "venue size over time" charts on artist pages, as it's an interesting metric to look at nonetheless.

 

Incidentally, the idea of tracking downloads to gauge foreign popularity is brilliant. MH needs to implement this, stat

If you want an approximate count for that, look for how many views a release has.

On 7/1/2018 at 10:14 AM, inartistic said:

• Average capacity of livehouses at which the band plays. (Could be improved by weighting sponsored events/oneman lives, but how?)

How would you be able to determine the amount of fans who showed up to see that particular band and not one of the other head lining bands?

On 7/1/2018 at 10:14 AM, inartistic said:

• Number of releases (excluding free releases?).

Any band can pump out releases, but popular bands would tend to sell more. If it's a limited release, you could try to figure out if the band sold out of all of the copies they pressed. If they end up pressing second or third editions that's a good sign.

On 7/1/2018 at 10:14 AM, inartistic said:

• Number of releases which vkgy users own. (Anyone with a vkgy account can add releases to their collection to make this stat more accurate!)
• Number of releases which vkgy users want.

That would be introducing bias into your data set because it would be restricted to vkgy users, which may not encapsulate the scene as it stands in Japan.