StriderSubzero

I really like the tweaked chorus in the new The Final recording but otherwise I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other. I like the original, and I like the re-recording, but I don't understand why you'd want to re-record something so recent, especially when it's one of your most popular songs.

What even is this? It looks like he just drew a few Tim Burton-esque characters and made a website with merch on it featuring the characters?

In honor of the one year anniversary of the album, I've made it free (or pay-what-you-want) on Bandcamp: https://lichtnoire.bandcamp.com/album/sink

Thanks!

Does anyone have a scan of the 21st Century booklet, or just the lyrics? Mainly "Cyber Patrol wo uchiotose".

That's fair, but nearly all contemporary death metal uses blast beats of this sort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4KNXi-SWWc (0:23 - 0:26) I suppose it isn't necessarily a requirement but you have to go back to like early Autopsy to find a period in death metal where there isn't blasting at all. I think you just have a broader definition of death metal than I do, which is fine; musical genres can be somewhat subjective anyway.

Thanks, I really appreciate that as well and thanks for the feedback. I liked your "Silhouette" song on Decadent Society a lot actually. Really dig the 80s influences you roll into your sound.

Speaking as a drummer, I had a lot of respect for Shinya when I started learning and I do think a lot of the criticism about him is unfair. He can't blast, or at least we've not heard him do that, and as such would never be able to play in a death metal band... but Dir en grey aren't a death metal band. Shinya's approach very rarely comes across as that of a metal drummer; it sounds more like what a pop-rock drummer that was exposed to some prog would come up with. That's not a bad thing overall and is just one of the things that makes DEG a unique-sounding band. I don't mean to sound pretentious because I don't mean it that way at all, but I listen to a lot of types of music, and I've yet to hear anyone else that approaches rhythmic sections the way Shinya does. One thing I've always noticed about Shinya's parts is the odd snare placement. A good example of this is the intro and verse patterns in "Shitatarou mourou." It isn't until that pre-chorus around 1:00 when it opens up that the rhythm stop sounding like it's falling over itself (I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way). It's possible that the odd phrasing in those parts was just Shinya following the rhythms of what the guitars are doing, but I personally would never have approached those sections in that way and would have written something entirely different. Even in some of their older songs he had a tendency to take a section that most would play more straightforward (like placing the snare on 2 and 4 for example) and make it sound different by where he would place the snare in the phrase. "Itoshisa wa fuhai nitsuki" on WTD comes to mind. I think that's a genius rhythm section with what the bass and drums are doing, even in its simplicity. In the verse he puts the last snare hit at the end of each phrase on the "and" of 4; that's really strange but works very well and changes the groove a lot. This does cut both ways, because for instance on the chorus of "Rinkaku," that droning 8th note kick drum pattern is just terrible IMO. Playing that live he never seems to get it quite right and it makes it sound sloppy; and no one, unless they're a robot, could get it exactly right every time. He should have written something less dense and more forgiving to errors.

I always liked this one a lot:

Neos can speak to the vocal composition, but instrumentally they were not a specific influence on that song. However I do like them quite a bit and their sound is something I consider an influence. I think in songwriting sessions for the EP I did at one point set out to specifically write something driven by an odd-time signature, bass-heavy groove in the vein of MGR but it never developed further. I hope I can explore that more in the future. I would say that this song was probably channeling some mixture of Shiver, Syndrome, La'Mule, and Laputa. Specifically the walking bassline was something I wanted to incorporate. I don't know where that came from in VK, but sometimes you'll hear that in more jazz-influenced songs and often in songs with no discernible jazz influence. It always struck me as unique to VK that a post-punk or goth-rock song would have a walking bassline.

I'm enjoying this read a lot, particularly the historical stuff. It's funny to see people admit to thinking fondly of this stuff, because I loved this sound when it was current and I assumed I was in the minority. Around 2004 when I was just getting into VK, I was exposed more to D'espairsRay, UnsraW, Gazette, and of course Dir en grey, and that was the sound I associated with VK. I really didn't discover the "classic" sound beyond Dir en grey's early stuff until a few years later. I played in metal and -core bands in late middle school and high school so the heavy vibe spoke to me more. Truthfully I did listen to some nu-metal like Mushroomhead and KoRn but I didn't see much similarity between those bands and this style of VK until later. I'm not entirely sure why. Where does stuff like early Devil Kitty fit in? It has some odd turntable usage (0:43) and some awkward, sort of metallic riffing but I have no idea what to make of this weird garbage. While not as nu-metal as most of this thread, it's a fairly early example at 2003, and I always enjoyed this song more than I care to admit: I'm not familiar with this version of the song which is apparently a more recent re-recording, but I always dug the original's riffs: This is a good example too. It's like if Coal Chamber was fronted by a child:

That would be fantastic and would help a lot. Thanks everyone for your feedback and also to those that purchased the album. Really appreciate it!

They are partial re-recordings and totally remixed and remastered. New vocal parts and melodies, new guitar solos, and some other things.

I told you this when you PMed me but I thought it might be helpful to anyone else that is looking to start a project: The reason no one responded to you is because they don't know what you sound like. It's easy to talk about all the musical styles you've mastered and so on, but without any audio examples it's just talk. Collaborating with people online to make music can be really fun, but if it's a total mystery who you're working with and what their abilities are, that's just frustrating and not fun at all.

Thanks rebelstrik. It was fun to work on a cover for once. We have quite a few new songs we're working on now as well, but I think I can say that we're pretty proud of this single so the kind words mean a lot.

I ran out of time on this one (didn't do the middle part of the song between each chorus) so I hope to do a real cover and use an actual mic and so forth eventually, but I just wanted to get some feedback on a quick and dirty run-through of the song. I feel like I should mention that I don't speak Japanese and just learned the lyrics phonetically, so I apologize in advance for butchering the language. https://www.mediafire.com/?v8j8qwj2q9syn71

I'm the other half of the band and I haven't been active on the forum so I just saw this post (from like a year ago... haha). Are you talking about the snare rimshots at the end of the song in the waltz-y section?

Hi everyone, I'm going to list this on eBay, but feel free to contact me here if you are interested. http://www.ebay.com/itm/171216317174?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Been playing the first Dragon Warrior for quite awhile now... looking forward to finishing it soon so I can move on to something else.

I'm not terribly familiar with any of those, except for the Dir en grey intro song and the Muse song. "Starlight" is a great song though, I love the intro to that. 1. Dir en grey - "Aoi tsuki (Blitz 5Days live)" 2. Avenged Sevenfold - "Natural Born Killer" 3. Dir en grey - "Reiketsu Nariseba" 4. My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - "After the Flesh" 5. Jay-Z - "Hovi Baby" 6. Sleep My Dear - "Tsuki no shizuku..." 7. Queen/David Bowie - "Under Pressure" 8. Ayabie - "Sakura mau kisetsu ni" 9. Daft Punk - "Daftendirekt" 10. Deflina Ma'riage - "Infection" Wow, tough one. I'm gonna go with the Jay-Z song... I really like the production on that one.

I feel a lot of what Perez and xxzer0xx said as well. Although I definitely enjoy Dum Spiro Spero and the general vibe and especially the guitar compositions, I have to say that this EP was a little lacking for me. I think it's a little strange for them to be remaking songs from Withering to death and Vulgar so soon already (I did not like what they did to "Obscure" since it is one of my favorite songs from Vulgar, even though it was quite good live at the Baltimore show last weekend)... paradoxically I commend them for remaking "The Final," which was a bold move given its popularity. I'm generally of the mindset that if you're going to remake a song, you might as well take it in a completely different direction and not try to "upgrade" it, which is what I feel that they were attempting to do with "The Final" and "Kasumi," and it fell a bit flat IMO, since these songs were already excellent and nothing good can come of re-recording them. There are some interesting new parts in these songs, but even though I think Kyo is an amazing vocalist, the vocals in the intro of "Kasumi" are wholly unnecessary in a studio recording and honestly kind of ruined it. "Bottom of the death valley" is also one of my favorite DEG songs, and the remake is interesting, but not as compelling as the original. I found the new guitar solo to be unfitting, what with the blues scales in particular. As for "Unknown.Despair.Lost," the acoustic intro is again unfitting, but I'm happy that this song is more recognizable than their botched remake of "Kiri to mayu," also one of my favorite songs by DEG. I also have to say that the vocals in the verses are very cool, and the update to the chorus is well done. "Karasu" was a good song on Kisou if only for the engrossing atmosphere, but I have nothing against the remake and it adds some cool parts. "The Unraveling" is just not that great of a song IMO, and honestly I feel that they could have left this off the EP entirely—it really doesn't do anything particularly engaging, and is overall sort of mediocre. I felt the same way about "Rinkaku" and "Lotus," but I'm sure lots of people disagree with me. "Macabre" is good, but I prefer the original; the remake changed my favorite part (the section in the middle where the clean guitar starts playing the eerie arpeggio riff, after the "chorus"). Overall I think this EP was a great idea, but I do feel that DEG has been kind of hit-or-miss with their remakes ("Undecided" was fantastic, "Tsumi to batsu" is odd but cool, "Kiri to mayu" is decent as a new song but IMO not a worthy remake). I like that DEG is finally starting to acknowledge their older material, but hearing some of the songs live made me wish I was listening to them play the original instead. However, given that that is extraordinarily unlikely, I'm okay with these new versions as a compromise. At least it means that I was able to hear "Bottom of the death valley" and "Karasu" at a live show in the US, which is something that I had absolutely no chance of before.

The vocalist sounds like Varg Vikernes in the verse and then... that chorus. What?

The "Untitled" thing isn't bad. I don't speak Japanese so I have no clue if his accent is terrible or not, but otherwise it sounds fine... kinda like a poor man's Plastic Tree. That video though—truly wtf.

I think your rhythms sound fine—I actually like that aspect of it. The main problem that I hear is that your guitar is out of tune (or maybe you're just playing a few really strange chords). There are also the occasional notes in the lead guitar, towards the beginning especially, that sound like they are in a different key than the majority of the melody. It sort of starts to work after awhile because it sounds like you're playing in some sort of jazz mode, but it's rather jarring. It's really difficult to give any concrete advice on this, but the most crucial thing I would say is "less is more." There's a lot going on in some of these parts, and it makes it difficult to focus on any one thing in particular. I wish I could be a little more direct, but hopefully someone else can be more helpful.