saiko

If true, Shinya essentially saved dir en grey. 💋

“Uroboros", the seventh full-length album from Japan's DIR EN GREY, sold around 6,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 114 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD debuted at No. 1 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of The Billboard 200.”
 
Mofos should have thanked me. 

I don’t remember if Arche leaked, but I know DSS did. 
 
I leaked Uroboros. 

I feel some kind of weird when I realize the many awesome songs penned by Kyo (or Ruki, also) that are clearly anti-abortion hymns... Then I remember that Japan is far, very far indeed from lightening their heads with a little of genre conscience...
Well, I just try to avoid thast thoughts lol

I feel some kind of weird when I realize the many awesome songs penned by Kyo (or Ruki, also) that are clearly anti-abortion hymns... Then I remember that Japan is far, very far indeed from lightening their heads with a little of genre conscience...
Well, I just try to avoid thast thoughts lol

I never thought I'd say this but I think even Bad Bunny can make better music than Koichi now.

This are the examples that force us to reconsider what's the meaning of vk nowadays... This kind of idolized-bands, produced strictly to deliver fangirl fantasies, makes my head explode in cringe... I guess we won't be getting any genuine band in the scene ever again... I wish I lived in Japan in the 90s lol

Obviously there are a ton of factors here, but I honestly wonder how much music these people listen to outside of DEG and Gazette. There’s also the question of when did they get into this, because I know when I first started out with Gackt, Malice Mizer, and DEG, I thought everything else was inferior. It’s not that the music was better than what I had been listening to, it was just different. It sounded new. 
 
We know the average VK fan can often be blinded by adoration, but goddamn are you really ACTUALLY listening to the music itself when you claim you like every song your favorite band has written?
 
I’ve only been on this forum for a few years, but it’s nice to be able to have real discussions without having to pussyfoot around giving criticism. I don’t know if you guys managed to weed out all the toxic trash over the years, but I appreciate the VK safe space. 

This "feud" thing in music confirms how little comprehension people has of music in general... for example I read that people are pissed because Dimlim's singer uses clear notes, claiming that he is copying Kyo, as if only him can sing such in a way... there's a BIG difference between SIMILARITY and RIP-OFF! But in general the fact that people goes out because they hear something "belonging" to previous band is so boring, because music is free expression and we can choose whether liking it or not, that's it. I think there's so much useless drama about that...

I'm very happy reading this. First, Disposable is actually acknowledging that there certainly IS a particular sound for visual kei (And that is a hard thing to realize, considering the fact that no matter how the majority of the fanbase try to simply deny its existence, or else try to "explain" it reducing itself to nonsensical and very vast categories like "Japanese goth" or even "Japanese metal", or ways like that). Second, he also gives a special place to this kind of sound into Dir's arrangement genealogy till today.
Happy.

At some point it's just just a matter of persons trying to obtain acknowledging of others for the things they love. Also, consider that this is a central issue specially within teenage years (I'm  sure 90% of the fanbase we are taking about are teenage and young adults), a period of life where happens a deep reconstruction of oneself's identity. Yet vk is far from being a mainstream scene, so the amount of said acknowledging you can take from being enthusiastic about it is perhaps null. And also you really can't wait from them to understand, for example, the recalling aspects of same bands with, for example, Kuroyume. In my own experience, it took me almost ten years and a deep understanding of musical theory to actually come to realize the specific criteria and values of the scene in terms of music, lyrics and performance, and the system of genealogy relations between certain artists, and so on. But before then... I must say I was a rabid 2009 AN Cafe fan lol

This is an interesting issue as well. I perceive a lot of denial among some fanbases when it comes to the acknowledging  of influences from other bands and when it comes to technical limitations. You have copies of copies of copies being acclaimed "The only OGs of VK" and every mic-cupper inhaling dude becoming the best vocalist in the world. It's pretty freaky.

in real talk all this talk about post-core amphibian dainty-punk is getting very tiresome, especially since the main proponents of creating these inane subgenres and categories and marketing gimmicks come from people who've been listening to metal for two weeks and think they're now on the up and up for discovering ritual ambient or some shit like that. 
 
A band like Dir en grey is impossible to strictly, or at least in a very definitive way, to categorise because they're a combination of two very amorphous musical traditions of visual kei and metal anyway. Their nu-metal base acquired somewhere midway through their career has been almost completely transformed thrice over due to the accumulations of sounds and techniques they've kept on acquiring over the years, and while visual kei is a strange case in of itself ( like, you can still hear the influence of X and Luna sea from almost every band, namely in vocal melodies and how guitar solos function, or that even in 2018 a vk song exceeding 2 minutes in length would not be caught dead without a chorus ) Dir en grey is unique even within that context. They've had progressive elements and done weird shit through mazohyst to hotarubi and then revisited these techniques again and again later on ‑ all the while having songs seemingly contrast in genre on the same release; and despite this there's still a common thread and heritage running through their stuff, but it just defies simple category since they're quite unique. Even if what I just wrote doesn't make any sense, the point still stands that there's else you could call THE UNRAVELING other than visual kei or alternative rock/metal, and neither of those in today's context mean much of anything. 

Jesus that's fucking rank. I want to say yes, but for some reason I recall these, almost wing-like things at the far ends of the D and Y. There exists a shirt for this tour ( Unwavering something of tomorrow? ) with just a straight up band pic with the logo. It was easily the worst shirt from them I've ever seen. This was at least for the 2010 London show
 
edit: found it 
 

I propose to call their genre "dir en kei".

It's actually post-progressive avant-garde experimental metal with death metal and j-rock influences.

See, that's the thing I was hinting at. I think that nobody really cares THAT someone does(n't) like it. That's not interesting, you can't really talk about that (except for that little passive aggressive "DEG SUCKS" circlejerk on every page of this thread). It's far more interesting to talk about WHY someone does(n't) like it.
 
I don't know how much thought or effort went into this image but it's full of symbols either way. And these symbols can be read and since they are thematically/semantically pretty consistent, they can be combined into a narrative or message. If that message is exactly what the dude(s) who made it had in mind doesn't really matter, does it? Things mean different things to different people. That's kinda the beauty of art, right?

To be fair, you have to have a very high I.Q. to understand DIR EN GREY album art. 

Sadly true. But fuck them, Garden is awesome. They really made up something very genuine with one of the most cliché formula of the 90s scene.

They’d probably break up rather than play Garden again. 

I wish they'd do MISSA...
Maybe with B-sides so the live isn't only 30 minutes long though^^

i cant believe kyo went as hard as he did during the freakout section
 
mode of ___ is the best deg footage ever, there's no way they'll out-do the emotion, live sound, and visuals of the series. I wish they could re-do gauze and not look like they were in pain the whole time.

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. 

Hey all. How's it going? I guess I should introduce myself now, huh?
 
I originally got into Visual Kei back in....2009, I believe? It may have been slightly before or after. Anyway, I would spend countless hours everyday doing things revolving around VK. (as I'm sure all of you do/did) that continued until about 2013 or so and then I kind of fell off. I would still come back every so often and see which of my favorite bands decided to disband or check out who was new, but I never jumped completely back in. That is until the last month. Not sure what called me back, but something did! The first thing I noticed was "Boy oh boy do I have a lot of catching up to do." While it's been a crazy ride so far, it's been fun as hell!
 
I decided to come back to Monochrome Heaven just to help me sort everything out. Oh, that reminds me. Forgot to mention, I used to have an account on here many moons ago. I have absolutely no idea what any of my info was anymore, so I just decided to make a new one! I'm going to finish this off by saying it's nice to meet you all and I'm glad to be back in the community!

Yes, a merry bad end