enyx

'Love' as a universal objective concept with a single definition that somehow exists outside of our own brains? No. 'Love' as a subjective interpretation of chemicals being released into our bloodstream to bring about a yes/no reaction based upon what actions previously allowed our ancestors to pass on their genes (cough)? Yes.

Aha, brilliant topic. This is a difficult one for me as I find that my favourite albums from the band come from both 'sides' of their career; namely Macabre and Uroboros. Furthermore I actually find that these two albums have more in common with each other compared to, say, Uroboros and Arche or Macabre and Vulgar. I don't find that Dir en grey's discography fits as neatly into two distinct eras as a lot of people tend to. In fact I'd argue there are at least three distinct eras for the band: Missa-Kisou, Six ugly-Marrow, and Uroboros-Present, though even then I'm not so sure about that last one since I consider Arche to have more in common with their work from the Six ugly-Marrow era than with Uroboros or DSS. Anyway, in the end I opted for 'Dir en grey' mostly due to this: This has been my biggest problem with DIR EN GREY in recent years (most notably on Arche and The Unravelling, though also noticeable at times on DSS). As much as I adore Uroboros, that's honestly the last album they put out where I felt that pretty much every song was an organic creation born out of some coherent creative vision. Since then a lot of their music feels more like it was forcibly produced in order to substantiate a new release at the expense of organic songwriting. So yeah, Dir en grey wins for me.

So I move to Korea and can't regularly make plug sessions anymore, and then Plug crashes and burns within a month? I think we all learned a valuable lesson here, be glad I'm still active on MH On a serious note, this is a shame. I found a ridiculous amount of good music through Plug. Hopefully a good alternative surfaces sometime.

Interestingly it was still posted on zankyorecord's channel. Intro sounded promising but the rest of the song didn't hold up in my opinion.

This is the most random band battle ever lmao. But 88kasyo without a doubt.

A Korean friend recommended some acoustic stuff so I figured I'd share it here. 어쿠스틱 콜라보 (Acoustic Collabo) 소란 (SORAN) 어쿠루브 (Acourve) 옥상달빛 (OKDAL)

new album「ghost is dead」 2015.11.11. PECF-1128 felicity cap-241 ¥2,916(include tax) 01. azure 02. echoes of S 03. ghost in a closet 04. escort & landing 05. feel uneasy 06. dawn draw near 07. iris 08. evoke 09. anthology of time 10. constellation 11. sogna Source

My 'Inspiration is DEAD' line was used without proper Harvard referencing, I'm suing for plagiarism. On a serious note, yep, I pretty much agree with everything here. I don't know what's going on with this band as of late but I haven't been able to really get into any of their stuff for the last 2-3 years now. I just find myself replaying their work from Inspiration to Sigure virgin and thinking about how they haven't really pushed their music forward at all since then.

Looking forward to this!

Personally I both really like like this album yet simultaneously consider it their weakest full-length effort. Some of the things that seem to have griped you, such as Olivia Burrell's minor role in Song Silly or Time Goes essentially being an interlude, don't really bother me so much. Others, such as Kashikura's extremely restrained drumming, hold the album back quite a bit at times; it fits on songs like Song Silly, which is pretty much built upon minimal beats and basically being depressing as fuck, but surely he could have done a bit more on something like Boyo, for example. On the whole, I find both the album's greatest strength and greatest weakness to be the fact that the majority of the songs just kind of blend together without really hitting any sort of peak, but never getting particularly 'bad' either. At no point do I ever feel bored listening to the album, but I don't find any tracks quite as appealing as what's come before. A lot of these songs are the type of thing I'd be more likely to listen to if I was simply shuffling toe's discography rather that seeking them out specifically.

On first listen it seems like a decent album, but I think that's mostly because of the fact that this heavier, more aggressive style hides their weaknesses a lot better than the stuff they were doing from Toxic-Beautiful Deformity. For the most part the guitar-work is still extremely dry, Ruki's vocals are still very limited, etc. Basically, it's still very much a post-DIM GazettE album, for better and for worse.

I totally forgot how hot Seoul gets during the summer. FML.

Is that one of the member's solo project or something? I tried IX -NINE- before and, although I enjoyed the music a lot, I found the vocalist really off-putting - whereas this just sounds like the elements of IX that I enjoyed minus the vocals.

I'm waiting for "The NUCLEAR OBLITERATION of Last.fm" to show up.

Literally the opposite for me. Spotify doesn't scrobble anymore; only my desktop iTunes does. I'm not a huge fan of Spotify (especially its generally awful tags), but it's still a pretty convenient way of checking out a new material without having to either buy it blind or pirate it. It's frustrating that it isn't scrobbling for me atm. I'm genuinely surprised that there isn't a good alternative to last.fm out there. Unless they have some sort of patent on scrobbling or something, it seems like now would be a pretty good time to start one up.

That's all I have to say.

I'm surprised that I haven't already replied to this thread. This is one of those bands that have been on my radar for ages yet I haven't ever given any of their full albums a try, just the odd song here and there. This PV track doesn't sound as interesting as the others I've heard, but if the reaction to the album is positive then I'll probably give it a shot.

I guess you could say that Inspiration is DEAD.

It really seemed to start after abnormalize's success; I'm guessing they just realised how much commercial appeal their sound actually has and decided to just roll with it. It is getting very tiresome, though. I didn't mind too much at first because I thought that TK's solo project would make up for it (since film A moment and flowering were a lot more experimental by comparison) but since then he's taken that down more of a repetitive alt-pop direction too.

Nothing particularly special as far as PVs go, but eh.

Can't wait for the inevitable 10,000yen live Blu-ray + bonus DVD + live Blu-spec CD2 release that these lives will no-doubt spawn

Yeah, I'm more inclined towards Cat's way of thinking here. Robin's always shown a lot of interest in electronic music, and let's not forget that he was part of Dhal too. It's amusing that you mentioned this considering the fact that I was literally just talking with Cat about the general lack of Japanese doom and the like. It'd be really interesting to hear if he does go down that route. I have a feeling that cover may be his own artwork, since he's previously served as an illustrator for unkie and on the Helping Hand albums.

Whoa! Consider me very interested! I wonder if it'll sound anything like downy or unkie or whether it'll be something completely different?

Hmm. Sounds more enjoyable than the previous three albums, but still nothing ground-breaking either. Their guitarwork still sounds very dry and that's been their biggest problem for a while in my opinion. Still, I'm more interested in this album than any of their others since DIM, so I guess it's doing something right.