enyx

"Guest vocals" is a weird way of putting it. Isn't that term usually reserved for vocalists that aren't a part of the band itself? I'd have though "backup vocals" or something like that would have been used instead. Still hella interested either way.

I dreamt that the planets had aligned in mysterious ways and somehow Yusuke Kobayashi had joined Die's new band. Crazy right? Wait a second...

For those that aren't familiar with Kobyashi, he's the vocalist/guitarist and main composer for THE NOVEMBERS. We have a thread for them over in the artists section.

I've never heard of this band before, and ART-SCHOOL has been perpetually on my "to check out at a later date" list. This sounds interesting though.

KOBAYASHI!? THE FUCK!? Hype levels skyrocketing.

I think I just orgasmed when I opened MH to see an Aureole banner at the top of the page. I mostly agree with the general sentiments expressed in this review, though I'd say that my lasting impression is slightly more positive than yours. Whilst I don't think anything on the album manages to hit the same level of pure awesomeness that Core does (though I am rather fond of Inner Plane), I do nevertheless find the album's consistency to be mostly a positive thing. Whilst it's true that it would be nice to have a few more "killer" tracks, I also don't find myself feeling the need to skip any of the songs on the album either. By contrast, all of their previous albums have featured varying amounts tracks that I simply couldn't get into in addition to the ones that I loved. In that sense I'd actually go so far as to call this my favourite album of theirs when viewed as a complete package. I'm also not quite as down on the later tracks as you are. Though I agree that Last Step feels somewhat like a waste of time, I'm actually rather fond of Ghostly Me's new context within the album; it's much more 'raw' sounding than songs like I, Core, or Edit which gives it a lot of 'oomph' considering its placement towards the end of the tracklist. For some reason the first half of 2015 has been rather disappointing for me as far as full-lengths go. There have been a few minis and singles that I've really enjoyed, but not so much in the way of albums. So to be honest, I'd actually say that this is my favourite full-length of the year so far. It could have been better for sure, but it's also not very easy to find any particular fault with either. It's just an all-round solid release and a nice bit of experimentation from an already experimental band.

I found that thread title too amusing. Would have been even better if it was 'ESNO new release "Release" release.' Anyway, I'm not too familiar with this artist but I'm pretty sure that track feat. Daoko has been around for a while now, right? Either way I think I'll give this a shot.

Welcome to Monochrome Hell. You may never leave.

I typically don't care too much for a band's look, but hot damn this one looks good. The only one I'm not really digging is Aoi. Some decent song titles too; 'Lucy', 'Deracine', and 'Paralysis' in particular. Still, none of this means anything if the album doesn't deliver.

It sucks when you see it all big like that; I didn't even realise that there was a face on it until I saw it as a thumbnail. When it's smaller you can see it clearer and it looks a lot better.

Mind explaining how they were 'bad' changes?

It's been confirmed in interviews that he composed 濤声 and てふてふ on ARCHE. It's also widely believed that he composed 懐春 since it contains so many of his hallmarks, but that hasn't been confirmed as far as I know. On DSS I believe he co-wrote 獣慾 with Kaoru, 暁 with Toshiya, Lotus and Vanitas. I don't think there's much known about Uroboros' individual credits, though he is known to have composed Red Soil.

What the. Well, to be honest, Die's been my favourite composer in DEG for a while and I felt that his writing on ARCHE in particular was a step above what the other guys (particularly Kaoru) came up with. My feelings on this are similar to my initial feelings towards sukekiyo: I'd rather see him do something he loves away from Dir en grey as opposed to just doing Dir en grey and feeling artistically limited. I'll wait to hear more before I decide if the project is for me or not, though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shenmue 3 at the same conference? What the actual fuck xD I've never seen the point in a FFVII remake, and I still don't. I love the original but I've never seen the point in constantly looking backwards and relying on past successes rather than looking forward and innovating. That said, however, my reaction is pretty similar to my FFXHD reaction: I didn't ask for this and if it was my choice then it wouldn't be happening, but if it's happening anyway then ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN! I have a feeling a lot of people will turn against it when they realise how much they're going to change and alter things to make the game work on modern consoles, though. Considering how much hate FFXHD got for simple OST rearrangements and retextures, imagine what complete overhauls in FFVII are going to get? The Shenmue 3 announcement feels completely unreal. I always knew that if that game was ever going to have the slightest hope in hell of being made that it would have to come through crowd-funding or something to that effect, but I'm still utterly stunned.

That video had a whole lot of talking without really saying anything. So far all of the teasers and videos have basically amounted to nothing more than "This project is going to be dark." I did giggle a little at the voiceover saying "Five Guys" repeatedly though.

Yeah, Chara working with toe makes a lot of sense. I think her voice works really well in 'chill' tracks such as this and her collab with TK, so this could turn out to be really cool. Shame about the release date though.

That's a shame. I have mixed feelings towards HOLLOWGRAM as a whole but I am very fond of his vocals, so here's hoping he has a quick recovery.

10 Acts of Service 6 Words of Affirmation 5 Physical Touch 5 Quality Time 4 Receiving Gifts So many people seem to appreciate quality time a lot. For me, too much of that quickly leads me to feel smothered. Anyway, I thought affirmation would be a little higher but on the whole I'm not too surprised with how it turned out.

That awkward moment when your Mother mentions something regarding somebody called ‘Steve’ and you spend the next 2-3 minutes thinking to yourself “Who the fuck is Steve?” only to eventually realise that’s your Dad’s name. Oh well.

Going to breathe some life back into this thread. I'd like to do the same for the Ling thread too but I'm already the last person to post there so eh. Yeah, pretty much this. Though I do feel that Misstopia could be seen as a sort of 'transitional' album for them in that respect. I think tracks like Gilmore guilt more and dysphoria started showing signs of the band becoming a bit more than your average indie outfit. Even though the album as a whole wasn't as consistently good as what came after, I also think that it's noticeably better than what came before it. Anyway, time for an album face-off: Rhapsody in beauty or zeitgeist? Personally it's a really hard choice for me. I think the former is slightly more consistent in terms of song quality, but zeitgeist has some of my favourite individual tracks in their discography (the title track, 鉄の夢). I guess I'd say that Rhapsody slightly edges it for me overall.

After a month of not being able to hear much out of my right ear I can finally hear properly again. Excuse me while I cry with joy.

While I'm very much in the camp that found this release to be underwhelming as a result of its generic songwriting, I'd nevertheless like to distance myself from the "Sigure-clone" comments. Sigure does have a very identifiable style, and I'll concede that it is just human nature to make comparisons when something comes along that takes a lot of cues from something already notable and established, but I nevertheless think that it's somewhat asinine to write off every band that bears some similarities to Sigure purely for that fact. Sigure doesn't have a monopoly on the "three-piece, male&female vocalist, and aggressive instrumentals" sound, nor does TK have a monopoly on high pitched male vocals. For that reason I'd also like to refute the 'Sigure-clone' tag that has been tagged onto HaKU too (I mean seriously, their recent music in particular doesn't even sound anything like Ling). We might as well call every band with two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer "Beatles clones", or go back to the days when every video game with first-person shooting mechanics was labelled a "Doom clone" if we're going by that logic. Anyway, rant aside, none of that changes the fact that the band itself feels like it's lacking something in the songwriting department in my opinion. There's clearly some potential there, but right now it's just potential and nothing else. This band reminds me of groups like きのこ帝国, tricot and fox capture plan in the sense that they all have the right components to make for a good band, but their songwriting just seems to consist of formulaic structures that hold it all back. This being their first release I'm not going to write them off entirely, but I'd really like to see them push the envelope more on subsequent releases or they're going to drop off my radar pretty quickly.

Sorry for double posting, but here's the PV for leviathan. Also, the artwork is now viewable on Amazon.