Dir en grey

[nekkichi 6043]

1 hour ago, Saishu said:

Worst thing about being a DEG fan that’s a grown ass man: being lumped in with the fucking weirdos that squee over everything from new haircuts to some subtle facial tics Kyo makes during an interview. Makes me wonder if any of them are actually even listening to the music. 

you always have an option of deleting your account and enjoying the band solitarily, like a serious heterosexual male should.

[Saishu 1589]

2 hours ago, blacktooth said:

But that's my favorite thing about their shows. I always go in thinking I'm going to hate it but it's somehow made so much better by the fact that I feel hilariously out of place, yet we're all watching the same five Japanese men slowly trudge through their midlife crises on stage. It's strangely cathartic.

There is some truth to this. I roll my eyes and laugh pretty hard when I hear Americans shouting “ANKORE!!!” 

 

Another favorite: when Kyo went thru that phase where he changed lyrics in The Final. In Japanese lives you would see fans holding up one finger and then two during the “hitotsu futatsu” line. Well he changed that part, and a small group of people anticipated the old lyrics and held their fingers up, but Kyo left them hanging. 

 

2 hours ago, nekkichi said:

you always have an option of deleting your account and enjoying the band solitarily, like a serious heterosexual male should.

Did you just assume my sexuality and gender?!?!

[Seelentau 884]

15 minutes ago, nekkichi said:

you always have an option of deleting your account and enjoying the band solitarily, like a serious heterosexual male should.

 

I don't think that's his point, tho.

There's a difference in being interested in a band bc of their members and being interested in a band bc of their music.

You can be both, of course, but if your interest in the members overshadows your interest in the music to the point that you literally think you're the vocalist's fiancee, know what they're feeling or read each and every tanuki post about them, it's just weird and obsessive.

The people who are like that are also more than often the ones that scream "Kyo-sama" or "Die-chan" or whatever at their concerts, at any possible point, especially during moments where the crowd is supposed to be quiet (in Rinkaku, for example).

It's just agitating as hell.

 

10 minutes ago, Saishu said:

There is some truth to this. I roll my eyes and laugh pretty hard when I hear Americans shouting “ANKORE!!!”

 

Same for the Germans. Especially since it's pronounced "anko~ru". :^)

[nekkichi 6043]

20 minutes ago, Seelentau said:

You can be both, of course, but if your interest in the members overshadows your interest in the music to the point that you literally think you're the vocalist's fiancee

you know that one direction fandom does this to a worse, creepier extent with 40 y.o. + het ladies thirsting over some drug addicted twinks in their 20s in exactly the same ways as visual kei fandom at large

don't be surprised when you run into the types of stans that sustain visual/ex-visual kei acts.

 

I won't even mention k-p*p fandom because the demons are too near 

Edited January 19, 2018 by nekkichi

[Seelentau 884]

Yes, I know, doesn't make it any better. Just proves that extremism about anything is never good.

[Tokage 5930]

all im getting from this is the implication that apparently non-het people are incapable of enjoying music solitarily

[blacktooth 227]

I don't even enjoy music in the first place.

[Tokage 5930]

i only follow dir en grey for the funny album covers

[Saishu 1589]

I just stick around to see if Shinya’s drumming is going to get any worse. He’s going to be the Japanese Lars Ulrich in another ten years. 

[rekzer 599]

[LIDL 692]

Some of y'all here seems to be bipolar af

 

[Saishu 1589]

I listen to visual kei OF COURSE THERES SOMETHING MENTALLY OFF 

[suji 8317]

yall talk about this band to DEATH, don't add any drama to it thx xoxo

[geist 227]

And here I miss the simple days of admiring Kyo’s boner poking through his track pants...

 

We all know that non-Japanese female VK fans are the worst, so let’s implement male-only lives again! That’ll eliminate most of the problems tbh

[Saishu 1589]

35 minutes ago, suji said:

yall talk about this band to DEATH, don't add any drama to it thx xoxo

Seriously. Look how much this thread blew up all because they re-released a bunch of shit we’ve been listening to for years already. 

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

I might be late to the party but the worst part about the dir en grey fandom is people who take this band so damn serious and follow them acting like it's a religious cult or something. Chill the fuck out. Who gives a rats ass if some 15 year old girl screams Kyo-chan or likes the band because she likes the members? In the end, if the western fanbase would only consist of people who think they're better than every other fan then the band wouldn't tour overseas, so these fangirls that y'all hate pay their bills in the end. I'm sure they're more appreciative of them than someone who buys a demo tape for 20,000 yen and generates zero cash to the actual members.

[Seelentau 884]

Slow day in the MH kingdom lul

[Saishu 1589]

I really wonder if the screaming 15 year olds are the ones paying the band’s bills. 

 

VK/jrock fandom is fucking weird. There’s no getting around it. 

[Pretsy 1343]

We belong to this fandom though?

 

This fandom talk is all moot anyway, so let's move on and discuss something else than western sugar mamas, heterosexuals, homosexuals, apachesexuals or people legitimately enjoying Bataar. 

 

Which features do you guys consider as something that makes Dir en grey the band you'd recognize musically right away? Is it something more than just Kyo or are these features perhaps Die's tremolos, Shinya's playing style, or Toshiya's slapping?

 

I could barely name things from their latest output that make their sound distinguishable, but WtD, TMOAB and UROBOROS had a lot of things in common imho. 

 

[Saishu 1589]

I know. I’m not saying I’m not just as weird. Trust me, I know. 

 

But honestly, I still hear a lot of distinguishing characteristics of DEG in current stuff. Just listen to Hageshisa... only Die would throw a jangly funk lick in the chorus, or in a song like that period. I also felt like the pre-chorus in Un deux summer up Kaoru and Die’s roles in the band. Kaoru is in the left chugging away while Die is on the right doing the melodic jangly stuff. 

 

As discussed before, the only thing lately that hides what makes DEG stand out is their production choices. They used to make great, dynamic ballads, but now they sound just as loud and crunchy as the heavy stuff. 

[blacktooth 227]

For me it used to be that chorus/flange/reverbed effect Kaoru and Die used to do all the time, but now it's chugging and perforated ear drums.

 

Oh and I guess Kyo's voice is pretty unique.

[Nowhere Girl 189]

2 hours ago, blacktooth said:

For me it used to be that chorus/flange/reverbed effect Kaoru and Die used to do all the time

You mean like in egnirys cimredopyh +) an injection? Yeah, I miss that, too.

 

It'd be cool to see them make some more fun songs. There used to be a ton of them, and now everything's mostly dour; all doom and gloom. When they play that old material, you can see they love it onstage because they're smiling and having a blast. I question whether the band even enjoys the newer songs sometimes, especially stuff from DSS where they look like they're bored to tears in the live shows.

 

There have been some exceptions recently like Chain Repulsion and Cause of fickleness. Hopefully this will continue in the future.

[Pretsy 1343]

Which is also the reason why I asked about distinguishing characteristics that may also affect their direction per each album. In the end they did accept that their first steps up until six Ugly and Vulgar had no specific direction or some kind of leverage that made them different, recognizable from the rest at that time.

 

If I never knew about Dir en grey but had a certain degree of familiarity with other J-rock acts at that time, I would not be able to associate most of the early 2000s Diru tunes with the band at all. Just one big medley of styles without any specific features that make them "THE Diru" as we know them today. 

 

Which ONE of the Diru songs would you show to your friend, if you had to explain at least a bit about their trademark sound? Every act, including the most experimental bands, have a batch of songs that comprise most of their distinguishable features. Would "Doukoku to Sarinu" suffice? "Magayasou"? "Akatsuki"? Could those songs be the most Dir En Grey-iest tracks off their repertoire?

 

 

[Seelentau 884]

I would probably use MACABRE (the song), it has almost all the different styles they used over the years.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Seelentau

[Nowhere Girl 189]

24 minutes ago, Alroy said:

If I never knew about Dir en grey but had a certain degree of familiarity with other J-rock acts at that time, I would not be able to associate most of the early 2000s Diru tunes with the band at all. Just one big medley of styles without any specific features that make them "THE Diru" as we know them today.

And yet, many still think that DEG's best work is in those first few albums. I would actually argue that they found their voice by MACABRE (the album).

 

As for a song I'd share, that'd be VINUSHKA. It moves from fragile to epic to full hardc0r3 br0074l.

 

Not a fan of Akatsuki, myself. The demo version is fantastic. Album version, not so much.