by saishoe
April 13, 2013 10:19 am · 9
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This certainly isn’t one of Dir en grey’s best performances, but I want to call attention to Shinya here. Why? Because he’s a mess. Granted this was recorded back in December — probably after their hiatus that was a result of Kyo’s throat issues — so maybe they were rusty. But Shinya has been rusty for a while. It’s telling in the song’s opening drum fill, where he doesn’t even bother throwing in the double bass hits, so it ends up sounding like an amateur is sitting behind the kit. I find it curious.

We all know Shinya is a fantastic drummer, but I seriously have to wonder if the heavier style Dir en grey has adopted just isn’t his forte. He doesn’t have the power to drive the sludge forward. In live settings, he’ll go from cracking the hell out of the snare to sounding like he’s applying a feather touch to the toms, all within one drum fill. And his feet sometimes sound like they’re stumbling over each other.

Look, it’s obvious he’s using triggers in the studio. Bring them with you to the stage too, dude. There’s no shame in it. Don’t turn into another Lars Ulrich.

by futurakei
March 15, 2013 03:17 pm · 316
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Happy DEG Friday!

Because the blog needs it (just kidding—well the mood in the shoutbox has been…) (^_^);

Much better new photos of Dir en grey. That yellow b/w one from “The Unraveling” promo was pretty bad, like someone just wanted to use a PS filter for the sake of using it or just random messing with the Exposure settings to make it EXTRA EDGY.

(via dklly)

by fiver-land
March 1, 2013 12:11 am · 3
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dir en grey | the unraveling (2013)

Covers and artist pic for “The Unraveling”.

http://direngrey.co.jp/english/e-theunraveling.html

The cover features original artwork by artist and sculptor Yasuyuki Nishio. This intriguing artwork is the result of the fusion between DIR EN GREY’s expressions to this day with Yasuyuki Nishio’s perspective of the world, bringing forth yet another release that exhibits an overwhelming sense of existence.

The covers give me a Gazette-y feel for some reason.  :\

http://www.barks.jp/news/?id=1000087949

by gofromjrocknyc
February 16, 2013 09:25 pm · 12
·

Saturday, January 11, 2003
My Last Deg Live
Part Two

Now playing:
Onmyouza
(the one with the pentagram on it)

The lights go out and the place explodes, that techno-beat intro they’ve been using starts pulsing, everyone shouts on cue and the two giant screens flanking the stage start flashing images from Deg’s Zepp/Citta shows — Kaoru in his red-and-white harlequin leather, Kyo caked in crusty white flakes, Die headbanging in his shiny blue suit, Kyo again, Toshiya, Die again, Kaoru again, Shinya, Toshiya, Kaoru… — “the whole last year has been leading up to tonight!” they seem to be saying. And the crowd believes.

Then Shinya’s name flickers and dances on the screen, and out waltzes Shinya, and everyone cheers. And Die, and Toshiya, and Kaoru, and finally Kyo — and the cheers quadruple in ferocity. Everyone idolizes Kyo! I wonder what the other guys think, I wonder what i would think in their position… “Well, he’s definitely the crowd favorite, so i guess I’m a little jealous, but fuck it, we split the profits equally, and i’ve got enough girls cosplaying me to keep my spirits up anyhoo…”

Silence.

Kyo: “Dir en grey desu.”

The band beat their instruments noisily. Dun dun dun dun dun dun!!!! The crowd screams.

Shinya hits his hi-hat: 1, 2, 3, 4…

Mr Newsman!

(Or was Mr. Newsman the second song? Damn my rusty innards! Somebody find me a trustworthy online setlist before i embarrass myself!)

They play pretty much the whole Six Ugly E.P, and follow that with the bulk of Kisou. No Gauze at all, no Macabre til later, no indies anything unless the new Byo Shin counts. That’s the first hour or so.

Then it’s the new single, Drain Away, (due out 11/22) and here’s where my memory gets fidgety… but i’m gonna go with my gut and say they stopped here and left the stage. We’ll see what the DVD says when it comes out in a few months.

When they re-emerge, the first lilting piano phrases of Ain’t Afraid to Die drift up — and it’s beautiful… but i find myself hoping they’re gonna pull a “Osaka-jo I’ll” and stop abruptly and Kyo’ll yell Baka! and they’re crash through Zan. But when we hit the chorus of Ain’t and the snow starts falling from the ceiling — it’s gorgeous — i realize that that ain’t gonna happen, so i relax and enjoy the ride. And at the middle break, no one interrupts the silence (eerily!), and Kaoru’s crunchy little guitar flicks sound out before he slides into the solo, and yeah, Ain’t Afraid to Die is a pretty cool song.

Then they storm through Jessica (which, i realized, is far and away my favorite Deg song — it’s happy and it’s heavy, everyone loves to crowdsurf for it… it embodies all that’s cool about a Deg live.)

Then Filth… then an intermission, and when they finally return, KR Cube and Rasetsu Koku and… bang, done.

So that’s the basic skeleton. Here’s the juicy details:

Oops, outta time, see ya tomorrow!

by gofromjrocknyc
February 15, 2013 04:56 pm · 10
·

Saturday, January 11, 2003
My Last Deg Live
Part One

Now playing:
Def Leppard
On Through the Night

Leaving home for the Dir en grey Final at Yokohama Arena, I’m in am inconsolably grouchy mood: i’ve got like half a dozen people clawing at me via email (“Where are you?” / “I need this!” / “I need that!” / “I need your help!” / “I need you!” / “We need to rehearse!” / “Let’s meet today!” / “Let’s meet tonight!” / “Let’s meet tomorrow!” / “Let’s meet now!” / “Call me!” / “Call me!” / “Call me!”) and rather than being thankful for the attention, activity, friendship, all that, i just feel like throwing my keitai into a very deep hole, pouring cement over top of it, then building an apartment complex on top. Leave me alone! “I vant to be alone!” For the first time i can understand what actors and musicians mean when they whine about, “oh, i can’t take the fame and pressure!”

Plus i’m running late and i JUST miss my train so i have to stand around like a moron for 10 precious minutes. I’m scowling at the world.

But I eventually get to Shin-Yokohama, and the restorative powers of 10,000 cute teenage female Kyos and Dies running around kicks in. Bliss! It’s hard to be pissed off when there’s so much cuteness in the world.

As I draw closer to the venue, there’s a giant chant echoing through the streets. I get to the place and there’s thousands of people, including maybe fifty girls in a circle, and each one has to yell the name of her favorite band member — giving them “fighting spirit” — so it’s like “HEY! Toshiya! HEY! Kyo! HEY! Shinya! HEY! Kyo! HEY! Die! HEY! Kyo! HEY! Kaoru! HEY! Kyo!” It’s a very cool melody to hear echoing through the canyons of office buildings as you approach (2.5mb RealVideo) from 50 meters back.

I meet up (888kb RealVideo) with Jang, Karla, and Bunny, recon the situation a bit (the merch tables are closed, the coat check is that-a-way, that line’s for this and this line’s for that), and i go get on line to check my coat — which, at Yokohama Arena, means “wait in line for 15 minutes for a white garbage bag. Pay ¥500 for said bag. Put all you worldly possessions into said bag. Tie a knot on top. Get in another line. Wait. Watch sun set. Watch icicles form on the tip of your nose. Be deafened by loudspeakers announcing DOORS OPEN! DOORS OPEN! Watch people start running maniacally and colliding into each other. Get antsy and nervous because you’re STILL in LINE. Finally hand over your bag to another clerk, who slaps a flimsy piece of tape with a number on it onto the bag, gives you a matching number, then throws the bag onto a giant cart-o-bags like so much trash…”

“Realize it’s freezing (it’s January, the sun is down, i’m in a t-shirt, shivering). Adrenaline kicks in. Accost a frightened staffer (frightened not of me but of the insane girls frantically running to and fro like the North Koreans are invading runforyourlives!!!) and ask where the B1 entrance is.”

“Run in elegant, gazelle-like lopes past troops of slower, turtle-like, platform-booted girls towards the entrance, which turns out to be all the way around the building.”

“Make a face and sign of the devil at a camera guy trucking along the line of people.”

“Hand over your ticket at the door and dash for the ‘standing’ entrance. Show your ticket ten times at each gate til you reach B1. Stop. Breath sigh of relief. Look around in amazement.”

Yoko Ari is huge. It’s an American-style arena — a.k.a. a hockey/basketball kinda place. Only instead of ice, there’s a 3 x 3 block formation on the floor, filled with Deg lookalikes. (Picture the Brady Bunch intro, with the nine squares). My block, B1, is Peter Brady’s square — Die’s side, maybe 20 meters back from the stage. Block A1 (Greg Brady) is in front of us, directly in front of a wall of P.A. gear, and though i’m jealous of their proximity to the stage, i also know they will be instantly deafened, so it’s a fair trade.

A2 is the Brady dad, and the place where everyone wants to be, right up in front of Kyo. But still, that section was several few meters back from the stage — there’s giant camera rigs rolling around in front of the stage. And there’s not one but THREE cranes swooping around like seagulls plucking fish out of the ocean, practicing various audience shots. And half a dozen big-ass cameras are perched around the room, like the ones you see on a TV set, the ones that look like they’re trying to be two-man guns on the deck of a battleship. And there’s another half dozen guys ducking around like troops in trenches, with either big news-reporter cameras on their backs or smaller digital handicams. Today is one hell of a big production.

Looking at all the hardware and manpower, i begin to feel nervous for the band. Because it’s like, imagine someone telling you, “Ok, so all the money you made touring last year? We’re gonna spend it all in one day, to make a DVD. So if one of you sucks on that day — if you get a cold, or sleep poorly the night before, or your grandma dies, or you eat some bad sushi, or if you’re just plain nervous and don’t perform at 110% — then the DVD will suck and you’ll have flushed a year’s worth of earnings for you and your bandmates down the toilet.”

So i feel not just excited, but nervous as well, as block B1 gradually begins to fill up with maybe 200 people total, a few guys but mostly girls… a few just wearing short schoolgirl skirts and nothing else, except for gauze wrapped around their chests. Now THAT is a cool fucking fashion statement. [me: big smile, superhappy nodding.]

From the point of view of the cameramen on the cranes, the whole scene must look like frost on windowpanes, with all the fans collecting in the corners closest to the stage, trying to get as close to front-and-center as humanly possible. The whole back half of each block is empty spare a few lazy people leaning against the back railings. But the forward railings though… crunch!

As 6pm rapidly approaches, Deg’s manager, a familiar face to all of us by now, comes out on stage — in a suit! — and goes on for 10 minutes about “don’t hurt yourselves, don’t hurt anyone else, and you see these police lights rigged up all over the place?” <rotating red lights start to spin and flash> “If those are activated,THE BAND STOPS PLAYING.”

And then out go the lights and up go the screams…

END OF PART ONE

by saishoe
December 29, 2012 08:23 am · 11
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“kokoooooro waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa… kiiizzuuutsuuuuiteeeeee”

Kyo has pretty much always sounded like shit.

by saishoe
December 23, 2012 10:24 pm · 1
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luna sea | ra-se-n (live 2007)

This is my favorite Luna Sea song. 

It’s from Style, my favorite Luna Sea album.

Shine sucks, okay?

by gofromjrocknyc
December 21, 2012 09:16 pm · 5
·

dir en grey | rinkaku (2012)

Does the new Dir en grey single suck? Mostly. But not completely. 

“Rinkaku” serves up the now-standard headache-inducing detuned guitars that Deg have embraced lately, plus irritating, doubled, falsetto vocals for the chorus.

“Kiri to Mayu” is super-uber-ultra death-metalized beyond recognition. 

And the “Rinkaku” remix that closes out the single is mellow new age tripe with the barest instrumentation (a very little bit of distant drums, angelic keyboard, some clean and droning guitar).   

So I guess it ~is~ completely sucky, I stand corrected.

:( 

by saishoe
December 21, 2012 07:28 pm · 16
·

dir en grey | rinkaku (2012)

“Rinkaku” is a natural evolution of the sound Dir en grey has been exploring over the past five years or so: equal parts progressive, heavy, and melodic. It opens with sparse piano notes, cleanly picked guitar, and some airy atmospherics before the thick distortion comes in. The densely layered section after that is almost noisy, but multiple listens reveal it to be meticulously crafted, almost symphonic in a way. Kyo mostly sings in his higher register here — approaching an operatic tone on occasion — but I get the sense that he’s comfortable with it. The chorus is as sweeping and grandiose as Dir en grey choruses come, with Shinya masterfully attacking the toms in his recognizable, off-kilter style. The solo section is the show stealer; a dual harmony piece played over a flamenco-esque riff that gradually builds as Shinya throws out maniacal drum fills one after another. It conjures up memories of Dir en grey’s early days, sounding almost like it was lifted from 2001. I love that Kaoru and Die appear to be stepping up their game after several years of just chugging it out, as “Rinkaku” offers a wide variety of riffs that intertwine and play with each other. The outro seemed off to me at first, as it’s sinister tone seemed incongruous with the rest of the song. But the lyrics here — onisan kochira te no naru hou e* / oni o tsukamae watashi to kawa — (translation: demon, come and catch me, can you hear me clapping? / when I catch the demon, we’ll switch) serve the sudden, disturbing tone perfectly. And then there’s a sudden ending much like the one in “Lotus”.

Then we have another one of Dir en grey’s self-covers. This time it’s “Kiri to Mayu” from 1997’s Missa. Instead of playing it straight with a few modifications here and there like in their remakes of “Obscure” and “Undecided”, we have a total deconstruction like what they did with “Hydra” and “Tsumi to Batsu”. With those two, though, there were at least hints of the original songs in there. I’m hard pressed to find anything familiar in this rendition of “Kiri to Mayu”. The solo threw me for a loop, sounding like something lifted from a Carcass song. It’s an interesting take on an old song. It was mildly offensive upon first listen, but having taken it in repeatedly it’s grown on me. I just try not to squeeze any of the source material out of it.

The final track is a remix of “Rinkaku” from Akira Yamaoka. Anyone familiar with his work as composer for the Silent Hill video game series will know his handiwork without even reading the liner notes; this is unmistakably Yamaoka. Dir en grey have dabbled in remixes in the past and they’ve mostly been weird abominations that sound more like jokes than anything else, but Yamaoka has created the band’s best remix by far. Or by default depending on how you look at it. It’s not Yamaoka’s best work, but he serves the song well and I would be fine with Dir en grey employing him for future remixes. Anything to keep the band themselves from doing the remixing. Please.

So, I like it. But then Dir en grey are now notorious for being slow with new releases, so my enthusiasm could stem from being starved for new material.

Dir en grey: forever dangling that carrot in front of the fans.

*These are the exact same lyrics that open “KR Cube” from the Macabre album. They reference a tag-based game where the person that is ”it” is blindfolded and must find everyone by the sounds of their clapping. The person who is “it” is referred to as the “demon” (oni).

by saishoe
December 21, 2012 08:41 am · 7
·

Not that I have any idea what’s being said here (I think they’re giving their influences?), but I’m mostly amazed and disturbed at how normal Kyo is. And at how Shinya can’t talk without touching his face and despite being the feminine one in the band, he isn’t that pretty.

And Kyo’s haircut. The hell?

by fiver-land
December 7, 2012 09:15 am · 75
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dir en grey | rinkaku (radio edit) (2012)

Not the full song.

by saishoe
December 4, 2012 05:44 pm · 12
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dir en grey | rinkaku teaser clip (2012)

There’s not much to go on here, but we can tell that Kyo has probably ignored all the advice he got from his doctor in regards to caring for his voice. Shinya sounds a lot more comfortable within the context of less angry and jackhammer-y drumming, too.

Remember, a re-imagining of “Kiri to Mayu” from Missa is also going to be on this single. I suspect it will be a total deconstruction!

Also! Pencil sketch art style looks like an homage to a-ha’s “Take On Me”! I can only hope the full PV features Kyo entering a drawing and chasing the rest of the band through a winding series if entrail-littered corridors! A brotherly love story for the ages!