Experience Dir en Grey

Live this September, Seattle and Portland get to experience Dir en Grey.

A quick aside before that…

I’m not like most of my friends. Though I grew up with hip hop and gansta rap in school, I was bombarded by jazz, blues and rock & roll from my family. Once High School was coming to an end I found myself listening to music in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese; really from anywhere I could find an interesting rhythm or beat. The vocalists and stage presence tended to garner the most of my attention. I found four bands from Japan that have really stuck to me since: Malice Mizer, hide (of X Japan fame), Buck-Tick, and Dir en Grey.

Malice Mizer is more of a goth rock vibe. They’ve created some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Mana is likely one of the more attractive men you will ever see. He’s like some sort of live porcelain doll; he never spoke and always appeared as a girl. Malice Mizer and Buck-Tick have been given credit for helping or even starting the Visual Kei movement (though X Japan is given credit for that too at times). Visual Kei has no real equal in Western Music. The closest description I can give you is a cross between Glam Rock and Gwar and everything in between. Buck-Tick is my all time favorite rock band. They were formed practically the day I was born and have been together since. I really could go on for days, skimming through my complete catalog; showing their evolutionary progress. Hide was the most eccentric member of X Japan; the fathers of Japanese Rock & Roll. When X split they all still contributed to music greatly. Hide brought out ska, rock, punk, and influenced so much of Japanese music during his short life. The most persistent of those four bands has been Dir en Grey (DEG).

DEG started off as Visual Kei and evolved into a more familiar Western shape. Their first album Gauze was produced by Yoshiki (again of X Japan fame) and from there their popularity soared. Macabre was the first album of theirs I bought. The title track is about abortion and the video plays like something out of Rosemary’s Baby. DEG is striking as is the point of Visual Kei. There next album Kisou is a change from the last. My favorite song from that, Bottom of the Death Valley; is about drowning in the trunk of a car at the bottom of the sea (with other metaphors). After Kisou DEG changes again. They release an EP called Six Ugly. The six songs are more punk rock. To some this is startling, it isn’t like Missa, Gauze, Macabre or even so much Kisou. Then they release Vulgar. My favorite Metal album to date. They tone it down a bit with Withering to Death than go into overdrive with Marrow of a Bone and then change again with their latest album Uroboros. Uroboros is more along the lines of melodic metal.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, than motion pictures will speak even more adequately: