It's been such a long time since I have found a dark industrial music group that I could really get into. Back in high school there were dozens of great bands like White Zombie, Tool, Ministry and Nine Inch Nails with music that was dark and cool and just plain made you wanna thrash. Grunge and metal rock groups came and went in those days, but eventually would lose my interest. It was those dark industrial rock albums that I kept playing over and over and never tired of. But these last five years, the scene for these kinds of bands has been sadly lacking and have failed to recapture the mood that the industrial music scene had from '89 to '94. Now that old feeling is back with Dir en Grey who are cool behond words. I just can't get enough of this band right now. They're now one of the hottest names in visual rock and are very much into the visual look. So you may think they're a bit odd-looking, but this is one of the coolest dark rock bands I've seen in years. Definately the perfect example of a group that knows the appeal of visual rock and plays off of that appeal heavily.

It's been a quick rise to fame for Dir en Grey. The band was first assembled as an independent visual kei group around 1996 under the name La:Sadies. All of the members of DEG were there except for the bass player Toshiya who was then with another group. At the time they played with Kisaki who after leaving La:Sadies became leader of another indies band Mirage. Around the time that Toshiya joined, the band was reborn under the name Dir en Grey and became reknowned through their live shows as one of the hottest indie visual kei bands throughout all of 1997 and early 1998. Their indie album actually hit the top 35 when it was released. The last indie band to accoplish that was X back in 1988. DEG was so popular in fact that it wasn't long before they caught the attention of none other than X Japan's legendary leader (turned producer) Yoshiki. Seeing their potential to be the leading visual band, Yoshiki signed them as major label artists and personally acted as their producer. The songs were written by DEG as always who had total control of their own music, but rather Yoshiki trained them to be better and helped with song arrangement. Much of this time around early 1998 getting them ready for a major debut was spent in Los Angeles where Yoshiki owns a studio. The five singles that are found on their new album came from these L.A. recording sessions. It's quite apparent that they learned much from this time when listening to their recent music. They still have that stage prescence and ability to make cool fringe music, but their technical ability has improved somewhat and there's a greater sense that these guys are becoming seasoned pros.

Their songs are a mix of various hard music styles of the last decade. Musically they're often compared to early Luna Sea or Rouage, but with a far stronger industrial sound. Most songs have a strong industrial-goth music influence (especially their remixes), yet there's a heavy metal sound in their music as well having been inspired by groups like X Japan. Their songs can be melodic dark rock with songs like Yokan and I'll where the music rocks, but has a catchy melody. But their sound also leans equally towards chaotic metal with psychotic songs like [S] and Zan where there is no comfort in melody, just chaos and anarchy. But if you let yourself get taken away by the insanity of these songs, it's such a liberating experience. Their music is not trying to aim for a mainstream audience and makes no excuses for their psychotic style.

Like most visual bands, Dir en Grey has a name that doesn't seem to make any sense. It's actually made up of a German, a French and an English word. I don't know German and can't figure out what "dir" is supposed to mean in this situation so I couldn't tell you what they intended it to mean. I hear some people say it means "Grey Coin" but I as far as I know, it's not used as such in German so maybe DEG made a mistake? Likewise their lyrics often feature German words which is unusual in Japanese music which tends to borrow from English and sometimes French and Chinese, but rarely anything else. So some of their songs have a German industrial feel to them.

Dir en grey is made up of five very abnormal young men who have such energy together. Let's start with the lead singer Kyo. I'll tell ya, he took me a long while to get used to. The first time I heard DEG, I thought "What increadibly cool music, but what's up with this vocalist? He's so hard on the ears." But the more I listened, the more I could see how perfect he was for Dir en Grey. Kyo's singing is a far cry from the smooth singing of groups like GLAY and L'Arc~en~Ciel. When he's singing normally it's a deep, throaty sound with a very subtle raspy hiss that sounds kind of demonic. But beyond that, what really amazes me is the wide range of ways Kyo uses his voice as his intrument to make sounds that feel like they're upheaved from the very depths of hell. Sometimes he sounds like he's laughing psychotically, sometimes he sounds like a screeching beast. Other times he sounds like he's gagging violently or wispering directly to your mind. Sometimes he even scares the living $#!+ out of me. I wonder how such sounds can come from a human. It's the way he fluctuates between such different vocal tricks and mixes it with his regular singing that it's really interesting to hear. If you're tired of all of those wimpy sounding visual kei vocalists, then you should get a load of Kyo. If you were to ask me to describe Kyo to someone who's never seen or heard him, I'd say that he's like some kind of hybrid between a human, a butterfly and a lizard. I can't explain it better than that. You'll know what I mean once you see him perform or hear him sing a DEG song. The guy's pretty small, but is a ball of fury on stage. Truly a one-of-a-kind performer.

Kaoru is probably the lead out of the two guitarists although it doesn't seem official since they both seem to play lead guitar at times. Kaoru is the goth-type of the group. Really dark and serious-looking with a kind of Reznor-ish aura (Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor is one of his idols I've heard). Kaoru could also be considered the heart of the band since at least half of the songs are written by him (with the other half of song-writing divided up among the rest of the four members) and thus is the most responsible for DEG's signature sound. He's probably the member of the group I like the most...

...but Toshiya would be a close second. Toshiya is the bass player and could be accurately depicted as the pretty boy of the group. I used to think that Toshiya was the leader of Dir en Grey since he sticks out from the rest of the band and has a really huge fan following (espcially girls). Right now he has a sort of androgynous look, but during their indies time, he looked very female (now he seems to leave that up to Shinya). I personally found his karasu-tengu (mythological Japanese crow golin) look to be on of the most interesting of any visual kei look I've seen [see above picture]. As far as being a bass player, he's pretty good I find and is also a great stage performer. But then again, all of the members are good at putting on a show.

Die the other guitarist of the band would most probably be responsible for the German influences in Dir en Grey. Especially apparent when he wears those Gestapo-like leather duds. You could classify him as the big scary one of group (whereas Kaoru is the thin, scary one). In real life he seems like a very nice and approachable guy, but on stage is a different matter. I think his hairstyle is really cool personally. I've never seen hair dyed so blood-red before. He kind of looks like an evil kabuki actor from the future. His songs, such as Schwein no isu and 304 goushitsu, harukana no Sakura are pretty wild tool, but as he's shown with the single Yokan, he can write melodic speed rock as well.

A lot of visual bands have a cross-dressing member. Malice Mizer has Mana, Shazna has Izam, Penicillin has Hakuei and X Japan had Yoshiki. As for Dir en Grey, obviously it's Shinya. The difference to me is that Shinya doesn't really look the part much in my opinion. In many publicity shots like this one, they're able to get away with it by lighting techniques, but most of the time he looks odd in these big elaborate dresses and girly hair since his face is rather man-ish. But musically, I really like his drum style. It comes as no surprise that among Shinya's heroes is Yoshiki. Just like Yoshiki did in his day, he puts on the apperance of a woman, both are wild and crazy drummers and both produce mainstream friendly songs that are very much heavy rock music, but still have a way of appealing to people who don't usually like hard rock. Shinya's songs such as Yurameki and Toriko both have this quality.

Now having been the talk of the J-rock world for the past year, Dir en Grey is a very promising band. When they started off, technically their skills were still maturing and were rather sloppy, but that kind of thing comes with practice. Instead they had something which could not be taught and that's a sense of cool musical style and showmanship done right. Now after Dir en Grey's major debut under Yoshiki's training, they've apparently improved their skills as well. So they seem nearly unstopable at this point. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Mason's Favorite Album GAUZE Dir en Grey is a relatively new band so it wasn't hard to choose my favorite album. Their one indie album MISSA is awesome, but only has 6 songs and therefore can't fairly compeat with GAUZE, their first major album. I haven't stopped listening to this album since I got it. It's really good if you like this kind of music. Kyo's singing has made a remarkable improvement. Before it was a bit sloppy and he had trouble with singing smoothly. But now Kyo's voice is awesome. All of the other members as well show off how much they've improved since their last release. They really gel together now. There seem to be two types of songs on this album. There's the songs co-arranged by DEG with Yoshiki in L.A. and then there's the other tracks that DEG arranged on their own later on. And there's a very distinct difference between them. With the exception of their most hardcore song Zan, the songs from the L.A. sessions approach a more mainstream style. But all the rest are dark underground rock. Either way, all of the songs on this album are excellent. Buy this if you're looking for a really edgy dark J-rock album.

(1999/7/28) 1. gauze ~ mode of adam 2. Schwein no isu 3. Yurameki 4. raison d'etre 5. 304 goushitsu, harukana no Sakura 6. Cage 7. Mitsu to tsuba 8. mazohyst of decadence 9. Yokan 10. Mask 11. Zan 12. Akuro no oka 13. gauze ~ mode of eve

Mason's top 20 favorite Dir en Grey songs