Music Banter - View Single Post - Micshazam's album and song picks
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Old 09-10-2017, 03:36 PM   #31 (permalink)
MicShazam
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Aalborg
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I'm not sure how big a single post can be, so I chose to cut it here and make it a two parter. So...

Uroboros (2008)

Another one of the band's finest albums. It is eclectic, ambitious, challenging , memorable and chuck full of feeling, atmosphere and musicality.
Several songs stand out as some of my all time favorites, but Toguro would be my pick if I had to only choose one song to keep from the album.
A thing to note about this album is that two distinctly different sounding production jobs exist on CD. The original 2008 release is my favorite by far. The clattering drums, booming bass and raw mixing job is hard to get used to, but damn is it magical when it finally clicks.
A remastered version of the album leaves it sounding a lot more conventional and pretty. By no means bad. It actually sounds great, but I much prefer the more unique sounding original version. If you listen to this album and you immediately think "what the hell is up with the production?!", the you're listening to the original 2008 version without a doubt.
10/10 - Just amazing. Every time I listen to this album, I hear something new. There's no other album quite like it.

Dum Spiro Spero (2011)

Oh boy did this album blow my mind! This was my first album of theirs and I was just immediately sold. For a long, long time I considered it the best metal album ever made. It still might be. It's certainly an album that still impresses me whenever I listen to the whole thing. Doing exactly that is pretty challenging, since this album is long, frantic, complex, abrasive and frankly a bit weird. I'm a sucker for Kyo's vocals on this record. He spans god knows how many vocals styles, octaves and moods and I'm thoroughly impressed. Did I mention he's my number one favorite vocalist of all time? Well, he is, and this album is big part of the reason why. Listen to the song Diabolos, then to the song Vanitas. Mike Patton go home (I still love Patton, of course, so relax).
Not even sure what else to say about this. It's quite a journey, but not an album you can really digest in your first sitting. The songs are sort of structurally odd and will probably feel all over the place until you've heard most of them a few times.
10/10 - Simply impressive. One of the very best the band has made.

The Unraveling (2013)

A collection of B-sides and re-recordings of older tracks. What's really interesting about the re-recordings segment of the album is how the old songs have all been re-interpreted to conform to the current musical style of the band, lending them all an air of darkness and musical sophistication that they didn't quite have before. Some of them are better than the originals, all of them are interesting. Together with the generally newer and quite good b-sides, this disc ends up feeling like a very cohesive album, rather than the somewhat scattershot collection of tracks it really is. It basically feels like a legit album in it's own right and I think of it as such, which is why I've included it on this list. Note that the track listing varies quite a bit depending on what region it's from. The EU version (the one I have) seems to contain the most complete set of tracks.
9/10 - Just forget that it's a bunch of re-recordings. It's much more essential than it would seem like.

Arche (2014)

As if I havent't gushed enough about this band already. This album might just be their crowning achievement as far as my opinion is concerned. Kyo's vocals take the center stage this time around and that proves to be a very good thing. I don't know what training regimen he's gone through, but he's basically gained an entire octave of vocal range and a few new singing voices. He's also more on point than ever in terms of nailing notes and vibrato. The album makes great use of his vocals with an impressive array of excellent vocal melodies spread out across the whole album. There's also plenty of aggressive moments on the album, plus a bunch of interestingly idiosyncratic tracks that sound like basically no other band on this earth. Rinkaku is a great example of this. If there's any other band out there that sounds remotely like this, I'd love to hear about them!
I just love this album like few other albums. I've played it countless times over the last few years. More than all other Dir En Grey albums put together, probably. What can I say; fantastic musicianship, vocals, arrangements and production.
10/10 - Listening to all 14 tracks in one go can be intimidating, but I've always just taken very long albums in two sittings, so I don't actually consider that a noteworthy knock against this or any album. It's just a fantastic album and I'm worried that no matter what they do next, it will take me a while not to feel disappointed about it, considering it has to follow this one.

Last edited by MicShazam; 09-11-2017 at 12:22 AM.
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