Dir En Grey

[Isaac Young]

Anyone else a fan of Japanese metal band Dir En Grey?
If you aren't I recommend listening to them

Vocalist - Kyo
Guitarists - Die and Kaoru
Bassist - Toshiya
Drummer - Shinya

[Jeremiah Lopez]

Been a fan since 2001 aprox, saw them live in 2011.

[Jonathan Taylor]

Been one of my favorite bands since high school. I still fuck with their entire discography.
Still waiting on that new album announcement but they want to tour endlessly instead.
Lucky
I had a chance to see them back in 2007/8 but ended up not going because they were playing with a bunch of shitty metalcore bands.

[Alexander Taylor]

They get a lot of hate from most of Sup Forums. I got into them when Withering To Death was out. I like how the band is not afraid to try out a new sound. Vocals are really unique and is what makes the band really stand out.

Other than I have no clue how the band feels about their music. In early interviews they made it seem like they weren't really into the aesthetics of their music. I don't know Japanese to investigate if the band was just some manufactured group or not. I've heard they were like some boy band formed by a member of X Japan.

[William Williams]

Most of those 90s bands were manufactured. I read in an interview that a good chunk of 90's visual kei bands didn't even write their own songs and were the equivalent to western pop singers made by corporate suits.

[Luis Cooper]

In Dir en grey's early Japanese concerts all you would see is nothing but female fans.

I'm not sure if the band is just changing their sound to be more marketable or actually enjoy the music they are making.

[Xavier Perez]

I think so too.
The point with Dir en grey is that they actually had some talent, so they probably needed a way to detatch from their boy band fans and they took from what was going on in the west at the time (nu-metal basically) to scare them off. They where pretty succesfull anyways so you can tell they had some fun with it and they started to like their new direction.
That's when they became interesting.
.
To be fair, Kyo's lyrics and the whole aesthetic that he evoked with them was pretty gory from the beginning, so you can just say they developed their vision further.

[Caleb Campbell]

I think they now play what they originally wanted to play imo but yeah they were pretty much a boy band.
Also those female fans are the reason why they won't come back to the west, especially South America.

[Colton Wilson]

They always had a bit of a metal hue (Byou Shin and Zan) to them and Macabre they were really trying to break free from their poppy sound.
I always wondered how their female fans back in the day felt about their gory and lewd music videos.

[Luis Davis]

I think that style was in for a certain period. Malice Mizer/Gackt could really get dark at times.

youtube.com/watch?v=P-j4z_OesS4

I remember like when MUCC used to dress all goth.
youtube.com/watch?v=FNPmJ2QwzWQ
Nowadays the band doesn't look anything like that.