Die Zeit | „Chihiros Reise ins Zauberland“: Chihiros Reise
https://www.zeit.de/2025/22/chihiros-reise-ins-zauberland-kinderfilm-anime-studio-ghibli
#Paywalled #Anime #Ghibli #DirEnGrey #Chihiro #ChihirosReise #ChihirosReiseInsZauberland #SailorMoon #美少女戦士セーラームーン #千と千尋の神隠し
https://www.wacoca.com/media/304800/ DIR EN GREY、7月より全国ツアー”TOUR25 THE MORTAL CHAPTER 0″開催決定！ #DIRENGREY #music #ディルアングレイ #音楽
Hier muss doch irgendwo Ausgang stehen.
Vielleicht hilft ja #direngrey
https://ymusicapp.com/watch?v=1kTi3pH6vDk
Dir en Grey faszinieren mit ihrer energiegeladenen „WHO IS THIS HELL FOR?“ Tour durch Japan. Es folgen internationale Auftritte 2025. 🎸#DirEnGrey #TOUR24 #JRock
Stuck in the Filter: July 2024’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
After the tight lineup we cobbled together for June, July provided a similarly lean yield for our team to offer the masses. It appears that my minions responsible for scraping the channels clean have become far too efficient! That said, what we did find might be our most valuable haul yet this year.
And so, we persist. Always dedicated to bringing you the not-quite-best-but-also-still-good two months ago or so had to offer, we scour for little nuggets worth inspecting. What more could an Angry Metal Fan ask for?
Kenstrosity’s Cataclysmic Critters
A Wake in Providence // I Write to You, My Darling Decay [July 26th, 2024 – Unique Leader Records]
Staten Island symphonic deathcore collective A Wake in Providence dropped a considerable payload back in 2022 entitled Eternity. Opulent and catastrophically heavy, Eternity bathed me in rich orchestration and legitimate riffs instead of stereotypical breakdowns and unending single-chord chugfests. Needless to say, I was enamored. Follow-up I Write to You, Darling Decay represents a deathcore equivalent to Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Opera, focusing more on lyrical storytelling and implementing vocal diversification as a vehicle for character development. Perhaps not quite as sophisticated— since those meatheaded, muscular chugs of the deathcore world still crop up here and there—I Write to You still offers major hooks and delectable detailing to keep my interest piqued through a full hour of new material (“Mournful Benediction,” “Agonofinis,” title track, “The Unbound,” and “Pareidolia”). Aside from those superficial qualities, I Write to You’s real selling point is album cohesion and overall fit and finish. Like a babbling brook across the smoothest bed of sand and soil, this record flows with a fluidity rarified in the genre (check out the awesome three-song transition between “Agonofris” and “In Whispers”). Combine that with a textured and multifaceted musical progression through a grief-stricken storyline, and you have a winning formula for an engaging record that earns its epic sound.
Cell // Shattering the Rapture of the Primordial Abyss [July 12th, 2024 – Self Release]
I first encountered Canadian black metallers Cell on a little Bandcamp stroll years ago, followed shortly by a breezy and brutal beach set just before 2020’s 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise. Nobody I knew had heard of them then, but I knew they had chops. With third album Shattering the Rapture of the Primordial Abyss, they’ve proven me right and then some. Combining icy Immortalisms with the chunky buzz of old school death, major bangers “Waking of the Blazing Night,” “The Plight of Council Skaljdrum,” “Drink the Sun,” “Unification of the Last Alliance,” and “Return of Tranquility through the Desolation of Truth” represent the sharpest, hookiest, and heaviest material Cell’s put down to date. Fury and fire characterize every riff, lead, and blast on Shattering the Rapture, but it’s the uncanny sense of groove that suddenly springs from Cell’s cells that takes this record within a stone’s throw of greatness. Tightening up the overlong fragments that bloat otherwise solid tracks like “Serenity in Darkness… Evermore” and closer “Carnage from the Sky” would go along way to throwing that stone past that threshold. Until then, rest assured that Rapture of the Primordial Abyss is a ripper, worthy of your time and your spine.
Dehumanaut // Of Nightmares and Vice [July 17th, 2024 – Self Release]
Just like Cell, Dehumanaut entered my rotation thanks to a serendipitous stroll through the Bandcamp ticker. Boasting a unique blend of death metal, thrash, and bluesy bar-crawl hard rock, these Brits offer something novel to the extreme metal catalog. With sophomore effort, Of Nightmares and Vice, Dehumanaut double down on the death and blues, evoking Entombed‘s Wolverine Blues in spirit as much as in execution. With swinging tracks like “Shred this Reality,” “A Perilous Path,” “Battle Weary,” “Epiphanies,” and “Black City” deftly stepping between deathly riffs and danceable grooves, thrashier cuts such as “Reject the Knife,” “Nexus of Decline” and “A Truth Most Foul,” and “It Has a Name” feel even speedier and more rabid than usual. Aside from affording Of Nightmares and Vice oodles of dynamics in songwriting, this multifaceted and structured approach to genre-bending showcases Dehumanaut’s versatility as musicians. Everything they attempt here feels effortless and reflexive, making every transition between measure and phrase not just purposeful but also buttery-smooth (“Battle Weary”). If it weren’t for a bit of bloat across the board, oddly muffled mixing, and somewhat flat death metal growls, Of Nightmares and Vice would be in play among my top records of July. Even still, it comes close!
Saunders’ Salacious Slams
Cephalotripsy // Epigenetic Neurogenesis [July 13th, 2024 – Self-Release ]
Looking for something so stupidly heavy and obnoxiously brutal that listening could kill brain cells and incite a rampage? California’s underground warriors Cephalotripsy have you covered on long-awaited sophomore album, and follow-up to 2007’s cult and apparently well received debut, Uterovaginal Insertion of Extirpated Anomalies. Unfamiliar with their previous output, I stumbled across this latest endeavor through a trusted recommendation, fulfilling my fix for devastatingly brutal slam death. Epigenetic Neurogenesis takes no prisoners and delivers blow after blow of steamrolling, pugnacious brutal death. Brimming with inhuman, sewer dwelling vocal eruptions of Angel Ochoa (Abominable Putridity), hammering percussion, and an onslaught of ridiculously thick, heavy riffs, exhibiting the sharp, technical skills of veteran brutal death axe wielder and long-term member Andrés Guzman. The newer members form a pummeling rhythm section driving the guttural swarm. Weighing in at a tight and efficient 32 minutes, the beatdown is relentless, though concise enough to avoid an early burn out. The songwriting doesn’t reinvent the brutal slam death wheel. However, the tight execution, dynamic tempo shifts, and memorable riffcraft elevates the material. Viscous, cranium crushing riffs and utterly devastating slams frequently deployed adds further grunt, immense weight and memorability on a set of killer tunes, including extra chunky gems “Alpha Terrestrial Polymorph,” ” Lo Tech Non Entity,” and “Excision of Self.” Nasty, crushing stuff.
Dear Hollow’s Disturbing Dump
Silvaplana // Sils Maria | Limbs of Dionysus [July 17th, 2024 – Self-Release]
Although shrouded in mystery, Silvaplana is a solo project of Alex DeMaria of Yellow Eyes and Anicon. Blackened punishment paired with atmosphere have long been the aim, but Silvaplana’s duel release finds duality: both take influence from parent releases separately. Sils Maria takes on a hyper-atmospheric, classically influenced, and dark ambient approach across six tracks and forty-one minutes, blackened blastbeats and distant shrieks hidden behind thick swaths of ambiance, organ, and piano, a relatively gentle affair that recalls the wild yet placid sounds of Yellow Eyes’ latest. Meanwhile, the two-track and also forty-one minutes of Limbs of Dionysus feeds a ritualistic fire with a scathingly raw black attack, reverb-laden growls, moans, and shrieks colliding with relentless tremolo that continuously scale minor and diminished frostbitten mountaintops with reckless abandon. Both seem entirely disparate in context to one another, but smartly they are held together by the thin thread of melodic motifs. The organ that populates Sils Maria’s tracks “II,” “IV” and “VI” are recalled in the closing remarks of “I” in Limbs of Dionysus; the ominous organ trills of the former’s “III” are warped into a blackened beast in the latter’s “II.” As Limbs of Dionysus concludes, the feedback-laden plucking feeds right into the morphing plucking populating the beginning of Sils Maria – an ouroboros of the blackened arts. Silvaplana exists on both self-indulgent and decadent ends of the blackened spectrum with Sils Maria and Limbs of Dionysus, both baffling and tantalizing in their rawness and ambiance, and otherworldly in their collaboration.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Inconspicuous Import
Quasidiploid // Deconstruction [July 1st, 2024 – Amputated Vein Records]
Do you see that cover art? Yes, it’s some sort of countess of the undead summoning the skull-kind with a horn. Would you believe then that one of the features throughout Deconstruction is its inclusion of a female trumpet player to break up the tension of a relentless, brutal technical death metal? Oh yeah, she’s also the vocalist and possesses a vicious guttural bark, shrill and penetrating squeals and hisses (the vocal intro on “Disasters and Infection Routes” is a straight Dir en grey moment), and a higher register manic collapse that features at key moments. That’s all to say that the cover lands a bit on the nose, but, in turn, the carnival crazed whiplash of Quasidiploid swings between brutal Cryptopsy riff smashing, Pat Martino jazz guitar pleasantries, Necrophagist sweep punishing, and Chuck Mangione brass crooning (“Overture”)—unhinged, unbothered, and anything but accessible. I would call it too unpolished, as Deconstruction strikes with a bit of a demo quality. But sometimes we have to ask ourselves whether what we hear is a questionably processed demo or an intentionally shredded Japanese master? In any case virtuosity reigns as provably human skin slammer Vomiken pushes a bass-loaded kick and a high-crunch kit to abusive and enthralling accelerations only to crash in on the spurt of a forlorn trumpet or flourish of a prancing guitar line (“Brutal Strafing,” “Massacre Fantasy”). Guitar lines weave about traditionally nimble sweeps to tricky meter riff crushes on a dime (“Melodies of Distorted Time and Space,” “Disasters…”). Tonal identities flip between Nile-istic, snaking melodies, flippant yet tasteful guitar heroics, and propulsive rhythm blasts whose only break is the close of a song. The definition of something olde, new, borrowed, and blue, Quasidiploid has come from far left field to provide a classics-inspired but funky fresh version of an extreme genre that thrives exactly on this kind of weird—a curiosity now, but with all the makings of something truly explosive to come.
Mark Z.’s Musings
200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures [June 28th, 2024 – Metal Blade Records]
Following a rapid rise to fame during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio death metal troupe 200 Stab Wounds thrust their Slave to the Scalpel debut onto the masses in 2021. While I was about as mixed on that one as Felagund was, their second album Manual Manic Procedures has proven these wounds cut far deeper than originally thought. The massive beefy chugs that the band have become known for are still here in full force, but now they’re paired with sharper hooks and a heightened sense of maturity. On Procedures, you’ll hear acoustic plucking, immense Bolt Thower riffing, grooves that will blow your guts out, and even some melodic death metal influence—and that’s just on the first song. The band also know when to give you a breather, be it a well-placed atmospheric instrumental (“Led to the Chamber / Liquefied”) or an extended ride on a great groovy riff (“Defiled Gestation”). With a monstrous guitar tone, plenty of killer moments, and a track flow that’s smoother than liquefied human remains sliding off a kitchen counter, these Cleveland boys have given us a record that truly feels like modern death metal coming into its own.
#200StabWounds #2024 #AWakeInProvidence #AbominablePutridity #AmericanMetal #AmputatedVeinRecords #Anicon #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #BluesRock #BoltThrower #BrutalDeathMetal #CanadianMetal #Cell #Cephalotripsy #ChuckMangione #Cryptopsy #DeathMetal #Deathcore #Deconstruction #Dehumanaut #DirEnGrey #Entombed #EpigeneticNeurogenesis #FleshgodApocalypse #HardRock #IWriteToYouMyDarlingDecay #Immortal #JapaneseMetal #Jul24 #LimbsOfDionysus #ManualManicProcedures #MelodicDeathMetal #MetalBladeRecords #Necrophagist #Nile #OfNightmaresAndVice #PatMartino #Quasiploid #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #ShatteringTheRaptureOfThePrimordialAbyss #SilsMaria #Silvaplana #Slam #StuckInTheFilter #SymphonicDeathMetal #SymphonicDeathcore #SymphonicMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #ThrashMetal #UKMetal #UniqueLeaderRecords #YellowEyes
Aujourd'hui c'est télétravail, réunion avec mes collègues pour définir le planning.
Au programme, écrire à tous les clients en retard sur leurs envois de documents statistiques et écouter #DirEnGrey à fond.
DIR EN GREY
“TOUR24 PSYCHONNECT”
2024.06.27【東京都】LINE CUBE SHIBUYA
🔻セットリスト
https://ameblo.jp/the-unwavering-m1nd/entry-12857637776.html
渋谷ーー！今日は届いてんぞ！
できるじゃねぇか 糞がっ！
AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö: Save This Utility – 亡失 Deprivation
By Dolphin Whisperer
“AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö” is a time-honored tradition to showcase the most underground of the underground—the unsigned and unpromoted. This collective review treatment continues to exist to unite our writers in boot or bolster of the bands who remind us that, for better or worse, the metal underground exists as an important part of the global metal scene. The Rodeö rides on.”
New year, same ol’ Rodeö! As the inaugural unknown-spankin’ event of 2024, we shall take a moment to recognize the bands who put up the best fight in this unforgiving clown show. Texas doomsters Slumbering Sun may not have snagged first, but they did end up listing, a rare honor in these halls! However, despite that one enthusiastic supporter, Greek proglodytes Conspiracy of Zero stole the show with higher consistency in their Quo Vadis meets Cynic with a regional flair outing Ahthos Arouris. Haven’t checked it yet? Lucky you, now’s as good a time as ever!
But for our main course today, we have something different—something admittedly far more weird and avant-garde leaning. Perhaps if you’re familiar with the brand of brutal prog interwoven with experimental death metal and tasteful lounge jazz passages that unheralded Japanese act 五人一首 [Gonin-ish] pushes, you might feel a little at home with SAVE THIS UTILITY. This fledgling Kyoto-based troupe, though, seems to have their own inspirations, with a bassist whose seven-string prowess explores dutifully the realm of poppy Idol music and a guitarist who moonlights as a pumping rawstyle DJ. You might be wondering what this all adds up to in the context of a website that allegedly reviews metal. Well, read on if you dare. 亡失 Deprivation might just surprise you. – Dolphin Whisperer
SAVE THIS UTILITY // 亡失 Deprivation [February 5th, 2024]
El Cuervo: Save This Utility is about what you would expect from a Japanese band self-describing as avant-garde: weird as fuck. Deprivation pulls together unusual influences into an unexpected and unfamiliar release. While the unpredictable song structures and varying time signatures are pure prog, the guitar leads have a crunch and angularity drawn from mathcore. Likewise, the deathly roars lend things an extremer metal fringe, while the production has a clinical edge that tonally (if not musically) recalls industrial. And plenty of piano and synths paper over the cracks of the frantic song-writing. Inventive musical ideas are scattered throughout but the spectrum of sounds amalgamated is too wide for a cohesive, purposeful release; even for a novelty EP that only runs for a shade over thirty minutes. Similarly, those individual moments are fleeting and not constructed into compelling songs. As inventive and unexpected as everything is, I’m not left with an over-arching sense of the substance of this release. Can I recall a particular track? A particular riff? A particular melody? A particular emotion (other than bafflement)? The answer to each is no. Deprivation prizes style over substance, which leaves little to compel repeated listens. It does a lot, but doesn’t say a lot. 1.5/5.0
GardensTale: I tried, okay? I really, really tried. Iceberg waxed lyrically about this utterly confounding blob of free form jazz death so much, I felt like there had to be something there. I clawed my way through spin after spin of clashing melodies, weird throaty shouting, riffs going the wrong way, piano flourishes in random spots, repetition where you don’t expect it, the repetition stopping when you expect it to go on, a variety of synthy sounds inserted sideways and unlubed, and I can now say at my most confident that this really is not for me. I have an upper limit of jazz, and this is too much jazz. I recognize the talent of the musicians, and there is a certain dissonant allure to the weird bendy noises coming out of my speakers. But I can’t say I enjoy listening to the whole thing in one sitting. This is one you’re going to have to try for yourself; my score and my recommendation are going to be as useless as a review of the taste of grass, and only you can decide whether you’re a herbivore or not. 2.5/5.0
Dolphin Whisperer: Every now and then you stumble upon a piece of music that is as original as it also is a smart integration of various influences. 亡失 Deprivation somewhat mystified me at first but as I continued to dig through its layers of rich piano and synth melodies, understated but hypnotic rhythms, frolicking and popping bass runs, and marathon harmonic resolutions, I started to understand SAVE THIS UTILITY as the music-lovers they likely are. The peaceful yet powerful crescendo builds that these longer-form songs prance toward remind my ears of various Japanese math rock/post rock hybrid groups, like jizue or mouse on the keys. But also the kind of oscillating synth work from resonant patches, that imitate sounds similar to a vibraphone or a Rhodes piano, cross about soaring and searing guitar leads in a big prog Gonin-ish fashion. Even further these qualities intensify as SAVE THIS UTILITY ascends to clashing, warbling vocal harmonies that burst against bright instrumental peaks in an epic, whimsical tryst. On their previous debut full-length, some of these builds arose in a more melodeath-like fashion, with the harsh-clean trades feeling akin to late, experimental Dir en Grey work. And the synth composition felt incidental and circus-y—wacky video game music, perhaps. While this new EP still hosts an ominous growl against tension building chords, that death presence has grown from intrusion to atmosphere, which helps the hard-to-connect dots of each track’s individual pieces come together as a dream-like whole peaking in the fifteen minute closer “網目 Web.” And, as such, SAVE THIS UTILITY not only continues to command the tag ‘interesting’ but also ‘captivating.’ 亡失 Deprivation isn’t perfect by any means, but that wouldn’t be any fun now would it? 3.5/5.0
Iceberg: You remember that scene in the old Willy Wonka (1971) with all the psychedelic visuals where Gene Wilder keeps shouting “the danger must be growing?” SAVE THIS UTILITY’s EP Deprivation takes me right back to that sequence; terror and wonder, all wrapped up in a bad trip. If you can imagine a witches brew of The Mars Volta-flavored mathcore, Schoenbergian atonality, Sketches of Spain-era Miles Davis, and the instrumental noodling of Frank Zappa you might begin to get an idea of the world on display here. This amalgam of genres should be a jumbled mess—and I imagine many will think it is—but if you duck beneath the sound and fury there’s masterful structure and skill to be found. The tension of cluster chords1 and disjointed ostinati given release by crystalline synths in “Hollow,” the end of “Abandonment” draining melodic material into a horrifying black hole of noise and aleatoric rhythms; there’s magic written all over this album. All roads lead to the whopping 15 minute closer “Web,” a tour-de-force in long form writing that leaves me in awe every time I revisit it. This track wields dissonance and consonance like weapons, tearing apart traditional structure and tonality at will, only to piece it back together by it’s close. The only thing that bothers me here is a slightly muddled mix, but it hardly matters with this level of musical material. Fans of challenging and grotesque music should absolutely give SAVE THIS UTILITY a shot: this band is destined for great things. 4.0/5.0
Mystikus Hugebeard: 亡失 Deprivation, the newest album by Japanese avant-garde progressive metal act SAVE THIS UTILITY, is my initiation into the AMG Rodeö, and completely broke my brain the first few listens. At its core, 亡失 Deprivation is an album of complex, gritty textures, a jarring arrangement of music that falls into the “love it or hate it” category. The more transitory passages are the most fascinating to my ears; there are some compelling soundscapes to be found within the tense, dissonant guitars of “廃祀 Abandonment,” or the Glass Hammer-esque keyboard noodling and jazz pianos of “網目 Web.” My enjoyment breaks as the music grows heavier, and exponentially more chaotic. The zig-zag of the guitars is incongruous with the rhythm offered by the drums and the vocals, which alternate between brutal-death gurgles and shrieks. To the album’s credit, the conflicting layers of sound create a curious and novel musical texture that I would liken to sandpaper, but it becomes ear melting during the keyboards’ fire-alarm shrieking above the already cluttered heavy parts of “廃祀 Abandonment.” 亡失 Deprivation does have a nifty puzzle-box quality to it that I imagine some will enjoy picking apart and unraveling, but overall I find it just a little too obtuse to emotionally engage with. 2.5/5.0
#2024 #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo2024 #ArnoldSchoenberg #AvantGardeMetal #Deprivation #DirEnGrey #Feb24 #FrankZappa #GlassHammer #GoninIsh #JapaneseMetal #JazzFusion #jizue #MathRock #MilesDavis #mouseOnTheKeys #PostRock #ProgressiveMetal #SaveThisUtility #TheMarsVolta #WillyWonka #五人一首
DIR EN GREY 鼓動 (KODOU) from LIVE COLLECTION Blu-ray&DVD『FROM DEPRESSION TO ________ [mode of 16-17]』
#JR_Live #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
#TheMetalDogArticleList
#BraveWords
Today In Metal History 🤘 December 10th, 2023🤘ACCEPT, CANDLEMASS, QUEEN, DIR EN GREY
HEAVY BIRTHDAYS Happy 64th Wolf Hoffman (ACCEPT) - 1959 Happy 56th Messiah Marcolin (born Bror Jan Alfredo Marcolin; CANDLEMASS) - 1967 Happy 75th Brendan Harkin (STARZ) - 1948 HEAVY RELEASES Happy 47th QUEEN's A Day At The Races - 1976 Happy 11th METALLICA’s Quebec Magnetic (DVD...
DIR EN GREY - 19990120 (тизер 33го сингла) / Релиз: 2024.1.17
#JR_Promo #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
DIR EN GREY - DOZING GREEN - LIVE COLLECTION Blu-ray&DVD『FROM DEPRESSION TO ________ [mode of 16-17]』 (Live-дайджест)
#JR_Live #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
DIR EN GREY - DOZING GREEN - LIVE COLLECTION Blu-ray&DVD『FROM DEPRESSION TO ________ [mode of 16-17]』
#JR_Live #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
DIR EN GREY - LIVE Blu-ray & DVD [25th Anniversary TOUR22 FROM DEPRESSION TO ________] (промо)
#JR_Promo #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
DIR EN GREY - GALACAA MOVIE「DIR EN GREY TOUR21 DESPERATE LIVE & DOCUMENTARY -Vol.3-」 (тизер)
#JR_Promo #jrock #visualkei #DIR_EN_GREY #DIRENGREY
Got my birthday discogs haul from Japan today. #DirEnGrey
@nobody_special when I lived in rural Prince Edward Island I ordered a Dir en Grey CD from CDPLUS that they ordered from Tokyo, Japan and it literally took a year to get to me.... this was in 2007.... lol
