I have the same feeling as you, i was very critical at my first listen but finally i find The Devil In Me instrumentally fairly uniform. On the other hand, a little well-placed solo of Kaoru would have been welcome. For me the chorus is effective but could be a little crazier indeed.
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I donât see a controversy here. Making music or other media about serial killers is nothing new. And was done by western artists as well.
Boomstown ratsâ âI donât like mondaysâ is from 1979.
Gazetteâs Taion is about a murder case.
Jack the Ripper inspired movies, music, books, plays and whatever since 1888.
There is also a movie about neary every catastrophic event be it 9/11 or plan crashes or mining accidents. Sometimes a year or two after it happening. Is anybody considering the victims here? Never heard about it. I donât think a band like Dir en grey who is not that big of a deal in the west should be critizied for something everybody else does. For me this is still freedom of art.
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That doesnât shock me either, no worse than Marilyn Manson who took the name of a famous guru and assassin. 
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what do those have to do with uroboros era bro-kei my quoted comment referred to, dove?
He never does, and we love him for it
Canât figure out whoâs the guru and whoâs the assassin out of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Haha.
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Yes, there is reason to ask the question. 
Joking aside, i really like The Pale Emperor of MM, a great mix between alternative rock and blues. Iâll stop there because iâm getting a little off topic!
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Toshiya has always low key been an âikemenâ. What I mean by low key is that he often doesnât show himself. He should have more confidence in interviews and stuff and not always disguise himself with hats/glasses.
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If you are in Japan, now you can stream The Devil In Me and discover what kind of song is the new single of Dir En Grey that everyone is talking about
https://twitter.com/DIRENGREY_ENG/status/1788043682903703792?t=aNHS5l8Dvh7DEWZOFXWAqg&s=19
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Does anyone else get this but the second time in the song where Kyo says âkaketa nawa ni waâ it sounds way more like hes saying âkangaeta nawa ni waâ?? Or is this just me? I know it repeats in the lyrics that the lyrics should be the same but it sounds different to me, maybe because of the added vocal harmony??? And lyrically that sorta still makes sense so im not sure what to make of this.
Both are kaketa nawa (put my head around a rope)
Itâs âkaketa nawa ni waâ (ćăăç¸ăŤăŻ) both times.
âHung on a ropeâ or maybe âhanged.â I donât know if Japanese follows the English rule of âhungâ being used for objects and âhangedâ used for people.
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Yes you are correct, its hard to know what he meant, I have sometimes asked my japanese friends about deg lyrics and they donât get it at all what they mean, even if they read much of the other lyrics as well for some extra context. So think its very deep stuff.
Or nonsense, thereâs always nonsense
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The line between art and gibberish is very thin 
In the end there are 3 kinds of DEG lyrics: painful suffering, screaming insults and âwow this is so deep I have now idea what heâs talking aboutâ.
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Couldnât have said it better myself.
Just a few things to add:
The Devil In Me is okay. As you say, itâs not exactly memorable. This wouldâve been a decent B-side/non-album track. As the lead single from a new album, this is weak. The instrumental ending feels like it should be the climax, but instead it fizzles out.
The video wouldâve been improved if J.W. Gacy hadnât been in it. Otherwise, I donât mind it. Itâs better than what we got for RED SOIL.
I really donât like the mix on Kyoâs vocals recently. Theyâre treated with far too much compression which destroys any semblance of subtlety that the dynamic range of a natural vocal should offer. This is most obvious on the two remakes here.
Speaking of remakes, I can respect them recreating the songs note for note while at the same time being utterly bored by it. The band isnât bringing much new to the table. They just sound like worse versions of material we already have with some of the character stripped out, either by lacklustre performances or by removing unique and memorable parts (Kyoâs monologue in Yokan, music box intro in Cage, childrenâs choir in ainât afraid to die, etc).
Honestly, I long for the days of the weird experimental remakes rather than these dry, tedious retreads which didnât need to happen.
TL;DR: Theyâre inoffensive while simultaneously being creatively bereft.
I donât hate this single by any stretch. It all just feels a little half-baked.
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I feel this way about a lot of their recent singles actually. Iâve felt this way since Utafumi. Ochita definitely didnât feel like a single, and even in the context of PHALARIS it feels more like Track 6 than âlead singleâ material. The song which deserved to be a single (itâs Otogi) is relegated to an album track and doesnât even get a PV.
I can even go as far back as Dozing Green to show that their âfirst singleâ is usually never indicative of how the new album will sound. This early preview makes the new single even more confusing to digest, because Iâm pretty certain even they donât know where theyâre going to end up.
I wonder why the band insists on a pattern of releasing a single right after an album was released, only to go dark for an extended period of time, then release one to two more singles before the next album. Makes the first single feel like an album leftover rather than the beginning of a new era.
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Sorry for double post but this thought came to me much later. For me, the order goes
Great Remake > Note For Note Remake > Ooga Booga Remix
Iâd like for them to make a Great Remake but Iâll settle for a Note for Note Remake. To me, a Great Remake is a new song that reinterprets the original while still being recognizable. Two good examples would be undecided and Dozing Green acoustic. These are the exception rather than the norm.
Note for Note Remakes are okay because Iâd rather a creatively bereft remake thatâs musically intact than an unrecognizable hodgepodge of Drop D + A riffs that may as well be a new song. Itâs so common with their heavier remakes. Songs like Kiri to Mayu are still unrecognizable to me even to this day, and I canât hear the original even when people give me timestamps.
this is what i actually liked about the remake, they dropped the music box (after that newcomer band overdid jukebox sampling earlier this year Iâm not sure Iâll ever want to hear one ever again) but they kept the intro
it was quaint
I agree that dropping choir on AATD was a huge L, and I can only explain it by either a rushed production, or not being able to record it again/not being allowed to re-use their major single sound assets in a self-produced cover?
I feel like they did it out of necessity, not because The World View Hath Dictated.