Musically I think it’s a very well put together record. I even love some of the songs that people are the most down on, like Devote My Life or Rubbish Heap. I even ADORE Celebrate Empty Howls, and Downfall is probably up there in my favorite songs from the band in general.
That said, it took me until seeing them in New York on that tour to actually appreciate the album, I just couldn’t get into it with only the CD mixes. And yes, the mastering is a bit sus, but a lot of my issues with the tone of the album come from mixing decisions, not mastering decisions. Whereas I thought The Unraveling’s guitar tones were hyper-scooped and lacked any midrange, the heavy rhythm tones on TIW are practically all mids. This forces the guitars to compete more than they really need to with other elements, primarily the lead vocals and the snare drum. As a result, the rhythm guitars get buried a lot of the time in the mix. I’m also, personally, pretty fatigued of how obvious the sample replacement/augmentation is on the drums in the last few albums. When Shinya does a fast roll on the snare drum and every hit is the exact same max-velocity sample, it can really take me out of the vibe.
It’s maybe obvious but I just realized something about album covers. It’s only my second Dir album purchase so I didn’t payed much attention on different editions before, and as you already all noticed the deluxe editions of recent albums have always the regular edition cover, it’s me or it’s just a stupid way to try make you buy at least 2 editions (if you want the release « full set »).
I mean right, you can choose at start with your taste and budget which edition you choose. If you go regular or limited obviously you don’t have the full package.
But if you go deluxe, ok you have all the bonuses with the best edition possible buuuut you don’t have the exclusive cover so you can be tempted to grab the « basic limited » too and it’s a bit perverse.It’s maybe me but it left you the sensation to not have the full thing.
There is no other reason why they don’t put limited cover on deluxe wich would be more logical and (matter of taste) the limited one is « by chance » always the less classic and more esthetic / « prestigious » than the regular (a centered bull for Phalaris, a less weird face position for TIW, more details and not blur effect for Arche etc…) The exception is maybe DSS with a Deluxe different from regular (but on the contrary the photo composition of regular is more « Deluxish » than the statue closer imo !)
Well sorry for all that text for this little thing and maybe obvious but what you think ? ^^,
So I have two of the scorebooks, for Kisou and for Vulgar, and maybe I’m just missing something, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere clearly marked what tunings the guitars are in on each song?
I’ve searched the books and the only tuning markings I can find are for Kaoru’s 7-string on ‘Keloid Milk.’ Otherwise, nothing. There’s chord markings that sort of help in the Vulgar book, but the Kisou book’s chord markings are showing what’s physically fingered on the guitar, without regard to if it’s been detuned. So for example both ‘24 Cylinders’ and ‘Bottom of the death valley’ show E minor over sections where what’s heard is D minor because the guitars and bass are all tuned down a whole step.
My ear is ok, not amazing, but decent enough that I could probably sit and figure out what tuning each song is in myself if I didn’t want to reference online tabs, so it’s really more of a curiosity thing than me crying about it. But for anybody else who may have these books, am I missing something that would be super obvious to somebody who can read Japanese?
Kisou was written mostly in D-standard. Zomboid/Karasu are in A-standard, and Keloid Milk is in C# standard, which is why they play it with 6 strings these days. Hope that helps.
Zomboid is in D-standard (Toshiya uses G# tuning though hence that very low bass)
Keloid Milk is in 7-string C# standard (you can play it in drop C# like they did so back in 2010 but the original tuning is bassier)
Undecided is in E standard
Karasu and Domestic are in C# standard
I think it is a normal standard when even with lower tunings the chords are still shown as if you were to play it in E standard.
PS. Mode of Kisou - Zomboid does use their typical ADADGBE tuning though. It is easy to emulate and make it sound crunchier as so.
Did Dir members ever list any death metal / black metal influences (regarding PHALARIS)?
I remember seeing/hearing some Anaal Nathrakh references in DUM SPIRO SPERO but that is pretty much it.
It’s pretty common yes, but in my experience with things like Guitar World and other mags when I was a kid, they’d put a little note “tuned to ___, all notes sound ___ lower than written” or something along those lines, and then they’d have some kind of notation showing what the exact tuning was. I guess what I was hoping for was, if somebody had these books and read Japanese, if maybe they had seen something in one of the pages in Japanese stating the tunings that I wasn’t catching because I’m a pleb monolingual.
It’s hard to rank right now. I do think this very well might be their best sub-one-hour record. Time will tell for greater placement, but the consistency is one of the most impressive things here. Usually DEG albums have a couple of songs that I really don’t vibe with, but nothing on here is annoying or unpleasant to me. I guess it’s a “safe” album in that sense, being DEG doing DEG things, but I have a hard time complaining when the execution is this enjoyable and engaging.
currently -
Kisou (actually follows phalaris in my deg playlist for now.)
Vulgar
Phalaris (will drop down a few notches once the novelty is off)
Withering to Death
Arche
Macabre
Gauze
Missa
Six Ugly
Uroboros
The Marrow of the Bone
The Insulated World
Dum Spiro Spero
I don’t listen to anything off the past 4 albums listed except for the single tracks and hydra 666; the ain’t afraid to die single goes right after phalaris.
for now:
Kisou
UROBOROS
PHALARIS
Vulgar
Withering to Death
Arche
Six Ugly
Macabre
The Insulated World
The Unraveling
Dum Spiro Spero
The Marrow of a Bone (the live version of this album is way higher on my list)
Missa
Gauze
the order always changes depending on my mood and there are some albums that i have to remove some songs to listen to it ( Gauze and The Insulated World) and i only listen to live versions of The Marrow of a Bone as I find the studio album almost unbearable
