I’m probably in the minority thinking this, but Ruki is a boring vocalist. I feel like his performance has gotten fairly one dimensional over the years and doesn’t bring out the energy or emotions in the compositions.
By contrast, I feel like the band’s music has gotten much more interesting. I’m by no means a GazettE connoisseur but I used to listen to them quite a lot up until Dogma. I listened through Ninth maybe twice but it didn’t really grab me. And I think it’s the vocal performance.
It makes every song sound the same to me. The compositions in the previews span a wide spectrum of genres and moods and I’m not really feeling that being translated. It sounds to me that Ruki nowadays sings in “modes” rather than “moods”: clean singing vs screaming vs falsetto vs vibrato RATHER than anger vs excitement vs sadness vs ominous, etc…
I feel like this is the most interesting the GazettE’s music has ever been, but it still hits me the same from anything between Division and Ninth.