most of ninth actually grew on me over time, but I had to drop this album on the second try.
it’s physically exhausting to listen to - in a sense, the intro SE got its suffocating, draining presence pretty much to a T.
For this look Ruki just changed blazers
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Why are the drums mixed so fucking low?
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It’s all guitar guitar guitar and Ruki’s strained and flat warble.
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I’ve listened to it a number of times by now and definitely understand the critiques of it, but I still really like it. I fell in love with Blinding Hope immediately and thought it was really well done. The biggest critique I agree with is that there isn’t much musical growth and it really does seem like Ninth Part Two or something.
No one particular track screams out to me as being so interesting like happened in albums in the past, but I definitely like The Pale a lot. I think Last Song/Nox/Hold are all strong tracks too. Generally, I have the whole album on my playlists for me to listen to whenever, but I think I’ll end up tiring of it quicker than I did Ninth.
Definitely doesn’t hold a candle to Dogma, in my opinion.
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I remember several people criticized the way Ninth was mixed back when it came out. I was one of them. Well I went back and listened to it today and Mass sounds significantly worse.
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We all know GazettE stopped trying after 2010. In general I don’t expect innovation from bands over 20 years old (Except Cali≠Gari).
They found their signature style and gonna die with it. Some songs are fun tho
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Very forgettable album :’(
(wish I could say more)
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I like most songs in it except for MOMENT. Probably one of their ballad that I didn’t like, it is just drags along.
Highlights for me are: NOX, DAKU, THE PALE, LAST SONG
Overall, it is just another Gazetto album. It got their signature things and sounds going on, with few new bells and whistles.
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I think the familiarity of everything greatly weighs down this record. I’m sure they could still push on forwards musically, beyond just polishing the same old formulas, but are they even aspiring for that at this point? Clearly glossy presentation is as important to them (Ruki) as ever, but I’d say one more record like this and they’re clearly not just stuck, but stagnating musically by not making enough progress on that front.
I’ve talked about this before on MH. I really wish they had a pretentious instrumentalist like Kaoru as their songwriting lead. That way there’d always be someone whose job it is to mainly work on their musical legacy and to keep the ball rolling. Now it’s apparently only Ruki who really drives the band creatively and he’s not enough of a music geek to feel a need to be that adventurous. He seems most interested in working on the big concepts and then designing the whole integrated experience around them. The music gets lost somewhere between the art direction and demi-glace in priority. A record only needs to sound like Gazette (which is easy when its written by Ruki, because my impression is that he’s kind of gotten to define the sound over the years) and a bit glossier than last time to give an illusion of progress. The bar should be way higher and other people in the band should contribute more to the sound. Aoi and Uruha seem to kind of pull their weight and write those one or two usually interesting songs per album, but it should be more. I’m sure they give their own touch to everything, but it should be beyond that. People should challenge the norm. Otherwise it’ll just be more and more like this. Highly distilled mediocrity. A golden turd. Listening to Mass, I couldn’t say what has been written by someone other than Ruki. If it didn’t sound unrealistic, I’d say it’s all by Ruki, written with his latest blazer as inspiration. That’s how I like to imagine their creative process of last ten years works. Ruki gets a new blazer and he writes an album about it. Everyone else looks like a deflated Wojack as they work to realize Ruki’s vision as Tomomi holds a whip in the background. But maybe I’m all wrong, it’s all a lot more democratic, everybody pitches in and this is really the best they can do as a collective effort at this point. Who knows.
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Regarding the aspect of songwriting on that album I’ve been seeing someone saying on SNS that Ruki’s been writing all songs for this album. I’ve not seen any interview translations yet so that’s just a comment nothing else.
About the decision on the direction or how to call it, I think back in January or March alongside with some of the announcements Ruki said that it’s a lot of discussions and all that to get five ways/opinions/whatever together so that sounds a lot like it’s not just been him which’s of course just what he said though (but I think he also said that’s why they won’t care about other people’s opinion what they should sound like, talking about fans or other people complaining about their sound after every release).
This all aside there’s one thing I just see by the comments that’s not new to me at all. I’ve seen that not just with Gazette but with some other bands that are around for a longer time.
If they don’t change their sound much people start complaining the new release just being recycled material, it all being so boring etc… If they do change and try something new lots of people start complaining how it doesn’t sound like band XYZ anymore and how strange that is and why they did that.
I don’t get what these people actually want because no change is boring, change sounds like shit.
It’s alright to not like everything but what I don’t understand is what people actually expect. It feels like it’s about complaining only.
I don’t say that I don’t agree with some things being said here before I don’t even have a real opinion about that album yet. It’s just something I recognized throughout the years at MH and also now for the months I’ve been here.
There are changes in that album, tiny ones but they are there.
At least I already felt with BLINDING HOPE back in March that these switches to some a lot higher notes are new and Ruki went on with these for quite some other songs. I’m still not sure, if I like them or not but I got used to them over the past months for that one song so I might for the other songs, too.
Also the lyrics did change in that way that only BLINDING HOPE has English lyrics and one of the lines from there again shows up in LAST SONG everything else is in Japanese. That is a change not music-wise but still one in these new songs.
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MASS is a watered down NINTH. Hell, most of the songs sounds like they could be leftovers from the NINTH recording sessions. The three songs that i did enjoy could’ve made for a great Single (NOX, DAKU, THE PALE) and i would’ve been pleased. Ive been keeping my expectations low with every single release since Beautiful Deformity so I’m not shocked at all with how mid this album is.
No need to get into a whole spat about “Ruki writing this and the rest should do that.” Them Niggas are comfortable in their style and wrote a comfortable ass album. I now have 4 new GazettE songs (including BLINDING HOPE) to enjoy. That’s all.
5/10 with all the songs
8/10 with ONLY the 4 songs I enjoyed.
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So reading those semi-reviews I’ve become even more confident that this would be the first album of theirs that I’m not going to listen to. See ya in 2 years, gayzette-chan (or not, I honestly don’t care at this point).
After reading this comments, I actually think I’m going to like MASS. I loved NINTH and it sounds like it sounds like more NINTH. Excited!
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It’s really not that hard to pull up the album and make your own assessment of it. Not everyone here thinks the album is bad. You just might see light where others see dark and thats pretty common.
It’s quite doubtful tbh. Ninth was their weakest album imo, also hearing the samples and people comparing it to ninth does not provide any motivation whatsoever to waste my time on Mass. Gazerock has been dead to me for more than 10 years and i doubt that is going to change 
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Album shoulda been named ‘ASS’, but there’s at 3 songs I’ll add into my rotation.
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It doesn’t even really matter if anyone other than Ruki writes anything, because he gets the final say. If it doesn’t fit in with his “vision” it doesn’t get used. It doesn’t really feel like a band to me anymore. This is just a vehicle for Ruki’s diva mentality
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Alright, so, I might be in the minority here, but last album I liked by them was Toxic. I gave this one a try, and yeah… I don’t like it. The only recent album I really enjoyed was Trace Vol 2. I have to admit Ruki’s english got better, Dogma was kinda good somehow, but nothing that made me want to play their albums again and again. I like some songs off their recent records, but nothing I would listen to daily like I do with lots of bands. 
Had to say it. Last time I said that on facebook, I got tell off and people were saying “it’s because you don’t like heavy dark music (talking about Dogma)”. Hmmm sure. lolz.
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Gazette released one album with a bunch of edgy one word track titles and no ballad and all of a sudden they were the darkest band that ever was.
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