Dir en grey -- 'Uroboros' [review]

Dir en grey - Uroboros
The End Records (11/11/08)
Metal (Melodic) / Rock

While perhaps not quite at the level of Opeth or Dream Theater, Dir en grey is Japan's answer to the aforementioned bands, proving it with a solid decade-long career and this, the band's seventh studio album.

Uroboros is a mixture of metal and progressive rock—a combination of beauty, bliss, horror and destruction. Dir en grey combines elements from all corners of the metal/rock genres to put forth a cacophony of pandemonium, all the while vocalist Kyo, singing almost exclusively in Japanese, wails, growls and grunts along like a frenzied madman.

Opening with the one-two punch of the instrumental "Sa Bir" and epic "Vinushka" (which clocks in at over nine minutes), it's clear the band is happy to take chances. While "Vinushka" may come across as bloated at moments, the song is a sonic journey, bouncing from acoustic beauty to peaks of power metal and depths of death metal, again and again.

The band takes its experimental approach even further with "Stuck Man", a head-banging blend of funk and death metal.

But it's those moments of tight musicianship when Dir en grey produces its best songs. Take the straight-forward "Red Soil", with its driving riffs and stutter-stop verses, or the blinding fury of "Doukoku to Sarinu", or the radio-friendly modern-rock feel of "Glass Skin". These 3- to 4-minute songs display a better sense of the best the band has to offer as opposed to, say, the self-indulgent 7-minute plus "Ware, Yami, Tote..." that aims for epic but hits overly-dramatic instead.

Two nice touches with the album: the liner notes contain all the lyrics translated into English, which shows the band weaving tales of reincarnation and guilt; and two versions of "Dozing Green" included on this set, one sung in English, the other in Japanese (which only shows that, with a frontman like Kyo, it matters not what language the songs are sung in).

Any fan of Opeth, Tool or any progressive metal outfits will find more than a few things to love on this album.

Ashes Divide -- 'Keep Telling Myself It's Alright' [review]

Ashes Divide - Keep Telling Myself It's Alright
Island Records (4/8/08)
Rock / Alternative

Billy Howerdel is probably best known for his collaborative work with Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan in A Perfect Circle, though he does have a fairly lengthy résumé to his name. And with A Perfect Circle now being on hiatus, Howerdel is trying his hand at fronting his own band. The result is a mixed bag of ethereal rock music that pulls influence from a variety of sources.

Ashes Divide sounds more like 30 Seconds to Mars (with a hint of Nine Inch Nails) than A Perfect Circle, but that may be a much due to the absence of Keenan (more on that later) than anything else (though Howerdel's vocals could draw comparison to Jared Leto's).

Ashes Divide has just as much in common, sonically, with the aforementioned bands as it does notable '80s bands of the same vein (The Cure, Duran Duran, et al.), and Howerdel has managed to merge all of this influence to create something that harkens back to a time/genre without sounding dated. (The melancholic “A Wish” could just have easily been released by The Cure in 1988, yet it doesn't sound out of place on the album.) Likewise, something like "The Prey" could just have easily been released by Trent Reznor before he went all "garage" on everyone.

There's a definite ebb and flow to the album—it starts off loud, slides into a more retro groove for a few tracks, gets slower and more reflective in the middle and then picks up the pace again to end with a bang.

It seems Keenan may have been able to focus some of Howerdel's efforts in A Perfect Circle. The song structure seemed more direct in A Perfect Circle, which was a nice juxtaposition for the more meandering, imaginative vocals/lyrics. Here, some of the songs either plod along without direction, or seem to tail off and/or end abruptly, which is not only a disappointment but also calls into question what could have been given a little more effort. ("Stripped Away" and "Denial Waits" seemed to fall into this trap, which is a real shame since they’re the two opening tracks.)

Taken as a whole, Ashes Divide is a nice effort. There's a definite mood to the album, and everything flows very well together. A few times Howerdel seems to let his influences get the better of him, unleashing tracks that sound more like an homage than original effort, but this is a nice start for one of the music scene's harder workers.

Tool -- 'Aenima' [classic review]

Tool
"Aenima"
(Volcano Records)


"... a jagged, brooding nightmare filled with roaring guitars, abrupt rhythm shifts, and jarring sound effects. One of 1996's strangest and strongest alt-metal records."

-- from Entertainment Weekly's review of "Aenima"

"Aenima" is one of those albums that, after release, seemed to yield hit after hit. Each subsequent single seemed better than the one before. From the title track to "Stinkfist" to "Eulogy" to "H" to "Forty-Six and 2" and "Hooker with a Penis," the hits never stopped. Anything that wasn't released, very well could have.

"Aenima" has a fairly sterile feel to it. The production is crisp and the tone undoubtedly foreboding. Whether the band is tackling the destruction of L.A. (on the title track), death ("Eulogy"), drugs ("H") or even the taboo topic of fisting (on "Stinkfist" -- think about it, this song is on national radio since its release to this day), the message is quick and to the point and conveyed with a deadpan delivery. Even the instrumental and other interludes seamlessly flow between the tracks and pull the rest of the tracks into one complete cohesive unit.

The beauty of the Tool sound is that it isn't an in-your-face assault. Rather than the percussive unit, the guitar is the driving force behind the music and the rhythm is what propels the album. Not quite tech-metal, not quite an industrial durge, the focused delivery is what makes this album a classic.

The album and band pulls you in with a hard-hitting assault and then keeps shifting and changing the tempo and direction in such a pure manner that you feel powerless to stop the onslaught. That's the true beauty of the album. You can pull any nugget out and it sits perfectly alone. But it also fits into this complex puzzle of sound. You could never change the tracklist order for "Aenima," but each piece can be enjoyed on its own.