14 Jun 2007
Dir en Grey: The Marrow of a Bone
Flushed with success after a tour that included sell-out shows in the USA as well as their native Japan, Osaka’s Dir en Grey released The Marrow of a Bone, their sixth full-length studio effort. Although some of the song titles and lyrics are in English, they still insist on performing many of the songs in their own native language - not that it’s very obvious given the in extremis screaming that is Kyo’s vocal trademark. The nu-metal influence is a little more obvious this time around but nevertheless they deliver a record that is characteristically original and difficult to pigeonhole.
The Ring phenomenon, spawned from a novel by Koji Suzuki, has a number of sequels, prequels and spin-offs to its name; the 2002 remake is a particularly well-known and surprisingly high quality production but the 1998 effort by Hideo Nakata wins over the competition. The concept of a cursed videotape that brings about the death of its viewers seven days afterwards, and the efforts of a newspaper journalist to discover its terrifying secret, are fairly familiar to filmgoers by now but this fact does not detract from the film’s masterful grasp of creating an atmosphere of overwhelming tension and foreboding.
After Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Billy Corgan and James Iha announced that the band was taking a change in direction musically. Although this difference in sound was no doubt intended from the outset the overall feel of their follow-up, Adore, can also be attributed as much to the absence of Jimmy Chamberlin; at the time was fired from the band due to his problems with drug use. As a result, it is a very different album that lacks, among other things, the crisp and cutting drum beats of their earlier days. Instead, Adore is almost entirely a collection of slow, introspective ballads and synth-driven numbers that are a far cry from their previous alt-rock/borderline-metal offerings.
