Dir En Grey - Interview - 2007

Tokyo is amazing. It’s just like London. Only completely different. 

Everything works. If there’s a soap dispenser it actually soap in. Likewise, public phones, lifts and public transport all work. 

Everyone’s polite. It’s all smiles, bowing, thank-yous and door-holding.

Everywhere is clean. Toilet’s in venues and clubs aren’t swimming in piss-water and covered in vomit, poo and bog-roll.

Everyone is on time. Cabs arrive when you order them and you’ll be hard pushed to beat your Japanese friend to the pub. 

There is little crime. If you leave your bag/jacket/pile of cash on your seat, it will be there when you get back a week later.

Everyone is happy. Or at least, smiling constantly.

While all of this is true, it doesn’t mean a Japanese band are going to be easy to interview. Nonetheless, Metal Hammer flew the 14-odd hours to Tokyo to speak to and watch Dir En Grey: national metal cross-over heroes and international J Rock cult icons.  The band ripped up US stages on the Family Values tour, have just released their awesome seventh album, Ouroboros, worldwide and sold out London’s Islington Academy two nights on the trot when charging £28 a ticket! So, are Dir En Grey ready to be the first Japanese metal band to truly cross-over worldwide? Or are they simply a hyped novelty to retreat into obscurity, remaining the fancy of a handful of Japanophiles and Manga-addicts?

“It’s hard to say A + B + C = Dir En Grey,” explains guitarist, Kaoru, the most forthcoming of the musicians sitting on the far side of a large table. True. Especially in a foreign language you don’t know. But Dir En Grey’s music isn’t hard to describe because it doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s hard to describe because it sounds like so much. There are verses, phrases, bars, even just sounds, that sound just like Nine Inch Nails, System Of A Down, Testament, Soundgarden, Tool and Korn to name just a few.

“In the beginning, when we were teenagers, we were more interested only in Japanese rock music,” he continues with the aid of our translator, You, who’s name is an unending source of utter confusion. “As time went by, those older bands opened our eyes to other types of music. Once we opened that door Dir En Grey’s music expanded.”

Since their inception over ten years ago, the band have released seven albums, broken out of the isolated far eastern touring circuit and gone looking like a cross between Poison, Deathstars and any number of dark anime anti-heroes from a thousand 18-rates Manga movies, to a mature rock and metal outfit. The original look came directly from Japan’s the Visual Kei scene: a very visually driven scene that started in the mid 80s as a glam/sleazer/cyber punk look and evolved to include gothic and heavy metal elements. Dir En Grey formed as the scene was in decline and they quickly set themselves apart from it building a reputation simply as a promising new heavy band. As the band admit, people in Europe and the US with an interest in Manga and more broadly in Japanese culture proved to be an entry point for many fans who otherwise would never have discovered the band. This in turn prompted and allowed the band to tour the world, and they enjoyed great acclaim on Korn’s Family Values US tour in 2006.

We chat separately to singer, Kyo, who, sitting in a big soft arm chair, looks like an oriental pixie brought in for police questioning over the use of excess magic. The difference between his explosive onstage self and the withdrawn and shy person sitting opposite us now is completely bewildering.

“I never like talking about happy things [in songs],” he says almost inaudibly. “I like to see things from a painful side rather than a happy side. If you’re looking from a negative side, you feel positive things in a different way – it’s about contrast. That’s what I like.”

“There are no answers in the lyrics,” he continues, dead pan. “What I’m interested in, is, after somebody listens to the whole album, then they have the answer.”

Confused? Don’t worry, you’re in good company…

“Sometimes we don’t understand what the song titles mean!” says Kaoru with a wry smile. And with reference to the use of English titles he says “Sometimes a Japanese title gives too particular an image and we don’t want to limit our fans and the English title is better.”  

Trying to understand someone who doesn’t understand what someone who is trying not to be understood means. Ace.

And we’re still none the wiser what Agitated Screams Of Maggots is about.

Gigs in Japan are amazing. Just like gigs in Dundee, London or the Yeovil Ski Lodge. Only completely different. Or at least the Dir En Grey ones are. 5,400 avid fans pack into the Zepp Tokyo venue over two nights for a sold-out two night run here in Tokyo. The gig is made up of 80 - or even 90 - per cent girls, and all but a few (the boys) are dressed in the current iconic Japanese rock fashion: it’s a strange clash of all-black Regency-era dress-making (only cut off at the knee), headwear and a morbid mourning-dress colour-code and black lace. Oh, and a bit of cyber-goth make-up, jewellery and Miss Kitty accessories lobbed in for good measure. No one appears to be wearing any bands t-shirts. Apart from Dir En Grey ones naturally.

The 2,700 capacity room is in complete darkness as it fills up. We seem to be the only people at the bar, which is five feet wide and manned by only one small girl. Handily for the jetlag, shows start at 7pm, and finish at about 9pm. The crowd get restless as the hour approaches and a chant goes up: an eerily synchronized chant at an octave where it nearly hurts. The music fades. The lights dim. The chanting becomes Pipistrelle-piercing and all we can see is the odd LED on an amp. Dark figures walk across to positions on the stage and the searing noise gets louder still. A small backlight glows red showing the silhouette of singer, Kyo, and the deafening screams die to absolute silence as if flicked of by a switch. A second later and Dir En Grey are all illuminated and ploughing into their two-hour set.

People only start cheering (screaming) when the very last decibel of a song has finished, but return to silence the moment a new song is ready. Again, as if the power cable has been yanked out of the back of the telly while you watch the crowd at a Beatles concert. As we look on from the balcony, we can see that the band need no backing tape, or even backing vocals from the guitarists during chorus as every single person in the crowd chants the relevant words back to the guys at the right time – hand movements and all. In fact, the show has an eerie almost-choreographed perfectness that makes you feel like you’re in a scene from a film about a band: Pink Floyd’s The Wall with its dark caricature  images of militaristic conformity, hero-worship and religious devotion. Everyone here – and we mean everyone - punches the air at the right time, gives the finger as Kyo screams ‘fuck off, fuck off, fuck off’ in English and go headbang frenetically as the fast bit kicks in. Each move is like synchronised swimming to metal, and gives you the feeling that the floor is moving – whether smoothly as fist-pump or like a pen full of electrified pets.

The band move much like any energetic band you’ve seen before. Except Kyo, whose wrought and tattooed body moves as if he’s fighting some invisible enemy – like a tightly wound spring that’s releasing all it’s energy at once… for two hours.

Just as coming to Japan is a mind-bending and bewildering culture shock – so familiar, so alien - so it must be similarly bizarre experience for the Japanese to visit the UK.

“Whenever we go abroad, I always stay in my room.” Says the singer without expression.

Why do you not go out? Are you not interested in strange places? Are you avoiding people?

“Even in Japan I don’t go out so often. The only place I like is my home.”

You seem to like it onstage…

“Generally yes. Sometimes I don’t.”

It’s strange to meet someone so polar: you’re frenetic onstage but very quiet of stage. 

“I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, and I’ve never done drugs… this is what I do.”

Are you addicted to being onstage?

“No. Singing is the only means for me to express myself and therefore I put 150 per cent of myself into the band.”

What do you do when you stay in?

“I watch films. A lot of films.”

Have you always been like that? Or has it been since the band has become more popular?

“Since I was a kid. It’s not to do with the band.”

Is there balance in those extremes?

“I’m not even aware of that. To me, it all feels natural: to be that way on stage, and to be this way now. Some bands, especially US bands, try to act like a rock star, but I don’t try to do that.”

He’s right. I guess Hammer’s response to the alien is disbelief. We’ve become so used to the mass media-fuelled ideal of the quote-churning rockstar from the pop-rock radio band extruder, that to find someone real – if a little odd – confusing. Sure, the rest of the band are hardly fighting for the conch, but by comparison they’re like four Dee Sniders advocating Max Factor’s blusher.

So Kyo, do you think it’s important for the success of the band, for you to maintain an element of mystery around you?

“I don’t think it’s important, but I don’t feel a need to show/tell everything,” he explains as he starts the longest sentence he’ll say during our interview. “I just want to express myself with songs and that’s all the listener should listen to. By introducing other things – my personal life – if that purity is lost, then I would be bothered. So maybe it is better to leave some mystery to make my singing as pure as possible.”

We’re on a roll with Kyo. 

Do you feel that fans and the press are constantly probing to find out personal things about you?

“I don’t know if people want that, and if they do, I don’t care.”

But when people love a band they want to know everything about them. 

“I understand that but as long as I presents 100 per cent performance and 100 per cent music, that’s all they need.”

Roll over. We switch tack.

So what’s the most different thing that struck you about the UK when you first came?

“Nothing in particular.”

Really? Because coming to Japan has been quite a culture shock for us: it’s clean, it works, you’re polite and punctual.

“Ok, there are those differences. But I knew they would be there. That’s why nothing surprised me.”

Have people had any preconceptions of what a Japanese band should be?

“I don’t know what UK kids expect, and I don’t need to know. I just want to make something that I think is cool.”

That blood just isn’t coming out of that stone.

Do you mind having to do interviews? Would you prefer to not do them?

“Normal. I can cope with it.”

You say what you have to say through music not the press?

“True. But I do not dislike being interviewed.”

Right.

It’s hard to see through the quagmire of confusing semiotics, cultural misnomers, non-verbal ambiguity and everything else that simply lost in translation. If Dir En Grey were trying to stoke the fires of fascination, they’ve succeeded. Even if an unwanted by-product is the feeling that a farmer let you milk a cow that wasn’t lactating. But this farmer then played an amazing gig to 2,500 people. Ok, so the already bad analogy ends there.

Their live show is truly something to behold, and their new album has more depth and dimensions than 90% of heavy releases today. Having consummated its love affair with the band, the UK seems to set to turn its three dates into an LTR (long term relationship).

Dir En Grey are more human than a Google image search or a few exchanged syllables with Kyo may suggest. You’ll just have to listen a little harder than you do at the latest bright British hope from Bridgend.

Do you think people are too keen to create caricatures in bands - the angry one, the quiet one – where as in reality most people are capable of lots of behaviours and moods?

“Yes,” he admits, pondering. “But at the same time, it’s funny because with our music style, we kind of want to be seen as bad people, not seriously bad, we don’t want to be seen too much as nice guys, because it would be funny that nice guys play this kind of music.”

Dir En Grey on Dir En Grey

Die of Kaoru – “He is someone pulling the band forward. Musically and mentally.”

Kaoru of Toshiya – “same for every member, we are trying to go forward, we are demanding, desire to do further, but he is the guy who has the strongest passion to go further, to create new ability, and go to new places.”

Toshiya of Shinya – “I feel very happy to have him in the band, because he is living entertainment, just being here he makes us feel very happy. And aty the same time he is very hungry to get the drums right, so he is the only drummer for DEG.”

Shinya of Die – “Die is the guy with the burning heart. Sweetest guy. He is open to other people, open-minded to strangers.”