Dir en grey [mode of Withering to death] Kyoto Day 1 live report
First of all, this show at least started very colourful. It took until Kodou for the lights to be less of a rainbow. Kyo's hair is now dyed pink: I was just telling myself how that would be the next logical step to surprise us, and he did hah. I also had a feeling that he would wear Adidas track pants and he damn did! Even though it was more around Vinushka PV era. What the hell. These ones were more fitted than the previous ones though, and he either rolled the legs or stuck them in high top shoes that had FLUORESCENT green laces. Also what the hell. Kyo came out wearing a tuxedo with two tails behind, so you can imagine the 'colourful' and weird character that portrayed altogether. Kaoru's hair is also silver! Of course we should have guessed that that platinum blond would just be the base for another colour hah. Die wore a white blouse shirt, so Shinya was not the only one wearing white tonight. Technically, Kyo also had a white dress shirt with either a drooping collar or some of the buttons unattached at the top, with only half of it tucked in his pants again. Most of the songs sounded exactly like what I remember of the Withering to death DVDs. Kyo still danced sensually (?) to Itoshisa and some other songs, but Kaoru added a melody on top of some of the last segments of that song, unless I am just not remembering the song right. The live started with Merciless Cult, and it seemed obvious that both band and fans were delighted to begin with this one. Both ballads used the same picture of a back being grabbed from the front by multiple hands. Kodou did not have the second scream, as far as I remember, and another thing that disappointed me slightly was that Kodoku ni shisu, yueni kodoku's chorus was almost exclusively high-pitched, way more than in the recorded song and I would have prefered some growling instead. It is really one of my favourite songs though hah. I really liked that new Magayasou backdrop video with the exploding, cybernetic liquid thing - at least, I cannot remember seeing that video in the 2015 lives. The songs that had PVs (real, not live collages, e.g. Saku, dead tree) had mostly just that used as backdrop. C was good but Kyo barely sung it. At least he did sing the part, at the end, where he speaks of singing until his voice dies. There were two instances, one that was in the middle of a song and, the other, at the very end, where they let Kyo scream in a prolonged way. At the end of dead tree, he dropped to his knees, and that was very dramatic on the moment. Everybody was silent and immobile until the next song. Machiavellism's video showed a lot of stuff about war hypocrites. He had us sing a lot of the "Jesus Christ R'nR" chorus. G.D.S. came on right at the beginning of the encore! I had been upset that it had not been used as SE at the beginning, but this was awesome too. All the members seemed hyped. The video of the burning scepter made it even more awesome somehow as well. Kyo insisted more, it seems, for us to sing most of Un deux, right after they had done The Final (Unraveling version), and I cannot help but see it as a very positive message towards us, that you can think you are at the lowest bottom BUT, 'keep looking forward and I want to hear you say it like you mean it!' At the end, Kyo made us clap along with him, but then he stopped. Seeing as we had not followed that break, he started clapping and then suddenly stopped again and we just barely caught on too, laughing, so he left with a small wave of the ha d as if saying: 'Yeah, I'm done fooling with you, bye!' Amazing show, but damn, a knot members have seat tickets that require binoculars, really? By the way, the GARBAGE box is made of tin, very cool. Hopefullt I am not forgetting too much...