Review Summary: Dir en grey toss the magnum opi for a fun opuscule that questions the heady concepts of art, paradox, and Utafumi.
Periodically, we must investigate art; cultural obsessions with hyperbole aside, it is because most art is neither monumental genius, nor utter trash. Sometimes a thing is just a thing, or even worse: a mere product. For other occasions, there is room for both materialist realism and greater artistic integrity.
Sometimes, we even crank out a neat turn of phrase, reference, or a metaphor to describe such investigations:
Me (1st listen): “I hate this! It is revolting!”
Album: “Would you like more ？”
Me (4th listen): “Please!”
The above might be familiar to those who can appreciate the charm of an android enjoying alcohol for the first time. But it’s also a familiar scene for one’s ears when a new release comes out; the factor of how long an album takes to “grow on you”.
My initial lack of anticipation for this album was founded on a suspicion: I suspected that 2014's ARCHE would be the type of achievement that couldn’t be immediately surpassed, so expectations were silenced and tempered.
The album art references a Salvador Dali piece called "Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire". It features a variety of figures in the background of an otherwise normal scene of market life, that assemble into the face of Voltaire. This is achieved with perceptions being toyed with by the altering of the artistic space. Dali said that the goal was “…to make the abnormal look normal and the normal look abnormal.”
This quote largely explains the approach of this album; bringing much older elements from previous eras into the norm. Relegating recent norms as new relics. There is more variety here at the sake of a grand vision. The normal, or formulaic nature of these songs is the aberration compared to the previous album, where the formulae of previous albums were reconstructed until they were fundamentally different from their origin.
Lifting the chalk from the board, we can all admit to a pair of rose spectacles. Praise should be mixed well with a critical mind: was this the result of a failed experiment based on sound hypotheses ？ The album sort of achieves an identity on its own, separate from ARCHE, but it doesn’t completely escape it.
“The Insulated World” never quite gets to be either “anti-art” or “anti-ARCHE”, much to the displeasure of my previous ‘Dadaist influence per Dali’ theory. This is an album of paradoxes; even as I write this, the score itself is a temporal aberration. But, I digress; we’re dealing with real numbers here, not cats.
The album opens very strong; “Keibetsu to Hajimari” is a Molotov of an opener that refers back to the numbers like “Lied Buried With A Vengeance” (2007’s The Marrow of a Bone). “Devote My Life” rides its coattails with a stubborn snare driving the verse; thick bass anchoring the diving and periodic guitar riffs.
“Ningen wo Kaburu” is a serviceable song with a nice chorus, and is appreciated more on repeated listens. While not an eyesore like its sibling single, it does remain the weakest song here for aping the band’s last outing the most.
“Celebrate Empty Howls” mercifully kicks in, throwing up buzz-saw guitars backed by simple strong snare hammers, and occasional furious tom rolls. A good example of the production sounding more like a live raw recording here, versus every other track’s drum-kit being swallowed whole by everything else in the studio.
“Utafumi” drunkenly rushes in. A blistering bundle of inorganic riffs and over-engineered syncopation; this is where the band jumps the shark, kills it, and buries it at the end of docks. Suffice to say, it’s difficult to find “joy” with this concatenated composition, but it is an impressive technical feat.
A further example of anti-art, perhaps; maybe to parody the entirety of ARCHE under three minutes flat ？ Even after reading of the songs more conventional origins before being reworked as an “aggressive” song, the listening experience is no less intolerable.
“Rubbish Heap” grabs your attention, and also displays the album’s strength in providing slower but steady headbangers. The background vocals chirping “Fist!” add a good contrast to the raspy front and center Kyo.
“Aka” is the most beautiful song off of the album, and is an effective ballad. It also closest resembles anything from their pre-Western era, wavering between 2000's MACABRE and 2002's KISOU.
“Values of Madness” takes a detour back to Six-Ugly, and Kyo’s syllabic wordplay and various vocal tones here are a welcome change of pace.
“Downfall” picks up the pace a bit and gives us dueling piggybacks of guitar and bass with such simplistic savagery you can hear the nu-metal growing in the background.
“Followers” is the other intriguing ballad offered here; its arrangement sounds like a combination of “GLASS SKIN” (2008's UROBOROS) and “Itoshisa Ha Fuhai Nitsuki” (2006's Withering to Death).
“Keigaku no Yoku” brings to mind "Mazohyst of Decadence" (1999's GAUZE), but with a bit of “Red Soil” ('08 URO) sprinkled on the side.
The penultimate track “Zetsuentai”, is a seven-minute expose of gloomier atmosphere found from TMOAB. It drags a bit at the halfway mark, but is otherwise enjoyable.
“Ranunculus” ends the album well and in a relatively harmless and most accessible manner. The more theatrical and straightforward piano break is a little cliche, but the minor appearance here at the very end is forgivable.
While imperfect, "The Insulated World" is different enough to label the album a breath of fresh air, particularly as the band explores the slower, heavier aspects of their first Western-era (i.e. from Six Ugly to TMOAB), but with a looser curiosity and instinct that defies their recent career defining trilogy. Had the band been able to give the album’s production more TLC, TIW might’ve been able to fulfill more of this ambition, and stand on its own among the band’s upper echelon.
Despite its failure to be a classic, the band clearly found something minor yet unique in now familiar territory. A few snippets of the translated lyrics hold further clues on the true shape and scope.
“Followers” features doubt in faith: “A World where anyone is forgiven / And from back in the day when I had faith, nothing is different”.
“Values of Madness” displays an innate nihilism struggling to deal with the world: “What I want to ***in' destroy is / This world and myself / Who can't understand that ？ / Nothing in this world has value…”.
“Devote My Life” with a take on guilt and family: “To die in / Father, Mother, please forgive me /Loved you /I want to be worth I / I want my life to be worth living / The cruelty”.
For the time being, however, one can hardly blame Dir en grey for throwing out greater aspirations. They’ve at least thrice created concept albums to increasingly successful degrees, so what else is there left to do but have a bit of fun until inspiration appears ？
Sometimes an album is just an album. For those looking for the band’s next aesthetic ？ The real investigation has yet to begin.
Recommended Tracks: “Aka”, “Downfall”, “Followers”, and “Keigaku no Yoku”.
