Review Summary: Familiar issues continue to plague a band now running on steam.
For the first time in over a decade, there’s this sense of mystery and intrigue coming from DIR EN GREY again, a feeling I’ve not felt for the better part of a decade now. The band has always been very private and selective in what they reveal to fans, but the lead up to
Mortal Downer has taken their furtive disposition to a completely new level recently, and I’ll be honest; in this current era of the internet where nothing is sacred and everything is on show, I’m totally onboard with this approach. What is it that distinguishes
Mortal Downer from the eleven LPs that precede it? Well, they’ve broken a long-standing and fundamental element of their promotional cycle: its singles. Hitherto, at minimum, every LP has had two singles before its full release – typically spread out across a two-to-three-year period. From a corporate standpoint this is a savvy business practice that not only keeps the band consistently in the public eye in-between touring, in Japan especially, it has a monetary incentive attached to it – even today – where they release said tracks as “Maxi-singles” at a tier cost that can be very lucrative (these packages include live DVDs, B-sides, and remakes of old tracks to incentivise purchase). Conversely, this model has added benefits for the listener too, affording them the opportunity to ascertain a record’s direction and tone, for better or worse, before it comes out.
For reasons unknown,
Mortal Downer completely disposes of this thirty-year-old practice, releasing “The Devil in Me” in April 2024 before going radio silent until January 2026, where they abruptly revealed their twelfth studio offering with its project name and release date, with little else to go on – not even the artwork or tracklisting was included. While this gambit is a double-edged sword of sorts, for reasons we’ll get into, one of the main benefits with this is that it shatters any opportunity to build preconceived ideas or expectations, as we only had “The Devil in Me” to go off. So, I have to admit, I’ve quite enjoyed the discreet gambit they’ve been playing here, pondering over what we could be getting here. Nevertheless, as I tend to be a man who sees the glass half empty, the critical part of my brain couldn’t shake the feeling this cloak and daggers approach was a machination to mask the harsh reality: they knew the writing was on the wall with this one. I’m not going to repeat previous criticisms here as I feel drained with regurgitating what are glib platitudes within the fanbase at this point, but let’s be honest; DIR EN GREY are past their prime. As such, while “The Devil in Me” is the only song here to represent
Mortal Downer, it’s probably the best track to summarise what the album is as a whole – solid, but undercooked.
Say what you want about
The Insulated World and
Phalaris, for their sins they still had some memorable moments contained within them. “Aka”, “Devote My Life”, “The Perfume of Sin”, and “13” are tracks that stand head-and-shoulders above tracklistings operating on autopilot. Yet, in the dozen or so playthroughs I’ve had with
Mortal Downer, I’m hard-pressed finding a song with that “Diru magic” behind it. Ironically when “The Devil in Me” first came out I thought there were idiosyncratic elements nestled within it, but just as it was building up to something big, it just fizzled out meekly. This is an accurate reflection of how
Mortal Downer operates – it has some worthwhile moments scattered throughout, but any good ideas are either ignored and amount to nothing, or they’re just squashed entirely. To the surprise of no one, the biggest issue is the highly compressed production which eviscerates epics like “Bloodline”, “Void”, and “no end”. The muddiness of the low-end muffles the intricacies and layers trying to get out into the mix. The issue isn’t as pernicious on the heavier numbers like “EN’EN” and “Moumoku ga Yue ni”, but it’s particularly devastating to the tracks that require some breathing room.
However, without lamenting the perennial sound problems that have plagued the band since
The Insulated World, the songwriting itself just isn’t memorable. It’s a heavy album, sure; it’s a competent album, yeah; but this is a record lacking authoritative character. While I would put other albums below this one in terms of overall quality,
Mortal Downer is hands down the most derivative offering the band has ever devised. I suppose it’s par for the course for a band that’s twelve albums deep and peaked twelve years ago, but there’s just nothing new here. There are vestiges of
Withering to Death in a song like “There’s Nothing Else”,
Arche in “Moumoku ga Yue ni”, and
Vulgar in “Hizumi to Ame”, but it all sounds rather toothless and formulaic. If this was to get the same kind of production treatment as
Uroboros [R&E], I don’t think you’d unearth anything here that would reflect excellent songwriting (although “Demand” comes damn close in parts). Ultimately,
Mortal Downer is a serviceable prog-metal record that will pass an hour if you have it spare, but the top and bottom of it is, like the Ouroboros itself, DIR EN GREY are eating their own creative tail and regurgitating ideas, to a detriment where it has no lasting resonance or staying power anymore.
