Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - [article] Japan's Dir en grey bridges language, cultural divide

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That's the fundamental nature of J-rock: Everything is amplified to exaggerated, almost abstract levels. Little is original about Japanese popular music except for that, and this type of import historically has appealed in America only to hipster music nerds, the culture-curious and fringe folk hungry for anything non-American or that satirizes the American pop aesthetic. Which is funny on its face, because America is where Japanese rock and pop acts obtain much of their inspiration.

Osaka-based Dir en grey, which got its start as a visual kei (style-centered) act in the late 1990s, aped horror metal à la Slipknot and the Gothic depths of the human psyche's crevices in its early days. Now it threatens to invade metal's American sanctum as no other heavy Japanese act has (it's among the first such entities to headline a tour here) as it's become a truly original live act. And it showed at the Palladium.

Read it: Japan's Dir en grey bridges language, cultural divide