DIR EN GREY Full Member Live Appearance: 'MORTAL DOWNER' Special Program Report — Discussing the Unique Worldview, from Production Secrets to the First MV Unveiling [Nico Nico Live]

The "MORTAL DOWNER" Album Release Commemorative Special Program was broadcast on Nico Nico Live starting at 9:00 PM on Friday, April 24th. Hosted by Joe Yokomizo, the first half of the program featured interviews with each member about the production process and worldview of their first album in 3 years and 10 months, "MORTAL DOWNER". Furthermore, in the second half of the program, the band split into two groups—Kyo (Vo) and Die (Gt), and Kaoru (Gt), Toshiya (Ba), and Shinya (Dr)—to discuss their attitude towards upcoming live performances.

Initially scheduled for release in 2025, "MORTAL DOWNER" required additional time to further twist and refine the album's worldview due to the massive number of tracks prepared. Through repeated and thorough pursuit, the work was finally unleashed to the world on April 8th. When asked by Joe Yokomizo about the album's worldview, pierced by bone-chilling grooves and heavy, sinking masses of sound, Die answered as follows.

Die: "The production of our previous work (2022's 'PHALARIS') took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, so we were creating it with the anxiety of wondering if we would even be able to play live shows after making an album. Since then, being able to perform live and raise our voices again—that change in circumstances was huge for this work. I feel like the atmosphere I experienced firsthand while playing live since then naturally found its way into the album. The word 'MORTAL DOWNER'—or 'Downer'—might have been a keyword right from the early stages of production. However, there were a lot of candidate songs, making it difficult to condense them into a single piece of work. It might have been easier if we made it a three-disc set, but we always narrow down from a large number of songs. A song we struggled with? We struggled with... all of them (laughs)."

Following Die was Shinya. Shinya apparently composed the original track for "Bloodline" on this album, but due to a system of calling their massive amount of demo tracks by numbers instead of working titles, a "number mix-up" occurred. He explained with a wry smile that because of this, Kyo mistakenly picked up a track that wasn't originally selected, which became "Bloodline."

Shinya: "Every time we have a song selection meeting, dozens of songs come up, and we narrow it down from there. But since the working titles of the songs are on a number system now, you start to lose track of what is what (laughs). The workflow is that we first make a song, and usually send it to Kyo. Then Kyo sends back the vocal data, and we send that to the manipulator. The arranged song is then shared with a number attached to it. So, we only find out who wrote the song later. Well, 'Bloodline' wasn't supposed to have been chosen at that time (laughs). As for the highlight of 'Bloodline'... there's a part in the middle where it's just drums, but you don't really need to listen to that (laughs)."

While explaining DIR EN GREY's unique production flow and speaking somewhat humbly about his own playing, Shinya strongly and confidently described the album, saying, "I think this is a work that condenses the current DIR EN GREY." Appearing third after those words was Kyo. When asked about the title "MORTAL DOWNER" and its literally heavy-bottomed style, Kyo reflected on the process of carefully developing the album and described the work with even more core words.

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Kyo: "From the time we started making songs for the album, I had a vague image that an album with this kind of overall atmosphere would be good. And since I was only being rushed for the album title, I gave it a title in advance that I thought would fit the image of the album I had in mind. It's 'Downer' because I'm alive and I feel sluggish. Living is exhausting. Well, it's not exactly the extreme limit of sluggishness. After all, it's only going to get more sluggish from here. If anything, we've probably just stood at the starting line of sluggishness. So the next album might be 'DOWNER DOWNER' (laughs)."

The working title (?) for the next album, "DOWNER DOWNER", which suggests the possibility of becoming even more "sluggish," sparked a flurry of "www" (laughs) comments. Only Kyo knows if this is a joke, but scenes where prospects for the future are discussed are precious.

DIR EN GREY has consistently faced the theme of "pain" and imbued their music with the state of life struggling between life and death. Considering that continuous theme, the word "sluggish" might sound blunt at first glance, but it actually carries a critical resonance for this era. A sense of entrapment drifting everywhere in life, like being strangled with silk cotton...