puss_nd_boots | (no subject)

Kind of a bittersweet day around these parts, since it's the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy - which, for me personally, was the start of the Really Bad Year. My father went in the hospital with his first stroke two weeks later, and at least one of his doctors thought that the stroke was triggered by the shock of living through the hurricane. (The storm caused massive destruction around the New Jersey Shore and power outages of a week or more - I ended up having to take my parents to a hotel an hour away, in one of the few parts of the state that still had power, to wait out until their light and heat was restored). I'm going to a candlelight vigil for people who lived through the storm tonight at the boardwalk.

One thing about Sandy - at the far end of the Belmar boardwalk, where I have always gone walking on weekends while listening to an entire J-rock album beginning to end, there is a fishing pier on stilts that I have always called the Chizuru Pier, because it looks like the one in the PV. When the storm came, all of the boardwalk was completely destroyed (it has since been rebuilt) - except the Chizuru Pier. For some reason, that remained intact.

On a much more cheerful note, it makes me happy that the whole GazettE fandom seems to love the new album - and deservedly so, since it's their best work in years. Since I'm a latecomer (I found them with the Vortex single), I've never seen an album release that wasn't accompanied by wank, and I've always been kind of envious of the people who were around for NIL/Stacked Rubbish/DIM. The wank this time has been minimal, and has revolved around minor things - like Ruki smoking the hookah in the Inside Beast PV. (But it fits the Alice in Wonderland motif he started with the Rock and Read shoot - Rabbit, Mad Hatter now Caterpillar).

The album really does get better and better with every listen, and I think I've figured out one reason why it works so well - it encompasses the best thing about each of their classic albums. It has the melodic depth of NIL, the versatility of Stacked Rubbish and the epic sweep of DIM. At the same time, it avoids what were, IMHO and in retrospect, the pitfalls of the last two discs - Toxic's unevenness of tone (caused mostly by the fact it's half made up of previously released singles) and Division's over-reliance on electronic trickery. It's an album by an experienced band that has learned what works and doesn't through trial and error, and is now ready to conquer new territory - more than one person has pointed out that CODA sounds like the beginning of something else, not quite an end. (Notice that abrupt ending? Bet the SE of the next album picks up right from that point).

And on a much more shallow note, the Inside Beast PV has proven very fertile fanfiction fodder for quite a few people, it seems. XD My Kai muse has certainly gotten a lot out of it. XD

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I'm going to a candlelight vigil for people who lived through the storm tonight at the boardwalk.

That is such sweet thing to do - I hope it goes well! :)

Yeah, it's been nice seeing all the positivity for Beautiful Deformity! It's definitely up there with my favourite albums, and I'm finding my top track changes daily. (Currently Karasu. Damn, Reita! Why don't you write more? XD) Interesting point about Coda, actually - the last last line of the lyrics is "The end and the beginning". Fingers crossed this means we have exciting this to come! :D

I hope so, too. I think it's something the people around here need - I mean, there's a few in the hardest-hit areas whose houses STILL haven't been rebuilt. Even for those of us who only had power outages and some downed tree branches, you don't know how much you miss electricity until it's gone. No traffic lights plus not enough cops to direct traffic at every single one made for some tricky driving situations. When I drove my mother's car out of town to take my parents and myself to that hotel, I felt like we were refugees escaping a war zone, between the wreckage and the coned-off roads.

It's so hard to pick a favorite track off Beautiful Deformity, isn't it? They're ALL great! Any one of them could be your favorite at any given moment, or depending on your mood. And Reita DOES need to write more. The others need to encourage him! Maybe they should make "everyone contributes at least one song" a permanent group policy ~~with the understanding that Kai's song might be donated to Alice Nine~~.