Japanese outfit DIR EN GREY recently spoke to the UK's Planet Loud about the difference between the Japanese music industry and the European one along with their own influences and their plans for the future. A few excerpts follow:

Planet Loud - How do you think you managed to gather such a following without ever playing here before?

Dir En Grey - "It’s a complete mystery to the band; of course, with the internet people can hear bands like Dir En Grey from around the world without any sort of promotion or such like, but what’s more a mystery is why they listen to Dir En Grey specifically. Once the albums became available outside Japan, even though we weren’t touring at least there was some help from the labels, but there have been fans in Europe since we started 10 years ago which is a real surprise to us; we were making music for the Japanese market, not the overseas. We are very happy that we are now able to come over to Europe and tour and play to all our fans at last."

Planet Loud - Talk us through the new album.

Dir En Grey - "The album was written and recorded over a period of about a year whilst we were touring Japan, America and Europe. The only time we got to write songs was on tour in between shows. Instead of spending two months in the studios writing and rehearsing non-stop as before, we’d be writing for a bit then going and playing a show; new places, new environments and new sources of inspiration every day. We were also able to revisit songs later and change bits, listen with a fresh ear and take out bits we didn’t like and rewrite different sections. It was a mixed process, some of it went really well, but some of it went really badly."

Planet Loud - There’s such a marked difference in styles across the albums, what’s the thought process behind such stylistic leaps?

Dir En Grey - "It’s a mixture of a conscious decision not to make the same album twice, and getting a bit bored with a particular style and wanting to try something different. There is a natural process, we always want to release something different to before, not wanting to get fed up with any one style. It’s also a test, a challenge, to see how far we have improved and where we can go with the music. We do not like to release the same thing over and over again, and neither do the fans, we want to keep it fresh and keep the fans excited."

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