I heard you came here from Narita airport. Were you able to sleep in the airplane?
Well, kind of. But I still feel half asleep, though. But I’m all right.(laugh)
This time, you went to go NY to do mastering, why did you go there when you are so busy?
There was a part that we really wanted to get just right. If we did the mastering in Japan I don’t think that we would have been able to get the thickness and gloss that we wanted in our sound. So this time we worked in the famous mastering studio of Stering Sound, with an engineer Tom Coyne.
I heard Tom Coyne is a quite skillful engineer.
He usually works in hip hop and R&B, such as Beyonce and TLC. I heard he worked with Namie Amuro after he was done with us.(laugh)
You played with an engineer who isn’t in the field of rock music. Is this because in the new album [STACKED RUBBISH] after [FILTH IN THE BEAUTY] there are many songs which were mixed?
Yes, I think so. There were some who work solely in the rock field, but as we wanted to give a gloss to our music, we decided to play with a person in this field. And it turning out quite well.
Concretely how did it change?
The thickness of our sounds changed so much, and we could hear sounds which we couldn’t hear before. And they ‘sparkle’. I was so surprised. Even using the same material, how different they become. The engineer said “They became cool!” too.(laugh)
That’s great. But with your crammed schedule why did you not just send it in to be mastered like other artists?
Well, we thought that at first. But this was our first experience and we wanted to see the process with our own eyes. Actually the motivation of the engineer changes by just being there, and we heard that it’s good to make sure that he understands what we want, so I really think it was good. We learnt a lot of things.
At the same time, besides the change in mastering, is [STACKED RUBBISH] an album which has very progressive content for the GazettE?
I think so. Generally we have some regrets after we finish our albums, but this time we are quite satisfied with it.
Needless to say the sounds, the list of songs is so good in this album. Ruki, which songs did you write this time?
I wrote [AGONY], [CALM ENVY], [CIRCLE OF SWINDLER], the beginning SE [ART DRAWN BY VOMIT], and the ending SE [PEOPLE ERROR] and also all our singles until now.
So please tell me your point of view on the lyrics. Did you have many difficulties putting the words to music?
About lyrics, I write about what I usually think about. Over this past year, I started to watch the news often, so I became very interested in the real world and things happening around me, much more than unreal things.
In your previous interview, you said that you would at more ‘real’ lyrics in the next album.
Well, I could say ‘real’ or ‘simplicity’. I wanted to make lyrics so that when I saw them later I could still understand them. The result was that I wrote more bitter songs.
What are bitter songs? Actually they don’t seem so happy and rash, more serious.
They seem like dirty parts of humanity, which I could express really well from various viewpoints, such as conflict and coldness.
I see. For example, what prompt made you write [BURIAL APPLICANT]?
It is about that story, I wrote about baby posts (parents who can’t raise their children put their babies in baby posts). There have been various crimes where parents kill their children, or children kill their parents, and I expressed, using my words, how we should think about these problems.
Besides those, are there any other lyrics about such social contexts?
Maybe [CIRCLE OF SWINDLER]. I can’t say clearly here what I wrote about.(smiles bitterly)
You wrote the lyrics in English, which means “You should guess what I say.”.(laugh)
I couldn’t express in Japanese.(laugh) The point is, after we finished our live in Yokohama Arena, something happened. I wrote quite true to the facts.
Is [GENTLE LIE] also non fiction?
Ah, this story is quite real. I can’t say in too much detail but it’s a story about a couple who don’t love each other. Uh? Am I all right to say this?(smiles bitterly)
As long as you are talking about your work, there is no problem, I think.(laugh)
I know I can’t find solutions by writing about them. However, I don’t feel it difficult to sing about them. I just wrote down the facts to avoid forgetting them. So I didn’t want to use ambiguous words, nor beautify things, so I express it like this. Honestly speaking, it is about when you break up and some of the ugly things that happen. It’s definitely one of our human sides.
And this time there is a song which title is a little bit eccentric [ Ganges ni akai Bara](= a red rose in Ganges). Why did you use ‘ Ganges’?
I made the title afterwards. To be honest I didn’t care about the place. The story is a person who is absorbed in something; here it is about religion. And a person who learns the value of life and death when he/she dies. These are the lyrics from an outsider.
Is the symbol of life and death integrated into the word of ‘ Ganges’?
It seems like that. The phrase came into my mind suddenly.
By the way, what made you feel and write [AGONY]?
Well….I can’t say it’s for the fans nor listeners, but I wrote about our images which people around us have, and the feeling which we are almost crushed by them. And about the anguish that goes with that.
It is interesting that you would put a song like that first.
Well it connects up later enough. Before this song, there is SE [ART DRAWN BY VOMIT], which presents on the extended line from [FIRTH IN THE BEAUTY], because this album is about what a human vomits or spews out.
That’s why there is something so vivid there.
And at the end of the album, there is SE [PEOPLE ERROR], which seems like the word expressing this whole album. When I found this word, I felt like everything seemed to flow from it and [REGRET] connected to it too.
To think about overall, what is in this album seems to be ‘negative’ pieces.
I think so. Various emotions such as anger, sorrow, jealousy and distress are in there. I really want you read the lyrics, even if you are not able to understand them.
So, would you say that it was inevitable to put the title of『STACKED RUBBISH』on this album?
All of them also connect to there, such as degradation and vanity. Such negative things are unnecessary like garbage and trash, but they are indispensable.
And garbage is not something that is garbage from the beginning, but is mostly secondary products or something worn-out. You know, negative things are present everywhere in the world, yet in some ways they are important too. .
Yes, I think so. So that’s what you mean by『STACKED RUBBISH』.
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