Every ‘the GazettE’ Album Ranked
ADHD is writing three ranked lists in a row within the span of a few weeks about artists you’ve been hyperfocusing on lately. This time, I want to get into a more recent “legendary” visual kei band, the GazettE (that’s how it’s officially stylized but you’ll have to forgive me for any times where I inconsistently just type it as The Gazette from here on). One of Japan’s best-selling metal acts right now, The Gazette are still fairly recent but have developed a legend status in their own right for their major influence over the Japanese rock mainstream, excellent single power, and by just being living proof that visual kei is still alive and well despite claims by many pioneers of the genre/style that it had died in the late 90s when bands started favoring fashion and image over genuine musical quality.
I’ll be honest right off the bat —the GazettE have not previously been known for being an albums band by any means. Many of their most beloved songs like ‘Reila’ and ‘UNDYING’ aren’t part of any larger body of work (debatable actually for ‘UNDYING’, but we’ll get into that soon). Several of their albums, I’d say more than half, are subject to some bloat, but that doesn’t stop the great few from really shining as fantastic landmark albums for the genre especially considering the band’s more recent output.
I’m gonna keep things relatively short for the sake of making such a long list, but I’ll take a little extra attention on the top half of the list to get the point across about why some of these albums really are so great. I’ve also embedded each album via Spotify at the bottom of each article of the list, except for the band’s debut album which I hyperlinked to a YouTube video of the whole album due to it not being on streaming services.
1. DOGMA (2015)
It’s hard to say anything bad about the GazettE’s magnum opus DOGMA. It’s an album that deserves to stand with the all time great albums of the genre like X Japan’s Blue Blood, MALICE MIZER’s Merveilles, Kuroyume’s Feminism, L’arc~En~Ciel’s True, DIR EN GREY’s Withering To Death, ZI:KILL’s Desert Town, Versailles’ Noble, and LUNA SEA’s MOTHER among a handful of other albums. The most modern of all of these visual-kei classics, DOGMA makes it immediately apparent once the intro cuts to the title track that this is going to be a dark, foreboding, and downright heavy album. “Heavy” is the best word I really have to describe DOGMA. As soon as the drums and downtuned guitars kick in with that half-time beatdown rhythm, it’s a nonstop assault of brutality.
There isn’t a single song on DOGMA that even approaches the criteria for “skip material”, and that’s not something I can say about many of the GazettE’s other albums. As if DOGMA’s 51 minute runtime wasn’t enough fantastic music either, DOGMA actually fits into a trilogy with the two loose singles released a few months later in its release year of 2015, ‘UNDYING’ and ‘UGLY’. When you put the artwork of these three releases side by side, they create a full picture, with DOGMA taking the center and each single taking an arm on each side.
The Gazette bring their A-game to the table on DOGMA, serving up emotionally provoking clean and melodic passages intertwined with punishingly hard metalcore moments. Take for instance my personal favorite song on the album, ‘DERACINE’, which opens softly into its verses and lead into a brutal pre-chorus refrain which teases us once halfway through the first verse and finally leads to the haunting chorus the second time it’s heard. The whole way through, DOGMA is an absolute delight for anybody who can take their music both heavy and poppy.
Highlights: DOGMA, DERACINE — I’d also highly suggest checking out the lead track from the UNDYING single if you enjoy this record.
10/10.
2. DIM (2009)
The obvious #1 choice for many, DIM’s only weakness in my eyes is its length. Peaking at just over an hour and with 17 songs, DIM can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore to get through, though every song still mostly has its own value to make it all worth it. The opening track ‘The Invisible Wall’ is perhaps a perfect introduction to The Gazette’s blend of melodic metalcore and eerie J-rock stylings.
Despite every song on this album slapping, the track that really stands out above the rest here is ‘Nakigahara’, which features an impassioned hook adorned by gliding digital synthesizers panned to the sides and follows up with a spooky and slightly saturated koto refrain following each chorus, with the song capping itself off at the end with a key change and repeated vocal refrain sung through a filter by Ruki. ‘Guren’ also stands tall as a gorgeous orchestra-assisted ballad. Overall DIM is a fantastic barrage of heavy and soft, only hampered partially by its length.
Highlights: Nakighara, Guren
9/10.
3. NINTH (2018)
NINTH works so well because it had the pressure of following up an album as brutally grimdark as DOGMA and instead chose to not cave under that pressure, taking the more realized songwriting skills the band magically attained between BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY and DOGMA and instead chose to write a much brighter but ultimately still heavy album in NINTH. Don’t go into NINTH expecting a pop album or anything, you’re still immediately greeted by brutal metalcore riffing and blistering drums, but most songs certainly still have more of a pop chorus quality than DOGMA’s did.
‘SONOKOE WA MOROKU’ has the pleasure of standing as my favorite ballad in The Gazette’s entire discography, while the closing track ‘UNFINISHED’ has an almost pop-punk edge to it — or I guess maybe “easycore” is the term that the woman-abusers who actually care about that shit call it. Overall NINTH is an excellent and underrated album that did the impossible by following up perfectly on what I had thought originally was just an incredible stroke of luck for The Gazette with DOGMA back in 2015.
Highlights: SONOKOE WA MOROKU, UNFINISHED
8/10.
4. MASS (2021)
The Gazette’s latest offering MASS didn’t immediately click with me. On the surface, it just felt like a huge step back from the massive sounds of DOGMA and NINTH, like they were just doing their most generic metalcore to date. But after repeated listens, the catchiness of the songs on MASS really shine through and that first impression couldn’t have been further from the truth. While MASS is the GazettE at their most pop-oriented, I also don’t see any of these songs becoming massive classic hits that people will still go crazy for in 10 years, and I think that’s actually a good thing. These songs are a lot more dense and feature some pretty smart and catchy songwriting.
MASS is also notable for being the first album that the band wrote separately due to the pandemic, but I think it ultimately doesn’t really show any signs of weakness despite that. The opening track ‘BLINDING HOPE’ kicks in hard with the kind of heavy riffing and melodic hooks you’d expect from a GazettE record and continuous into the following tracks ‘ROLLIN’’ and ‘NOX’, which both feature some incredible rhythms from the band’s mainstay drummer Kai.
‘DAKU’ in particular is probably my favorite song on the album though, sounding like it actually could have easily come out of the DOGMA or NINTH sessions with its menacing dissonant guitar motifs during the verses, eerie synths, and steadily brooding pace in its refrains and chorus. The ballad ‘MOMENT’ also easily works its way into the best slow tracks the GazettE have ever done, and the aptly titled closing track ‘LAST SONG’ caps off the album with a bang, showcasing the closest the band has ever gotten to sounding like their beloved DIR EN GREY.
Highlights: DAKU, LAST SONG
8/10.
5. STACKED RUBBISH
As a whole, STACKED RUBBISH certainly sounds like a product of its time, or at the very least a few years too late for the time that it sounds like. It’s essentially a nu metal album throughout most of its tracklist, with funky hip-hop influenced beats and even some light rap-singing a la Red Hot Chili Peppers or Limp Bizkit or whatever dumb bullshit people thought was good in the early 2000s. But while tracks like ‘AGONY’ showcase that more nu metal side, other tracks like ‘REGRET’ still show off the unique rock sound that you can’t really find elsewhere outside of Japan. Immediately following it, ‘CALM ENVY’ is an early example of the more soft and melodious ballads that the GazettE have become so well-known for doing further on into their career.
While ‘Filth in the beauty’ is a track that still remains wildly popular to this day and is an essential staple to most of the GazettE’s live concerts, it’s the penultimate track ‘CHIZURU’ that really takes the cake for me, with its menacing and bass-heavy downbeat intro and powerful chorus. Overall STACKED RUBBISH is a pretty great record with a few duds but a lot of hits despite the semi-dated sound. I will say however that even DIR EN GREY did nu metal in a more unique way on their black sheep 2007 album THE MARROW OF A BONE.
Highlights: Filth in the beauty, CHIZURU
7/10.
6. BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY (2013)
I was actually pretty hard on BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY at first but as it turns out it’s a pretty solid record with some of my favorite GazettE songs to date on here, like the emotional and melodic bilingual ballad LAST HEAVEN, one of my favorite styles of song that the GazettE do if my bias hasn’t been apparent in my favorite songs on each album up to this point. The unfortunate part about BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY is that it just drags on with filler tracks for a bit too long.
And while these filler tracks are totally listenable, they’re just nothing as outstanding as the other highlights from the other albums that surround its release. The proper opening track INSIDE BEAST is still a massive fan favorite and played at nearly every GazettE concert to this day.
Highlights: REDO, LAST HEAVEN
6/10.
7. NIL (2006)
Here comes a pretty big jump in score and a controversial pick. I don’t like NIL nearly as much as everyone else does. There’s a lot of great ideas here, but it’s ultimately the sound of a new band who just got signed and still haven’t quite found their footing yet, the sound of a young band who really wanted to be DIR EN GREY but couldn’t figure out how to do that even half as good as that band can.
There are some gems here though, and the one-two punch of ‘Cassis’ and ‘SILLY GOD DISCO’ certainly hits hard and stand out as fan favorites in the band’s discography. That’s really all I’ve got to say about NIL, it’s a mostly inoffensive heavy rock/metal album and that’s about as far as it goes. I know some people love NIL, but it just doesn’t do it like that for me.
Highlights: Cassis, SILLY GOD DISCO
5/10.
8. DIVISION (2012)
Division is certainly an album that can be listened to from front to back comfortably, but overall as was the norm for the GazettE up until DOGMA is just full of filler tracks done better by singles and highlights. That being said, when the songs stick out here, they really stick out. ‘KAGEFUMI’ and ‘DRIPPING INSANITY’ in particular are two of my favorite slower and more emotional cuts within the band’s overall discography. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the album falls into one of two categories, either “less interesting ballads than the highlights” or “more generic electronic-metal crossover filler” complete with chuggy guitar riffs, filtered drum machine loops, and non-hooks. It’s also worth noting that this 14-track album features twowhole mostly electronic/orchestral instrumental interludes, two of which split the album into halves that still don’t really make sense when thinking of it as a double LP. If I had to pick a side though, it’s the back half for sure.
Highlights: REQUIRED MALFUNCTION, DRIPPING INSANITY
5/10.
9. DISORDER (2004)
Well, if you wanna hear the sound of a band that’s only just barely found their sound but still mostly just wants to be a DIR EN GREY and Maximum The Hormone cover band, this is basically it. No, they don’t actually do cover songs on here, but they go all in at trying to bite Maximum The Hormone’s sound in particular. There really isn’t too much else to talk about when it comes to DISORDER. It certainly shows the promise that likely got them signed to release their followup NIL on a major label, but overall is a pretty amateurish and formative album with the band not quite sure what they want to be at this point, showcasing a mixed bag of different sounds.
Highlights: Zakuro-gata no Yuutsu, Anti Pop
3/10.
10. TOXIC (2011)
Some may be surprised to see TOXIC all the way at the bottom of this list — afterall, it’s host to many fan-favorite live staples like ‘Venomous Spider’s Web’, ‘My Devil On The Bed’, and ‘Sludgy Cult’. But frankly, aside from these few highlights, TOXIC is an absolute chore to listen to from front to back. It frankly feels like a lot of retreaded ground and overall boring songwriting and despite being the same 51 minute runtime as DOGMA, it feels like it takes significantly more time to listen to in full. TOXIC is not an album I revisit often, frankly if ever.
However, ‘Untitled’ is an excellent song and shows off the direction the band would head towards on the following album, DIVISION. It’s honestly worth skipping altogether — ‘Venomous Spider’s Web’ isn’t even that good. The album cover also makes it look like a Ziyoou-Vachi album, not a GazettE record. That alone might comparatively speak to the quality of this album.
Highlights: My Devil On The Bed, Untitled
2/10.
