@Swallow Your Soul> I agree with you. JCRnR is however growing on me, slowly but surely.

Now, following the heavy metal/j-rock hybrid train we have a personal favorite of mine, the latest "full-length" release by DespairsRay.
As I said, it's a pretty heavy band. Prominent drums by Tsukasa (another one of the many outstanding japanese drummers influenced by the best of them all - X-Japan's Yoshiki).
Karyu and Zero, guitar and bass respectively, do their duties as they should... but the one element that makes DesRay stand out is Hizumi, the vocalist.
His ranges are pretty impressive and while his style is not as distorted as Dir en grey's Kyo (is that a good or bad thing? you decide!) it's very straight on and fits the music like a glove.

DespairsRay has, regardless of the fact that they have been around since early 2000, never released a full-length album.
Instead they have a myriad of singles thrown at us and the mini-albums that eventually appears serves more like single compilations (with a few bonuses).
Interesting, eh?

Anyway, the latest of these mini-albums is 2004's "Born", while lacking anything new for the fans of the band; it's a very good introduction to their music.

It consists of 5 tracks, as following:

1. Born - 4:49
This is the title track. It's well... fucking awesome. Tsukasa's soft drum line gets you started and the keyboard effects does as well, then heavy metal hell breaks loose and Hizumi takes you on a journey throughout an incredibly catchy song. After hearing this, I was stuck in the DesRay world.
- Rating 5/5

2. Marry of the Blood - 8:45
Previously appeared on 2003's "MaVERICK" (see, they even re-use songs from earlier albums...) but this time it's 2 minutes longer.
The only difference from the original song is a very weird intro as well as a longer ending. A good and heavy song when you want to break some havoc, but yeah, cheap to recycle it.
- Rating 3/5

3. Murder Freaks - 4:52
Insane song. Very good for the adrenaline rush. You can scream along with it. Not particularly awesome, but very nice to put on occasionally.
- Rating 4/5

4. Yami ni furu kiseki - 6:39
Contestant for best j-rock song ever. This song is fucking delight. The intro is BEAUTIFUL, the verses and choruses are enthralling and makes you die slowly out of it's pure awesomeness. The fact that this also appeared on MaVERICK doesn't matter at all. Even though it's almost completely unchanged. So fucking awesome.
- Rating 6/5

5. Quarter Void - 4:31
Beautiful and mysterious. Catchy. I think this song is a good defination on the music DesRay does. There's not much else to say about it.
- Rating 5/5

If you fast forward to song 83 you get an acoustic live version of Yami ni furu kiseki, though only the ending of it. Pointless.

Pick this EP up, people.
And for DesRay > RELEASE A FUCKING ALBUM. Commercial swines!