Interviewing Japanese rockstars Dir En Grey — whose excellent new album Uroboros is out now on The End Records — was one of the more challenging tasks I’ve been faced with as a journalist hack blogger. Interviewing a band you don’t know that much about and doing so on short notice? Been there, done that, easy. Having to do so in a completely foreign language through an interpreter? That threw me for a loop. Who do I look at while asking the questions — the interpreter or the band? Like, obviously I’m talking to the band, but in essence I’m talking to the interpreter since he’s the only one who understands what I’m saying. Kinda awkward. Did my questions get through as I intended them? Did the band members say I was a complete asshole? I’ll never know.

In any case the band’s two guitarists Kaoru (blue guitar in below pics) and Die (red guitar in below pics) were good sports, the interpreter did a fine job (at least as far as I know!) and the interview came out pretty well. My chat with Dir En Grey — which in retrospect seems really short because every question and answer had to be repeated — after the jump.

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