MOTHER

The album reached number two on the Oricon album chart and stayed on it for thirty weeks. The RIAJ certified it platinum that same year, for sales above four hundred thousand. Bassist J has said its success changed everything for the band. The heat that the previous record, Eden, had lacked is back, and the judgement repeated ever since is that although every song here has a character of its own, the album holds together as one thing. The critic Takuya Ito wrote that this unity makes each song stronger for being next to the others, and placed the record as a treasure not only within the visual kei scene but within Japanese music as a whole. The magazine Band Yarouze named it one of the defining albums of 1989 to 1998 in a 2004 issue, and Bounce put it at number 49 in its 2009 list of 54 Standard Japanese Rock Albums. In 2021 Jamie Cansdale of Kerrang! included it among thirteen essential Japanese rock and metal albums and called it the band's magnum opus. On 29 November 2023 Luna Sea released a wholly re-recorded version of it through Avex Trax. The running order here is the original's as printed.