DAHLIA

Much of the album had already been issued as singles, so there is less new material on it than the length suggests. It is mostly ballads; the heavier side of the band survives in "Scars", "Dahlia", "Drain" and, to a degree, "Rusty Nail". The title track is among the last pieces Yoshiki wrote in his own blend of speed and symphonic metal. "Tears" is a song Yoshiki wrote about his father's death, credited as co-written with Hitomi Shiratori, one of his own aliases. The two songs by hide, "Scars" and "Drain", are both distinctly industrial rock. Yoshiki has called "Drain" very strange and very far ahead for its time, and said hide had a talent for seeing what was coming. According to I.N.A., the song reuses a basic track programmed by Heath. The instrumental "Wriggle" was written by Heath with guitar added by Pata, and is the only piece Heath officially contributed to the band's catalogue. It reached number one on the Oricon chart in the third counting week of November with 429,280 copies and was certified platinum. By the end of the counting year it had sold 500,710 and was the fiftieth best-selling album of the year. It charted for fifteen weeks, the shortest run of any of the band's major studio albums. Alongside the standard CD a limited picture-disc vinyl pressing was made. The running order here is the original's as printed.