I'm looking forward to his next album, judging from his singles Countdown and Season's Call. 666 was an average album, so I had doubts about another rock-based album. I didn't even like the singles that were the precursor to 666. Hello was too bouncy-pop-rock for my tastes and Horizon just wasn't compositionally interesting for me. Some of the songs in 666 were a bit too stagnant for my taste. And a lot of the melodies were too uninteresting or contrived (ie not very innovative or unique) and so got old fast. Not a bad album, but not the best. I've noticed a lot of artists have the "sophomore slump" though, so it's not a big deal.
The recent singles were good, though. I particularly enjoyed the post-chorus of Season's Call, for some odd reason. And while I didn't really like the trailer for Stealth, much less bother to watch it, I thought Countdown was nice enough.
And thank God he didn't punkify his Roentgen songs a la L'arc en Ciel! I was afraid of what would happen when I saw the tracklists, but the [dist] versions were much better than I expected, though probably not as good as the original. Then again, just about anything from Roentgen would be hard to top, compositionally.
edit: by the way:
Okay, f**k what I said I have a new fav! "Secret Letters (Jap. ver.)" OMG!!! I had only heard it in English before but MY GOD!!! Talk about emotionally devestating
Yeah, I much prefer the Japanese version to the English. The change in chorus lines with a climatic English line at the end vs. the same English lyrics repeated in the chorus (reducing the climax at the end)? Japanese, please!