I agree with 'Without You' being their worst song ever. (yeah, I know, come on fangirls and hit me hard.) What bothers me the most is actually the way Yoshiki announced it as something oh-so utterly beautiful and then it was no more than a rather tasteless ballad clearly created to make fans cry and to keep up their levels of trashy sentimentalism.
I don't see "Without You" that way at all. Its length alone at 16 mins. tells, to me, it's not about commercialism. Plus, you have to remember those tears falling down in the studio ver.
I think its development is thematically pleasant.
Me, I would definitely go for "Drain" as their worst ever song (it's utterly uncreative and I usually hate the industrial sound in music in any case). "Wriggle" also. I kind of see some intention at being urban there but the ambience just isn't there in comparison to many "serious" "urban ambient" musicians such as Craig Armstrong. Also some un-original stuff is a no-no (Desperate Angel, Joker reminds me a little of Hanoi Rocks, as does Taiji's look in the 1980s --> compare with Michael Moore).
I think people may miss the point of the "happier" songs (Joker, Easy Fight...). In tragedy (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy), people can be happy and profoundly sad at the same time. Hide arguably was the epitome of this lifestyle.
BTW: unless I'm mistaken, the "Rose of Pain" intro after J. S. Bach borrows from one of the symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich. I think it was Shostakovich but the trouble is, I could not locate the section later even though I own all of his symphonies and found it something like years ago. This kind of creativity I would like to see more, I think it peaked in "Art of Life".
In other words, too much of a Yoshiki that should have grown up and didn't.
Growing up is sometimes dangerous, but I see your point.
I'm not fond of IV neither. The lyrics are too cliche and the beat is too commercial. I think they were so concerned with getting their name on everyone's lips, they ended up forgetting about what's actually good music. Catchy stuff in detriment of art just doesn't work.
This is true IMO also: the direction of blandness and calculated "emo-ism" worries me also but I don't see "Without You" like that; on the contrary, it seems to me Yoshiki put a lot of effort into that piece. The danger is, you succeed financially by choosing the emo route. This primacy on success is exactly the contrary to X's early philosophy when they wanted NOT to please (financially, etc.) but shock and tremble and therefore got thrown out and banned time and again. It's unfortunate if they forgot how much success _difference_ actually brought to them.