Dude, that’s so intense

A ferocious little dynamo rips off his shirt and streaks howling across the stage atop a bludgeoning beat. Maybe he cuts his torso too, and glowers there bleeding. Another Iggy/Manson rerun? Repetition can mute shock; today, such rock ‘n’ roll theatrics come off like the latest mounting of a Sophocles tragedy.

But any modern portrayer of Oedipus or Orestes merits a squint on his own terms. And when the dynamo is Kyo, of the Japanese hard-rock juggernaut Dir En Grey, questions of mimicry quickly shrivel.

To start with, Kyo is a staggering vocalist. His melodies (usually sung in Japanese, which implies no communication problem) soar above the racket with an authority that recalls Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, substituting twisted humanity for Dickinson’s battle ax. Kyo also has stockpiled an extreme range of vocal inflections, from a guttural mutter to a tonsil-ripping scream -- no electronic effects needed. Just as important during the band’s live show, you can’t take your eyes off his compact frame as he flexes pecs, declaims from atop a speaker bank or, like a black hole, crouches to draw the light into the gravity of his despair.

The mood indeed is intensely depressive; while the meaning of the group’s name has been a source of conjecture, the interpretation that makes most sense is the internationally flavored salutation “dir” (German) “en” (Spanish) “grey” (English) -- “to you, in grey.” But there’s a lot of color to this group: Instrumentalists Kaoru (guitar), Die (guitar), Toshiya (bass) and Shinya (drums) are showboaters with a vivid, glammy look that inspires an even greater sartorial spectacle among their audience, which isn’t as heavily Asian as you might guess.

Musically too Dir En Grey skips wildly across the spectrum. Like the artistic climate in general, the five have veered away from lyricism and toward more extreme territory over their 10 years; their new CD, “Marrow of the Bone,” bristles with dense metallic thrash. Still, they hold tight to their flashiest skill, the cohesive grafting of rhythms and styles. A piano ballad turns into a funeral march with a dramatic catharsis. A trebly pop chord gives way to a leaden crescendo. With a boot to the distortion pedal, a riff out of the Doobie Brothers smokes up into a metal-funk figure worthy of King’s X. Contempt wrangles with romance. Rhythms and speeds alternate from minute to minute, somehow without sounding fractured. That’s good musicianship.

Comparisons to Marilyn Manson ring truest when it comes to the care Dir En Grey takes with its videos, notably Kyo’s smudgy makeup and steel teeth in “Saku,” with its insects-and-animals theme -- named best of last year by Revolver magazine in conjunction with MTV’s “Headbangers Ball.” Other clips are saturated with inventive filmic fillips such as million-cut artificial image-blossoms and abstract tint overlays, or burst with hard-hitting images: exploding heads, a hanged child, a projectile-defecating animated troll. The videos leave an impression of art films, not commercials.

Dir En Grey clearly wants to rule the world. It regularly sells out mid-size venues, as it did the Wiltern a year ago; hardly stopping after its own dates, it turned heads during its slot on the 2006 Family Values Tour. Now it is stalking the U.S. again.

Be aware: A Dir En Grey show can drain you, and these guys do it mostly the old-fashioned way, by blasting their guts out and raging about things that matter to them. On record of late, the sound layering allows just enough clarity to make out distinct shapes in the murk. Live, the distinctions are more subliminal, the assault more physical.

Many groups’ performances leave little behind to remember; Dir En Grey, with its unusual rhythmic interplay and ability to catapult a listener between the worlds of Alice Cooper and Charles Aznavour, resonates in memory like a living mystery. Call it depth.

Dir En Grey’s billmates are Bleed the Dream and Fair to Midland.

Veterans of the Warped and the Taste of Chaos tours, L.A.-based Bleed the Dream is a strummy emo outfit returning with a revamped lineup after losing its drummer to leukemia and changing singers. Texas’ Fair to Midland, debut artists of Serjical Strike, the new label of System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, promises to make commercial inroads with its punchy, melodic guitar rock and unusually strong songwriting.

weekend@latimes.com

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Dir En Grey

Where: The Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 6 p.m. Friday

Price: $29.50 (sold out)

Info: (213) 388-1400; www.wiltern.com

Also

Where: Avalon Hollywood, 1735 N. Vine, Hollywood

When: 6 p.m. Saturday

Price: $29.50

Info: (323) 467-4571; www.avalonhollywood.com