Dahlia is the fifth studio album by Japanese rock band X Japan, released on November 4, 1996, by Atlantic Records.

The album is composed largely of ballads, with only a few tracks retaining the band's heavier musical traits seen on previous releases.

1994 held few performances for the band as the members were focusing on their solo and side projects, but they did play two consecutive New Year's Eve concerts at the Tokyo Dome, titled Aoi Yoru (青い夜, Blue Night) and Shiroi Yoru (白い夜, White Night) respectively.

Although later that same day they played "Forever Love" at that year's Kōhaku Uta Gassen, marking their true last performance.

The album is composed largely of ballads, with only a few tracks (i.e. "Scars", "Dahlia", "Drain", and to some extent "Rusty Nail") retaining the band's heavier musical traits seen on previous releases.

The ballad "Tears" was written and composed by Yoshiki about the death of his father, though credited as co-authored by one of his aliases Hitomi Shiratori.

Yoshiki called "Drain" "very strange" and "very cutting edge" for its time, and said that hide had a talent for seeing the future in that regard.

In the third counting week of November, it reached number one on the Oricon chart, with sales of 429,280 copies[6] and was certified platinum.

[10] The 1998 release, which was a reissue of the original, and the 2001 one, which contained all previous versions, reached numbers eighteen and nineteen, respectively, and both charted for 4 weeks.

[10] The sixth single, "Crucify My Love", reached number two in the second counting week of September, with sales of 153,570 copies.

Alexey Eremenko of Allmusic said that "despite being a heavy metal act at heart, X Japan was always a deceptively diverse band, and this trait is in full bloom on Dahlia", and it "made sense for the members to go their separate ways" because "the group sounds tighter than ever -- but the music is really wide-ranging."

Besides "plenty full-on piano-and-strings ballads", it also has a "U2-like speedy ditty, some semi-psychedelic experiments (the quite catchy 'White Poem I')", and "a ten-minute epic that puts 'November Rain' to shame with its turgid bombast".

Several songs from the record remain mainstays in X Japan's live sets even after reuniting in 2007, such as "Rusty Nail," "Tears," "Forever Love" and "Drain."

[23] Swedish metal band Dragonland added a cover of the song to the Japanese edition of their 2004 album Starfall.

[31][32] The song was covered by South Korean rock band TRAX in 2004, as a B-side on the Japanese version of their "Scorpio" single, which was produced by Yoshiki.