Bands That Remind You Of Visual Kei

[blackdoll 907]

the rifts mainly and when she holds the growls

 

the riffs, and piano . i know i herd the riffs in some vk songs

 

 

 

anyway check the bands out! more songs on the channels

[Tokage 5930]

Pretty much all the 'typical' '90s nu-metal bands (Korn, Coal Chamber, Limp Bizkit, Deftones) sound like a large majority of VK bands from ~2002 - 2007 in some shape or form. Early girugamesh and also √eight, for example.

 

Also, Exotic Animal Petting Zoo always gave me a modern Dir en grey type of vibe (although they're not VK anymore, but still..)

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Early 90s bands seemed to be influenced by new romantic stuff. 

 

For example:

 

http://www.last.fm/music/Duran+Duran/_/Planet+Earth

 

This sounds like something early Penicillin or late-early Kuroyume would have done.

 

And this has synth that I can definitely see later 90s gawf bands like Eliphas Levi or Noir Fleurir using:

 

http://www.last.fm/music/Visage/Fade+To+Grey:+The+Best+Of+Visage/Mind+Of+A+Toy

[lichtlune 915]

Specimen - Hex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5KPA5SEqgU

[blackdoll 907]

yeah and the modern moldic death metal YT channel ReConstructDe4d

seems to sounds like a lot of the harder bands now a days (maybe not vocals though).

[rebelstrik 111]

i guess the cure inspired a lot of vkei bands.

[Pretsy 1343]

to knock on @Peace Heavy and @rebelstrik:

 

Yes, the bands you mentioned have had their own influence in earlier vk music, but when we take the influences most old vkei artists cited in their interviews into account - Bauhaus and Japan (band) are more often mentioned than say, The Cure or Duran Duran (and much more influencing that way)

 

For example: Sylvian has influenced many old vk singers (Morrie, Kiyoharu, Atsushi, Hyde...even Kyo himself) and come to think of this tho, the vibe of this song is somewhat similar to Kuroyume's pop song "Kuchizuke" - you could call him, say, "the father of typical vk vocals"

 

you can hear this kind of vocal/instrumental work (listen to those chords) in many, many post-punk-y vk songs...also: the bass.

 

Back to the topic tho, bands that remind me of vk as I knew it and loved it would be above - I mentioned reasons above.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Oh, I just listed them as a stylistic example more than to say they, specifically, are the source of inspiration. I'm sure the examples you've given are a much closer origin.

 

That Bauhaus song is awesome :V . Like you said, it sounds like an angrier / darker "Kuchizuke."

[nekkichi 6042]

that bauhaus track seriously sounds like jinkaku radio at their peak, brb torrenting discog

[Wonrei 108]

It's interesting to note the involvement of Japan with the actual japanese country... I mean, Masami Tsuchiya was their member for a while and they were pretty famous there. Ippu Do in a sense probably carried many of those influences over and brought them to the japanese scene.
 
I'd also bring The Mission and (early)The Cult/Southern Death Cult to the table. Both had this weird mix of goth rock, hard rock and pop that would influence a lot later Dead End and the bands that came following their later sound, like early L'arc~en~ciel and even some Luna Sea.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsB9UOZKG3I

 This song by The Mission for example reminds me so much of something you'd be able to hear on Dead End's Zero or L'arc's Dune.(sorry for the quality, all the studio versions seem to have been deleted from youtube)

 

 

I'd also maybe mention some hard rock/AOR bands because that was definitely an influence to bands like Siam Shade, Dead End and Janne Da Arc. maybe l8r
 

[Ikna 1225]

People already have mentioned most of the important influental gothic rock and post-punk bands, but I am surprised nobody has mentioned any japanese ones yet. Groups like Madame Edwarda, Phaidia, Neurotic Doll and Sadie Sads had quite a similiar style to many of the post-punkish early visual kei groups of the early 90s, especially Nagoya kei groups like Silver~Rose, early ROUAGE or Gilles de Rais.
Makes sense, since this groups operated within the regions and venues were Visual kei groups later would form, so there was a direct influence.

Also compare Sadie Sads' Glas Bruch (I feel it has quite a strong proto Visual kei flair). G-Schmitt should be worth mentioned too and of course all the other underground gothic rock bands from Japan (ASYLUM, Sex Android, Geil). Some of them are technically considered oldschool visual kei, such as EX-Ans or VOISS.

Oh and: if you mention Bauhaus then you should not forget Siouxsie and the Banshees. Their influence on early visual kei is often overlooked, maybe because it's not all too obvious, but the Banshees were quite big in Japan (and Siouxsie herself was influenced by japanese fashion and culture). Siouxsie was your typical 80s goth prototype as a lot of (new) wavers, punks and new romantics aimed to look like her. Black backcomped hair, massive amounts of dark eyeshadow and red lipstick are her trademark – and you happen to see this exact look a lot in early Vk bands too. Inoran from Luna Sea almost looked like a male japanese version of her.

Big But: I'd rather put all of this bands in a seperate thread called "Influences/origins of visual kei". Because it's a bit weird to say that those groups remind me of visual kei, when it's rather that this groups influenced (among other bands from different genres) visual kei (so early Vkei reminds me of the old Punk and New Wave stuff and not the other way round). For me most of them are still post-punk groups. A thread about the history, influences and origins of visual kei (and how it shifted from Hard/Glam/Punk-Rock and New Wave inspired music into the weird style mix thing it is today) would be very interesting though! (especially since I only know about the wave and goth origins so i'd be interested to hear about the other influences).

When it comes to groups outside of the "has influnces Visual kei in soe way" spectrum... then I don't know any bands who remind me of Vk. Sure, a lot of goth, Hardrock, Nu-Metal, etc bands sounded similiar to the struff from the late 80s to 90s, but as said again: that's because those genres had a definite influence on Visual kei. I don't remember seeing so many other modern bands drawing influence from VK, let alone being similiar to it (without having the intention of being a VK band).
Some people would argue that groups like Black Veil Brides are reminding them of Visual kei because of their looks... I wonder if the band does even know about Visual kei's existence? (I don't know, I am not a fan of them). But I can see why people would have the idea that make-up heavy Metalcore (or Emo?) groups are VK, especially since the musical style became popular within the Visual kei scene in the recent years too.

There was even a time magazines tried to sell those finnish rock bands full of adrogynous men to sell as Visual Kei. And bands like Tokio Hotel... most of the time it#s just the look which is reminiscent (or comparable) to Visual kei, but that's it.

[Wonrei 108]

^Maybe I could do something like that. I spent quite some years trying to understand the origins of VK, so I could try to explain the whole mix of goth rock/post punk/new wave/speed/power metal/glam rock that we call visual kei. If anyone wants to help it would be great tho. I'll try writing it later today

 

And yeah, I'd mention Siouxsie too. A band where their influence is quite noticeable is Zi:Kill...

 

 

And I'd like to leave this specific Cure song here, as when I first listened to it I was amazed at how much the whole song reminded me of visual kei

 

[Pretsy 1343]

One more back-to-the-past post until "origins of vk" comes out (mods might like to place those retro posts into that topic later):

 

This exact "Japan mix", especially the vocal mix, reminds me a lot of those later baritone vs. high key instrumental-acts, like say, EVERYTHING by CG's Shuuji - and the intro soloing is just so vk imho.

[Champ213 1858]

And I'd like to leave this specific Cure song here, as when I first listened to it I was amazed at how much the whole song reminded me of visual kei

 

 

I have been listening to The Cure for a long time, but this never really occured to me. But now I'm listening to this again, I definetely have to agree. I can totally see the 1992 vk band with cheap homemade goth clothing and bushy red and pink hair in front of my inner eye now.

[relentless 254]

I wouldn't say that "Visual Kei" is a specific sound though. Being rooted in its image, it's up to each individual band and scene to determine the sound of their music. Early VK was inspired by Western Glam and shock rock acts like Kiss; but today's bands aren't -- they're drawing influences from elsewhere.

One band:

Another band:

Even when you try to break down the bands in terms of "scene" (Oshare kei, for instance), it's largely based on their LOOK that defines them and not necessarily about a given sound in their music (though, there is correlation). Realistically, we can plug any band in the world into this thread and it will somehow have a similarity (unless it's really bizarre; but you never know). Why is this? Because each band (unless there is deliberate copying from a band like Sadie and 12012 in regards to Dir en grey) is going to have different influences that are going to contribute to how they sound.

[Wonrei 108]

Of course today's bands have been more varied, but early visual kei is what we're mostly talking about in this thread. And early visual kei managed to combine some lots of genres... it wasn't a genre itself, I believe. Or maybe it was? It has enough elements to be called so. But I'm not sure. We had influences from lots of things man, not only Kiss. Kiss was sure an influence in X Japan an the likes, but the visual kei sonority - those guitars, those basslines, the melodies hailing straight from 80's and 90's jpop were a hybrid of many different genres. Of course each band also had their own way of interpreting the sound, some going more metal(speed and power metal with a little glam were bases for many of the earlier visual bands, like X, Gargoyle, Gastunk, early Dead End), others more inspired by goth rock, post-punk and deathrock(Luna Sea, Kuroyume, later Dead End, D'erlanger) and even poppier stuff(Boowy, early Buck-tick,Glay, Sophia) with roots in new wave and the explosion of the so called J-POP on the 80's. Hell even J-pop is a really complicated job - how did japan went from enka and a thousand of folk bands to playing an style highly similar to what was in the 80's west but with these really different melodies, taking cues from jazz fusion and new wave? Jesus, japan's recent music history deserved some kind of further study, it's all really messed up. 

 

All right, I think I should create a thread for this. We're just going to move the subject too far. After it is created could the mods please move all these posts from people here to the new thread? So everything gets in the right place.

[Champ213 1858]

The posts that are already made in this thread I'd rather keep here because  the thread would become really disjointed if I were to remove them.

 

Any further posts that are not about the topic at hand, but the broader history of visual kei, can continue here. Those people that already raised some points about it in this thread, feel free to bring them up again in the new thread.

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

[blackdoll 907]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2WVO1qr5tA

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5bF9pcVgwI

 

riffs