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FerrisWheeL - 黎明レゾナンス FerrisWheeL - グリザイユの胚珠 FerrisWheeL - 夢幻郷 Marvelous Cruelty - 吊サレタ奇形ノ罠

アルケミ (ARCHEMI.) new mini album "阿吽 (Aun)" will be released at 2018/12/5. (5 tracks, 2200 yen)

The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids. “Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is. There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor. Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.” Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.” Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise. Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else. Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei. Or was it??? Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz. Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.

Their first mini album 「雨の朝、新宿に死す」(Ame no asa, shinjuku ni shitsu) will be released on 2018.11.07. (2500 yen + taxes) Tracklist : 1.新宿は燃えているか(Album Ver.) (Shinjuku wa moete iru ka) 2.孤独たちのララバイ(Kodoku-tachi no lullaby) 3.クチナシ(Kuchinashi) 4.青春の断末魔(Seishun no danmatsuma) 5.雨の朝、新宿に死す(Ame no asa, shinjuku ni shitsu)

As a single mother (divorced), I can understand what it was like for this woman. I've made questionable decisions because of loneliness and such, but if any guy had ever even looked at my child the wrong way, they'd never find his body... Looking at those photos was heartbreaking. In every single photo that poor girl looks terrified. There are always alot of rumors in VK, with the majority being made up by jealous bangya, but this woman seems to have alot of proof. Enough to go to the police, at least. My ex was a minor bandman in Osaka and he never really liked me going to Undercode events (I tried not to, but there was one band I liked). On the rare occasion he played an Undercode event, he did his set, then hid in the band van until it was time to go home! But this news is a million times worse than anything I've heard about before. I hope he burns.

- DADAROMA - 僕はアンドロイド 【Regular edition】 - DADAROMA - 3rd Anniversary ONEMAN TOUR FINAL「This is "LIVE”」 2018.03.21東京キネマ倶楽部 【DVD】 - 己龍 - 無垢 【TYPE C+ 2 cards : 一色日和 &九条武政 + photo 一色日和】 - lynch. - XIII 【Limited edition 2CD+Blu-Ray+phobook+special packaging+poster】 - Féroces - Joséphine 【digital】 - toe - Our Latest Number 【digital】

12 days and still nothing. Gan-Shin told me that "it's up to the band", not sure how to understand that. To me it sounds like they don't know more about possible teasers either. But a band like DEG, their 10th album and NO teasers? Unimaginable.

rare solo image of kyo leaked

Is that stack of TVs in the Ranunculus PV playing a bunch of their past PVs?

It's hard to be a goth guy living in a stupid sunny tropical country. #killme

Madmans Esprit covered DIR EN GREY this time. The chorus is awesome.

❤️

For as much as I love visual kei, there are plenty of practices I detest. I could go on forever. It wouldn't be fair to celebrate all of the good in the scene without admitting the bad as well. There are so many things that make me sad, make me irate, or make me want to rip my hair out that it was hard to settle on just five. Here's five commonplace practices in visual kei that's a total ball ache for any international fan invested into the scene. Like I said above, I have way more than five things that annoy me about the scene. Does anyone else want to fill in the gaps with practices that they hate that they've come to accept within the scene? Come share your frustrations and horror stories with me. We have plenty of tea and live-distributed crackers for you.

Hi! I look around this place a lot but I finally decided to join today. I'm a fan of many many many bands, from D.I.D. Until The Day I Die, Vexent, Kizu, The Micro Head 4Ns, Fatima, Versaillies, mainly Kamijo, D, The Black Swan, Mucc, DimLim, Dir en Grey, Sadie, Merry Bad End, Devize, every band on starwave records, G.L.A.M.S, Buck-Tick, Megaromania, Caligari, Avelcain, Avanchick, and more to X Japan, Malice Mizer, Baiser, etc listing them all would be a wall of text so I'll list some of the subgenres next, Ero-Guro Kei, Nagoya Kei, Harajuku Kei, and Kotekote kei. I adore Kaya, hide and a lot more. Nice to meet you guys! As you can see I'm a huge VK Jrock fan~!

it'll end up being Yoshiki's solo album, just like with that Attack on Titans OP only being credited to him

I hope for the next album they don’t drop any singles or samples at all.

Which quite frankly is a possibility

title of their new mini-album is finalized as "壊創するシンポジウム" (Aisousuru Symposium) and it will be released at 2018/10/17 (2 types) Limited edition (2916yen) Regular edition (2376yen)

I watched 5 Ugly Kingdom, Code of VULGAR[ism], and UROBOROS -proof...- while waiting.

Ive shipped guitars from japan before. Im currently waiting on one that cost $5k. Shipping ususally averages out to around $300, so between double and triple what it would cost to ship a guitar domestically. The shitty part about their instrument prices are that they are between $500-2000 OVER what it would cost to buy and ship a guitar from ikebe or kurosawa BEFORE THEY EVEN ADD SHIPPING, so what these fucksticks are doing is just going to the store, ordering the guitar, and basically charging you a 30% premium, then bending you over on shipping. Fuuuuuck that shit. Im looking into Blackship to secure an a knot membership. Looks like its a side service from white rabbit. Have any of you guys used them before? Thoughts? Im determined to get a membership this year no matter what it takes.

vo.さえまる(Saemaru) gt.Kou Gt.玖(Tama) Dr.むー(Mu)

Yoshiki trying to beat GnR' Chinese Democracy infamous record

Listened to Six Ugly again while waiting

#make_VK_bops_relatable_again_x

DSS is a musical laxative confirmed x

I almost shit my pants when I saw the samples pop up at the top of my YouTube feed just now. Then I realized they were the samples for DSS Live at Nippon Budokan

you always got the deep cuts. respect!

I was wondering the same too. Looks like it.

I don't know if anyone mentionned this, but the stuff bands release only in japan, like, for example, ALSDEAD's last live DVD. In 7 years, they never released any dvd but they released it only in japan, and I had to paid like 100$ for that god damn dvd, and got it like 2 years after it was released. Why the hell didn't they released it internationally? I wanted to hear them live so bad, they even played some shows in the US. They are my favorite band, and it was killing me not having their dvd. I was searching for it everywhere and couldn't find it. I agree with most of what people said. The fan base is also a pain in the ass. I don't have friends that like Visual Kei, I tried several times online, this year I even joined some facebook groups, but god damnit, all they could talk was The GazettE and only that one band. I've been following the scene since like 2006 and never made a online friend that I could share my passion with. People often judge me because I listen to japanese music. I remember one girl that once said to me, "Why don't you listen to music like everyone else?". I also hate the live-limited releases. They cost so much if they someone wasn't kind enough to share it. And well, the shipping from Japan to Canada. I bought Dadaroma's DVD and that shit cost me 120$. 70$ for a live dvd is soooo expensive. For an example, I bought like Delain's dvd, it cost me like 40$, but I had 2 live cds with it. Same with Nightwish. Why does VK cost so much? I'm also somehow that likes to buy cds and have a collection. My current collection probably cost me 5000$ since 2008. and well, I often have to download stuff as I don't have much money, and well, when I share stuff it gets uploaded everywhere. I rarely buy stuff anymore except for alsdead (now AllS). Anyway, that was me complaining haha.

I think the first time Yoshiki said the album was 90% complete was in 2007? He's a fucking liar.

Had never heard of Moran before Deep Sanctuary so I downloaded their discography today. What ya'll think of them?

What tragedy shall befall the band and delay it indefinitely once again?

those guys x did you know that snakesz are renowned for their commercial astuteness?

I actually really like the sound of this and I never got into Marco before

Lovely song!

Very colorful for them—The album artwork and the video. The song is good though, if not a bit mediocre (by their standards)

Jaki - 狂旋律 La'veil MizeriA - 呪縛郷 -Reincarnation ver.- La'veil MizeriA - 緋い縷 V.A. - EMERGENCY EXPRESS 1994 La fẽerie - La berceuse AZALEA - Fetish ～Masochistの喜劇～ MaitoeriA - 明星 MaitoreiA - ユグドラシル Waiting to be shipped: glamscure - Succubus≒incubuS LOGiQ - はじまりの詩 Crucifixion - 十三月ノ明晰夢 第零夜 「réveil」

It is back on again now! (and also on Itunes and amazon and everywhere) The reason why it disappeared is that they cut ties with ATMF and it appearently took a while for the new label to get the rights to put it back. (I'm glad my recommendation was well received : ) )

this is one of the best things i've heard this year,they deserve total attention of this forum visual kei and black metal,my two fav subgenres together,what could be better? and glad that they kept the korean language in most of the tracks, i'm definetely not used to listen any metal songs in korean,sounds really refreshing

these dudes are GODS for having grown up on dir en grey, internalizing their style and DEG-isms but keeping their sound fresh and relevant to post 2015s--which tbh even DEG stumble on. I cant recall any other era in recent heavy VK history with such interesting music (okay maybe the era where early dezert, avelcain and grieva were active).

I'll tell my grand-kids I've witnessed the birth of of the two most solid 201x VK bands : Kizu and DIMLIM. How can they get so much better at each release ? Album please.

What dimension is this where yoshiki and skrillex are chums. The X album can't be finished yet because yoshiki is finishing his dubstep apprenticeship with Skrill.

He didn't order a pizza in group chat, so this was an amateur-hour copout

You got good taste, been obsessed with this one for ages.

Live Dist releases for sure, and the new trend of the more settled older bands or a member of the said bands doing side project and releasing limited versions with super hefty prices, like, chill Chris Brown! Your DVD just not worth $50 no matter what 😂😂😂

I was around during the j-pop/j-rock/VK "boom" in the U.S., if you can even call the small subculture following it had for a short time that. I feel like it really comes down to a combination of these three things: 1.) Lack of availability/promotion When j-rock was at its "peak" popularity overseas, it was still somewhat difficult to purchase official releases outside of Japan, especially for indies acts. Most CD shops didn't ship overseas, if they even had English language sites at all. Labels and bands were late to utilize YouTube and SNS to promote their music, and introduction into the scene still relied heavily on music sharing networks or download sites. There was too little official information available/properly translated into English. By the time labels finally started getting around to reaching out to overseas audiences, people were moving on (to K-pop or in general). In general Japanese artists/labels just weren't committed to attracting overseas audiences or embracing any audience they did have. 2.) Touring issues Most bands ended up performing at anime conventions, despite if they had any real connection to cosplay or an anime show. Much of the time these acts were being consumed by people who were curious about the artist because they were from Japan, with few actual fans assembled at one place in comparison. Exoticism may get people to see you once or twice, but it usually doesn't compute into CD sales, especially when the value of the yen was so high and the cost of Japanese music so expensive compared to Western music. These acts, and even the rare show booked outside of a con was subject to poor management, planning, or promotion. Often they were cancelled. Perhaps if more acts had gone Dir en grey's route of performing at festivals, it would have made a sizable enough movement to have an impact, but it's hard to say. 3.) The general demise of rock music as mainstream Sure, rock will never get old. But rock is not nearly as mainstream as it was in the 90s and early 2000s. Even as certain indie rock sounds/artists flourish, it's a much different style than what a lot of j-rock (especially VK) is doing. So on top of less people listening to rock in general, there are less people interested in the style of rock Japan is making. Even I'm not as fond of most of the rock that's popular in Japan ATM (VK or generally speaking). Generally speaking, a lot of overseas VK fans I knew at the time eventually moved on to K-pop. Unlike Japan, Korean artists/labels were much more insistent on pushing for international success. They also swooped in taking advantage of YouTube and SNS promotion where Japan didn't. While this lead to a flood in the market for some time, it also give the genre the momentum that j-rock (or j-pop tbh) never had, eventually making it a powerful force to be reckoned with it's turning into today.