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I'm pretty much a lurker nowadays, so I'm really not one to speak haha, but I still agree with this topic. If you're a staff member and you're thinking this topic could be hinting at you being one of the inactive mods/admins, please consider how much you still have to offer for this forum. Feelings of nostalgia or responsibility are not enough reason to keep being a staff member.

Hello everyone, If I remember right this kind of topic was already been discussed longer ago. And I still yet think it's a good idea to divide the forum into more "parts" Let's create a kpop part. to discuss kpop things and to download kpop stuff. Also would be nice if we could seperate visual kei and jrock. Now days this forum is almost Visual Kei only and it's hard to find non-vk topics or music. So the music part of forum would look like: Visual Kei Japanse pop, rock & metal. Korean pop with all subforums we already have. somehow it doesn't matter if the VK part and the Kpop part would be more active. but at least those who want to talk about "normal" they don't need to. We just need to kinda post then in those sub forums. we need to fill them. however a kpop part is 100% needed. EDIT: I saw Style talking about "ANIME" subforum. and yes that's a damn good idea. and ANIME/MANGA subforum would be even greater! Also cdrama jdrama-kdrama subforum would be also nice. to discuss our dramas ps. if more people have ideas for must have subforums, then post it!

Lately me and various other regulars ( whom I hope voice their support for immediate action and add to the discussion ) have been thinking that there's a problem, and that is the severe lack of participation in forum activities in part of some of the staff members. It's pretty much widely acknowledged all around that especially a bulk of the blue ( and the late green, whom were subsequently and justly culled ) mods are notoriously inactive when it comes to interacting with much of the community. It's true that I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and what are the contributions of each one there, but I do believe that actual "moderating" is far from being the only job of a staff member. A member of the staff should have a proactive approach to the forums; interacting with the members, making topics and creating discussions as often as possible and not just once or twice a month when the mood is right. The benefits of this approach for example have been seen in the review and general sections. If Zess and CAT5 wouldn't have made all the topics and discussions there that they have I bet nobody would have and the general section would still be pretty much dead. I think the forum would benefit a lot from updating the staff roster with users who are in the loop of the current goings in the Japanese music scene, and imporantly the said users should be known by the people and the people should know them. I bet many newcomers who registered in the late 2012, early 2013 have no clue who these people are and I can't really blame them, seeing as some of the staff rarely post anything that classifies as a contribution. And I'm not trying to come off as hostile, but I really think this forum has seen a surge of activity as of late ( some people would very much disagree with me though ) and I think that we should capitalize on that with a new, active and participating staff. There should be as little inactivity as possible and most definately zero people that clearly stick around just because they're friends. A mod status should be for those who are absolutely dedicated and if the time comes when they cannot live up to their duties, they should resign without a second thought. edit: I urge everyone to say either yay or nay below. There needs to be some discussion about this because this is what people complain about all the time. Everyone, and I mean everyone has complained about the forum being dead at one point. I honestly think that a staff that is right there in the middle of everything is the best way to engage this problem. While I also realise that you might be hesitant to do a revamp after the failure of the green mods, culling the one or two that are certainly solely dead weight right now and replacing them with new ones wouldn't hurt. edit2: To address another concern that was voiced: The user and mod apathy. It may be a convenient excuse for staff members and users alike to free themselves of the burden of contributing just because "What does it matter when nobody else won't do anything either". That's reasonable, why would anyone post when nobody else does? I feel this concern can be directly addressed with a proactive, enthusiastic and most importantly of all, in the loop staff. What makes or breaks any content creator and site on the web is quality and consistency. The amount of good coming from a staff that brings life to where there isn't should be obvious for anyone. One or two mods can't do that alone, it needs to be the whole team. These changes need to be done swiftly and throughout with zero compromise or months long discussions between the administration. I think it's necessary that the amount of new blood is large is enough to reinvigorate the staff and forum.

Being one of the people who's been here for years, and being one who listens to kpop at that, I still think this isn't a good idea. This forum is supposed to be about Japanese music, right? We already have a section where we upload rock music that isn't necessarily Japanese, but it still is Asian. Isn't that good enough? Also, it's been years since this forum was only about all the VK. I get most of my Japanese rock music from this place, and I haven't been really listening to VK in years. There are a lot of blogs and websites out there sharing Kpop music. Now I'm not against listening to kpop, but it would result in a surge of kpop kids who, if you've seen anything at all, are pretty much brain dead (not everyone, but I'm sure you know what I mean) and you'd get threads full of oppa oppa ooppppaaaaaaa. Aren't there already enough websites for this? Call me narrowminded or ignorant or anything you'd want for that opinion, but as someone who's seen enough of the kpop world, I'd like to see Monochrome as some kind of website that still keeps to its original idea. Besides, how could we have split forums for every genre for instance, when so many rock bands are such a mix of thousands at once?

I agree with Dispos previous post, the staff is only as good as its weakest link - As long as there's some who do nothing or next to nothing it will reflect poorly upon the whole institution, and the hard working ones might grow discontent if they keep trying and their opinions either get shot down because its "too much work", or simply are never even considered because people aren't around, not to mention feeling like the entire workload is unjustly put onto them. I know that both previous and current staff members have expressed this frustration to me, and it shows that it really is a serious issue to address.

Indeed the trial run is a must, but it should also apply to all existing staff members as well ( I would go as far as to say that they've run their trial course a long, long time ago ). Your numbers are more than enough, so what needs to happen is getting rid of fat and replacing that with those who seem more apt for the job. It won't do that this whole thing culminates into another green mods disaster, where the existing staff members, whom seem out of the loop from the daily happenings of this very music scene and this community, seemingly try to off the workload to a bunch of former regulars who soon grow tired of the whole thing. I honestly think that if there's even one rotten apple of slacking and apathy in the barrel, the infection spreads. For example, presumably two of the staff have not seen this topic yet despite it being up for almost 24 hours, and one of the them hasn't even logged in since 4.10 for christ sake. I know I'm probably just saying what has been said between the lines before, but I wan't to make this 100% clear with no misunderstandings. With that said, I'm also up for candidacy ( which is not the reason I made this topic I assure you ) while vouching for Stylelover and Whirlingblack, and all of us hang out here practically 24/7.

There is a small weakness in the current mod team from my perspective not mentioning what being said above. None of them live in Asia which means there will be no mods active for 24/7 or at least in Asian daytime. Sometimes I see a misplaced topic or something that is not right on MH (including my own mistakes), but I can't report it to the mod team immediately.

Well, I for one have no problem with reshuffling the staff team and adding more active people to it. We had several recruitments drives in the past. The main problem: many of those people that we thought would be best suited for the job simply didn't apply. And another recurring problem we had that we recruited mods we thought were good for the job - but after a few weeks they stopped doing stuff, so we had to look for new ones. Let's face it: being a mod is not a glamorous task at all. It's actually very tedious, with most of the work done behind the scenes. For year after year I have been doing the jrock contests at the end of each year, which was a lot of work for relatively little results. There don't really seem to be that many people that want to do that kind of stuff for a longer time. It can also be somewhat of a stressful task. You may have to piss off people. Maybe people you actually like. I know I pissed off a lot of people in all the years as staff here, by repremanding or banning them. Including people I used to get along well before. The fact that you have to go around pissing off people by locking their threads, giving them warning for breaking rules etc. also makes it increasingly difficult to use the site as a normal "user" - people will look at you differently. That is something potential staff members should be aware of - you will get hate for actually enforcing the rules. In my experience many people simply weren't willing to that. They wanted to be part of the community - not punish members from it.

cant believe that article still exists

new band "JENOVA" has held their first secret live at Shibuya REX at 2013/10/03, and they will hold their presents live "FLY AWAY" at Shibuya REX at 2014/02/18 and their free one-man live "Spirit Never Die" at Ikebukuro CYBER at 2014/03/19 "JENOVA" members: Vo.Akirap (ex-TWICER-->ハッピー☆アラカルト(happy alacarte)-->4tune_UNIT) Gt.Roi (ex-REZEAL-->DOLL VIDE(support)(冰琅/hiro)) Ba.YASU (ELENDIRA, AZRAEL) Dr.Xia http://www.jenova-official.jp/

Inspired from a similar thread on another board and when I say inspire I really mean just copying their idea. The idea of the thread is to encourage sharing music and just sharing your enthusiasm for a certain artist you are really into. Try to avoid just spamming YouTube links with shitty little one liners about the VK boys being kawaii or dis song is so bruutal. This topic should not be like in this thread and should promote discussion. It doesn't have to be VK/Japanese either since I know a lot of us listen to tunes outside of Japan. Band Name: You must write a description of the band and what you find enjoyable/interesting/terrible/whatever about them. Try to really show what they’re about, what their sound is like, what artists they are influenced by/have influenced or some other means of describing their music.

Score: | The Japanese noise rock titans are back!! ...although it's debatable if they ever went anywhere to begin with. Fetch is a righteous kick in the ass. It has everything I've come to love about Melt-Banana - the chirpy vocals with unintelligible lyrics, the smorgasboard of guitar sounds that even Sigh would be jealous of, spastic drums, meaty bass, and songs that race by at a mile a minute. All has been quiet on the melty banana front for a while, and the three-piece is now a two-piece, but the band proves they still have what it takes to be considered noise rock titans. Fetch isn't about the music; it's about the experience (much like how you probably don't want to be strapped to the top of a speeding car but the adrenaline rush is undeniable). It's pure energy pressed to disc and the production is acceptably lo-fi, which adds to the overall craziness Melt-Banana embodies. There is a definite improvement over Cell-Scape and Bambi's Dilemma here in that the songs fit together very well. Short songs and long songs work well together and the pace doesn't stop right up until the end, where it slows down just enough to speed right back up and end the album with a bang. Or bang#53, since there are about 52 other sound effects that did the same thing in all the previous tracks. On multiple listens, once you peel back the layers, you'll come to have an appreciation for how well the noise is integrated into the music. It's simple but complex at the same time. Fetch isn't an easy album to listen to. It disregards a lot of what people have come to expect from their musical experience. It blends noise and music in a way that makes you either like it or hate it. There is no middle ground. If you don't mind high-pitched female vocals, evolving song structures and a lot of experimentation, Fetch may find a place in your heart. Stick with the title track Candy Gun, which serves as a composite for the entire album. If you like it, you'll like Fetch. If you don't, you won't. Or if you've ever wondered what Pikachu sounds like fronting a metal band, that's cool too.

Kaye you stole words out of my mouth on this matter.

oh

Somewhat unrelated, but if Trombe has mod powers, why doesn't she have a special colored name? I mean, she's practically 50% of the reason why this forum is still alive.

Pretty interesting interview, it's really cool to see how the band thinks, but look for your self. http://www.mtv81.com/videos/video-interviews/the-gazette-segment-1/ http://www.mtv81.com/videos/video-interviews/the-gazette-segment-2/

The preview for both PVs is finally out~ Sounds awesome in my opinion!!!

"Goddess" actually, calling her a God would be insinuating that Cher is male, which at this stage in time neither is correct. I cant really fault her for wanting to carry on working and making money. but there comes a time where enough is enough and its really time to put down the mic and bow out gracefully. In Cher's case she hasnt done that, all this plastic surgery, botox injections and face lifts. Here you have someone who seems to be obsessed with chasing her youth and 'trying' to look younger so she might appeal or looks more appealing to her listeners more. Better then my fave?? So what is my fave? you seem to know so much more about me then i know about myself when it comes to personal musical tastes. On a more positive note though, at least shes stopped using that godawful autotune. But i still think she needs to retire. NOT THAT I LISTEN TO OVER COMMERCIALISED POP TUNES ANYWAY

Sai and champ brings up legitimate things, It's really important that one understands that being a moderator isn't just some kind of "status boost" and more of a job that needs doing. People need to be able to not consider personal relationships with the people involved, be able to put down lots of their time into the site and try their best to keep it vital, healthy, and constantly improving. With that said, I'd like to announce my candidacy for the team, as I feel like I can do all of these things and have a lot to bring to the management of this site. If anyone on the admin or moderating team would like to discuss the application with me, feel free to PM.

The main problem that we've had with hiring new people who seemed very enthusiastic and active at that time is that basically all of them dropped off the face of the planet after around 6 months. They stopped doing their work completely and hardly even logged on without giving us a notice that they were in fact busy. When it comes to staff members, the problem isn't that we've got too few, just the fact that a part of them doesn't have the time to be here (which I have my own opinion about but which I'm not going to state here for obvious reasons). Finding enthusiastic candidates for this role won't be hard, but all we can do is give them trial runs and hope they won't disappear after about a year or so. We're willing to give it a try, but the attempts in the past (and especially the green mod-project) have not been very successful, so you might understand that there's a bit of scepticism from our part on this solution. I agree about the whole "showing your face more"-thing. Posting a couple of times or opening new threads is not something that takes a lot of time, so everyone on the staff could do this. However, there is only so much we can do. We can start threads and continue discussions, but when other members don't participate there's hardly anything we can do to encourage it apart from that. So basically it's an arm for a leg. We can promise to be more active on the board, the users agree to help the threads stay alive.

I'm currently listening to COHOL. COHOL describe themselves as a black hardcore death metal band from Tokyo, but black metal should do just fine. COHOL hit the spot for me because they mix black metal and hardcore in a way I haven't found any other band to do as successfully. They don't have too big of a discography yet but their one album, 空洞, is good enough for me to play it on repeat. The one thing this band nails above all other black metal bands is musicality - in an effort to be the blackest of the black too many bands forego music for pure aggression. What ends up happening is that The music sounds like blackened death metal, deathcore, or some other genre that isn't black metal with some tremolo picking thrown in for kvltness The album sounds like one long, angry, tortured track. I like anger and forlorn despair in my black metal tracks as much as anyone else, but I also like dynamics. Setting your drum to play at 200 BPM in 4/4 while you repeat one riff over and over again Burzum-style is not kvlt. It's annoying. There's plenty of pig squeals, shrieks and growls to suit those that want to headbang, but they're not afraid to get cuddly with an acoustic guitar or turn up the ambience and forget about blast beats and tremolo picking for a track or two. Songs like desertion on the ground and 回廊 do a really great job of breaking up the monotony that many black metal bands bring to the table every time they put out an album. It also heightens the intensity of when they do decide to get heavy, because it's less expected. Obvious influences for me are clearly Bathory and Burzum, for fearless incorporation of influences that the most ignorant of metalheads would turn their nose up at as well as constantly evolving song structures that revolve around a central motif. In a way though, they're truly just influences - I can't say that they borrow too much from any one band as much as they do their own thing. And they do it very, very well. I also cannot forget to mention that their music doesn't sound like it was recorded in a sock. 空洞 was recorded with decent/good equipment and mastered very well. This goes way past the snobbery of the "lo-fi idon'twantyoulisteningtomymusicpleeb" sickness that plagued second-wave black metal. I actually enjoy listening to this band and I can get deep into the mix with my gear. I appreciate that a lot. If I've intrigued you enough, check it out here:

Well no shit Piko's death was widely reported on many Japanese and vk news sites. It's only obvious that there would be a sudden surge of people willing to give them a listen and of course some of those people were bound to like what they heard. There is no difference in discovering them this way than any other way imo I hate this "I knew them first than you did!" shaming that a lot of (indie) music fans do.

Oh oh oh I have one! Most Western GAKKIDO fans didn't give two shits about that band until the vocalist died. Then suddenly everyone was like OH MY FUCKING GOD! And had to jump on the tragedy bandwagon. I remember a lot of the VK groups I lurked on Livejournal never had any topics about that band but when they had that accident, suddenly requests for music, scans, blog translations. Now I'm not saying they didn't have any western fans but it was considerably noticeable how their fanbase on the internet ballooned after the news of the car accident. RIP whatever his name was but the internet scramble to be the biggest GAKKIDO stan was gross.

I tried looking up Of Mice and Men and all I got was results to some dumb book!! But seriously dude, it's better to just post two or three artists and talk about the artist and what they do. Try not to overwhelm people with a whole lotta stuff and dumb lists all at once because no one ain't got time for that.

i guess stuff like how to change the forum would rather belong into the thread magatsu created, but im just going to include it to this post , as it somehow belongs to modteam changes too (you need to have some ideas too after all.) many regulars (at least chat regulars) talked about this situation for a while. its a fact that the forum is less populated than it was before , so we wondered why and talked about the whole situation a lot in the chat recently. but stuff like that belongs in the open or nothing gets changed at all. i also hope that people might join this discussion. General thoughts about responsibilites and the modteam: Like dispo said, the most important thing about a modteam that they are 1) active active active and 2) actually interested in the stuff the forum offers and 3) actually interested to be part of the community. Sadly i dont see any of these things in the current modteam. there are exceptions of course , but im not going to say any positive or negative examples as that wouldnt be fair to anyone of the current mod team. To get a little bit more detailed. 1) Lately i refer to mh as a lawfree place. you rarely see any mods and wrong topics or stuff like that sometimes stay on the site for a few days or they just dont get discovered at all. So thats where the first point comes in: a mod/admin team should actually be active and not just hope for the best and be kinda idle all the time. again as dispo said i dont know whats going on behind the doors, but i was a mod myself in the past( im going to say a bit about that too later on) and theres not so much stuff "backstage" to actually justify the common abscene of mods on here.its not the users job to report any single wrong thing in the forum. of course its nice to report something if you see it, but in a ideal situation the mods themselve would see stuff and correct it . 2) that leads me to my second point: you need to be interested in the stuff thats posted here to actually be able to properly do you rmodwork. not being interested in most of the news and downloads posted here AND being lazy or away is the worst combination possible. again: in a ideal situation or rather in a must be situation the mods actually need to be interested in visual kei /jrock /the news / kpop / whatever to be able to mod properly. its ok if one moves away from vk or anything offered here, but then you are just not fit to be a mod on a forum about that stuff anymore. imo a mods job is not just moving topics/locking threads. its also to be highly dedicated and interested in what the site is about, to take part in discussions and be a part of the community. and thats what my third point is about. one shouldnt be a mod just to ensure "law", one should be a mod because he/she LOVES to be on this site and LOVES the stuff the site is about. its just sad and cant be justified if a mod has like 5 posts in two months. and to actually reach that goal the mod team (and/or possible new mods) needs to be reviewed. that leads me to a bit of my own mod story and why i left the "team". it wasnt a team at all in the past. when i joined the mod team back in tainted world days it was actually more or less a team. everyone was fairly active and you could b e sure that if you wouldnt be able to look into the forum for lets say two days, someone else would be there for sure. that changed someday. sooner or later i found myself doing most of the stuff myself as some of the staff was just suddenly away and others lacked interest in the forum. that quickly lead to my removal of the team, because i just dont want to look over everything all the time , even though i really love this forum(im part of it for 6 years or so now). but a team is a team and not one single person and the others can lay back and hope that no one registers on the site. meaning: a mod team should consist of people that actually care about the forum and want to increase the community AND actually being interested in the stuff thats most common in here. ideally a team should be mixed with people that like different things (vk, jrock, jpop, kpop, other stuff) . of course things can stay like they are now, but the forum is slowly dying and it will die out sooner or later. im going to talk more about that in the second section, but atm theres no real reason to join mh. i chat with people yes, but i can just add them all to skype and it would be the same. and thats the point: a mod team should be a good role model and actually be interested to be a part of the community. now theres maybe the question who should be a mod: thats something that should be discussed later on , IF this might actually change something. i for myself would be willing to join, BUT it depends on how much the team changes and if i can actually say "yes this is a team of people who are active", because no one can change something alone. changes for the forum, current situation, what to do? first im just going to repeat something i said on the chat some days ago about the current situation: monochrome heaven as it is right now is just another blogspot site. sounds kinda stupid? maybe but if you take a closer look its not exactly far fetched. currently the only really active stuff on the site are 1) the chat 2) dl section 3) news section. lets see what a random vk blogspot offers me: news and downloads on one site and most of the time a chatbox on the sidebar. sounds exactly the same. so that relates to the activity of the forum: if you visit this forum for the first time (maybe even coming from a blogspot because you saw that many downloads come from here) you actualyl see that its not different at all, so why contribute to the forum at all? seems kinda useless. and thats the one most important thing right now: ACTVITY. especially in other existing categories or in new forums. because if things stay like that than monochrome heaven is just another blogspot. nothing else. so what could be changed about that? for me its out of the question that we need to look into things beyond visual kei /j-rock. imo it wouldnt hurt to be a little bit more open to other asian stuff as k-pop/rock and maybe even other stuff like dramas. we had a bigger music section a while ago and imo it worked quite well (own forums for western and korean music for example) i think it was all migrated into the general music section in an attempt to make the forum slimmer. imo that kinda failed, as the general music section is a huge mess right now and if you are interested in korean music for example its kinda impossible to see whats in the section. its not going to hurt anyone if we try to get people from other genres over here. its not like the vk section is going to decrease just because we have a kpop section and not just a general music section. ideally people might even check other sections if they are active, but one can also just stay away from it. not like anyone forces you to be part of every single section here. alright thats it from my side. if i can think of anything else to change the forum im going to add it

This release is simply flawless. But then again, Melt Banana has always been consistent with amazing releases. This one in particular, is my favorite at the moment, with Bambi's Dilemma coming in as a close second. Which is kind of saying a lot, considering Bambi's Dilemma has been my No. 1 for quite some time. One thing that brought me to love Melt Banana was their vocalist and I'm glad she still has that same quirky, high-pitched sound that keeps bringing me back for more. I had quite a hard time picking a favorite from this album, but I'd have to say "Infection Deflection" is my personal pick. The guitar-work is just fantastic. Not to mention the bass, which really brings out the best in this song. It really gives you this old Melt Banana "vibe",for lack of a better word. Overall I believe this album really deserves a;

It'll be fun to search the web by yourselves I think. Just copy the name and google it, that's easy. And get the information and maybe get the songs you like. If you think what I did is dull, just ignore me. I just list the bands' name and whether they're good or not, it's up to you.

the bands' names that I have the discography. the genre is hardcore punk.

Just saw this now. I actually am pretty much disemboweling Aoi Mochi and RoseOfHizaki. Y'all bitches better pay homage to the true God of this world. The album is amazing, better than your faves tbqh. And Nick you know BETTER than to mention that whiny dog in this thread.

I know this site : http://nihongo.j-talk.com/kanji/ Kanji Converter to Hiragana, Romaji, English