Leaderboard

this is what their fans look like x

Hello! I'm an old Visual Kei fan. I started by listening to Lareine around 2000 then carried on with X Japan, Malice Mizer, Moi Dix Mois and Versailles. With the decline of forums I lost a bit sight of the scene, but a few months ago I started to regain a bit of contact with how things are going now, because I'm missing all of it. Lately I'm starting to listen to Kizu too.

On the band's next gigs, from 07/11 to 07/14 their 2nd demo tape will also be sold, featuring two songs: 新宿は燃えているか and 孤独たちのララバイ (also I just noticed that both the demo tapes come with 34-page B5 size tour pamphlets, plus ofc the download codes)

Wow, I feel like if I were to ever see them live, I'd never make it out of the venue alive.

The video is not their best but the song is really enjoyable.

Thanks for the interesting responses! It really does seem like the only "foolproof" way to know is to ask people who attended lives of each band, which is obviously not possible on a large scale. But for now, I think I'll keep the "venue size over time" charts on artist pages, as it's an interesting metric to look at nonetheless. Incidentally, the idea of tracking downloads to gauge foreign popularity is brilliant. MH needs to implement this, stat

I've been wanting to write some of this stuff out forever because I'm a huge digital packrat and I like to archive these types of things... I don't think any of this has been written out anywhere before, but I'm not sure how much people actually care about the fan culture part of VK here, especially the Japanese fan culture, and especially the online Japanese fan culture. But, just in case any of you are also level 50 Turbo Nerds I thought I should post it here. I hope this is a sensible place to put it?? this piece is WAY too long for how lame the subject is and i'm so sorry tl;dr: tanuki is old as fuck and there used to be another tanuki and forums are dead, long live tanuki edit: fixed a number i screwed up

Since their live on 2018.07.14, the band will sell an album called 「参戦用」(sansen yô). (500 yen) Tracklist : 1.本能 (Honnô) 2.ファッション メンヘラ (Fashion menhera) 3.ちゅーしたい (Chû shitai) 4.うるせえ黙れ (Urusei damare) 5.現実逃避癖 (Genjitsu tôhi heki) 6.ヒス症(Hysteria shô) 7.頭がハッピーちゃん(Atama ga happy-chan)

The loudness I do hear. When I was doing comparisons, I was using DIVISION as my reference album and it struck me how much louder NINTH was. I would be willing to give people that criticism because its true, but it hasn't affected my enjoyment of the album any. Probably on par with DIM, definitely above Stacked Rubbish.

I love it when vistlip does uptempo choruses like this, and the melody is really nice, too. Pretty excited.

Hey, I got here before the "This was expected" and "They were (bad/garbage/sucked)" comments. I'm gonna miss them ;_;. I liked UKYO's vocal style and the band's electro-kei vibes.

Enjoy yourself

Welcome

Sadly it's gone since last week.

I have it and I LOVE it, but Lareine- Blue Romance... *insert graphic design is my passion old meme*

hi, welcome to the forums!

oh this is the good shit and omdz i'm living for nozomi going from the respectable ramiel to this merry band of messy bitches

[2] I hope the mastering isn't trash. They sound really good, actually.

Yeah, it’s from the making of Ajna Jishuban club version lol

Who would pay that much money to watch a shitty starwave MV ?

It's really sad that you can skip through their album and not notice that it's different songs you are listening to... Versailles and Kamijo at least have some variation!!!! Kamijo still manages to be at least innovative after all this time (vocaloid, anyone?)

BRATBAX will pause activities after their live at Shinjuku CLUB SCIENCE at 2018/8/17.

Video message about the upcoming album and tour.

the shame of ripping off lynch. was too much to bear

what kind of "when u have a progressing eating disorder but can't afford chowing on kleenex with indiefag bandomen income" realness

I need aki to retire that hairstyle!

Does anyone remember the name of that god-awful pop song Kyo, and other VK vocalists, had a cameo on? It was shared on Monochrome-Heaven YEARS ago, if I remember correctly it also features Shinya on drums; but I may be mis-remembering that. EDIT: nevermind, I found it!

unironically the best way to measure a band's popularity overseas imo... i guess it's important to distinguish between popularity overseas/domestic success for this conversation

You can't really take gigs / venues and judge their popularity unforutunately. I think you need to either see them live or see live clips, a good example of this is Gossip. You would assume that a band that has a 109 stop nation wide tour, a fanclub and a one man at Blitz would be very popular but they're not as big as they come off.

Livehouse capacity for onemans can be a good indicator of a band's popularity at times, especially if the band consistently plays at larger venues, but some bands also play at venues they can't fill just because they can whether it's due to connections, the guys having money, having fans who give them a lot of money, or whatever. Some popular bands also like playing smaller venues because of the intimate atmosphere. Also keep in mind that bands of all sizes play at AREA because it's a famous/popular vk venue. Number of tanuki threads is irrelevant. Sometimes bands have a lot of net gya who constantly like to shit on girls who go to lives, sometimes there's a lot of drama surrounding the members. XAA-XAA has had 95 tanuki threads in 3 1/2 years but they still have onemans at venues with a 200 person [or less] cap both in Osaka (where they started) and in Tokyo (where they're based now). Being featured in magazines, it really depends, but many times it's really a matter of having a good label/management. XAA-XAA and Grimoire are not very popular but get featured in a lot of magazines because they're signed to Timely Records which is connected to little Hearts. I remember seeing a similar thread or some posts on here regarding Youtube views and popularity but that's also not a good way to judge. DIMLIM's PV for vanitas has had over 71K views on Youtube in just 4 weeks (which is really good for a vk band) but I saw them again at EDGE on Friday and there were only maybe 15 people there for them (out of a crowd of maybe 40 people total) Tbh the only way to know for sure how popular a band is is to go see them or ask someone who has seen them before.

moar liek ASIAN HUNG-FU GENITALIA am i rite

Hey does anyone remember when Koichi and Tsuzuku were cool? They're making it oh so easy to forget

If you don't like their first two EP's then stop listening to vk

Sorry guys, there's gonna be some delays. On the brightside, I think we've got last minute additions to some backing choruses.

Literally one of the best in vk history tbh

I have meet&greet (VIP) and photo tickets for his September Paris concert! So excited!! I will give him a hug, and a letter in Japanese (translated by a friend), and as a gift together with the letter a CD with LAREINE covers by me. I'll also show him my Laliene 1st demo tape, he'll be really surprised!

i like lareine

YOSHIKI has posted the new album cover on Twitter.

I finally listened to some releases. My list is probably not going to be large enough to keep a file on as per usual, so I will just do it here instead.

Yay! Thanks for making the 2018 post. Gonna do my best to update this regularly and not wait until September like I did last year... >>; Last updated: 4.13

I'd say a healthy dose of both, lel Honestly, something like this would be the absolute dream. Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to read this, I'm so glad it went over well! Eventually I'd like to write about the old roadie/mentor system in VK (but it's been a pain in the ass to research), or do an archive of the older legends/rumors of VK (easy to research but probably going to take 100,000 words to write it all out), it was very encouraging to see that people were actually interested in this piece since it was my first crack at this kind of thing.

If Malice Mizer revived I think that would be such an awaited announcement that the band could not ignore a world tour. They are like our Spice Girls.

My dearest and most beloved purchase is without doubt X Japan - Art of life, published 1993 and it has the black photobook as well as the original plastic "slip on" case (though it's super damaged but I don't dare to throw it away XD) The CD+photobook is being sold in Yahoo with low prices but the emotional value of the CD can't be measured in money. It's my ultimate favorite song ever and I've spent way too much time listening to it, at least according to last.fm.

Just found this picture from my old phone. : D It's me cosplaying as Hisui (Madeth Gray'll) and my boyfriend cosplaying as Kon (La'Mule). (We look super serious but actually we were cracking up all day.)