I showed Dir's "Cage" to a friend to isn't remotely aware of VK or even J-rock, and he said "Wow, this sounds like Iron Maiden".
VK always sounded very unique to my ear. But in the last year, since
I was not very fond of the (Western) classics of punk, grunge, gothic, metal, and their respective subgenres and "post" scenes, although I always knew that theorically VK made itself over Western artist, the gap between VK and Western artists came up as much shorter than I tought, with only few elements of it (musical, visual, lyrical, performatic) keeping actually "unique".
In the case of "Cage", since I haven't heard much from Iron Maiden, what can you say about what my friend said? Are you agree with him?