NICKT

VERTICAL, SQUARE band photos. 
Well they are cool, but please also have a HORIZON photo to use for "event flyers", that makes designers very happy. 
 
A complicated logo.
Logo's are cool, however to be able to read the band name if the logo size is small, is also nice.  and one or 2 color logo is also fancy enough. 
I also dislike those "metal band" logos where it's difficult or impossible to read the band name whenever the logo is in big or small size.  
 
 
 
 

That they look like women. Man, I love the music but looking at artists sometimes and just see a bunch of gay looking dudes.

Yuuga topped this with naming a session "THE." . 

Also make sure your band name is easy to Google. Don’t make it one letter or a super common word like “Sugar”

I GOT HYPED BECAUSE I THOUGHT WE'D BE GETTING SAKI  
Now im gonna cry

was hoping to see saki, but this is cool news

kii @ kyo etc and their denial that this is precisely the crowd they sold themselves out to dropping the visuals

And other people pay to scream as loud as they can. So, yeah. That's kinda stupid, but what can you do.
Your freedom ends where their freedom starts, and in reverse.

It might sound weird from a western perspective, but visual kei is like the straightest and most homophobic music scene in Japan. We tend to look at visual kei with western eyes and mix its cultural aspects with things that belong to the western culture. Fanservice and provocations used for shock value put aside, the androgynous aesthetics of visual kei band rarely expressed anything related to gender identity and especially sexual orientation. 
After all, it started with people like X Japan who admittedly were inspired by glam rock bands and way of life, which I would find hard to connect to sexual orientation. Visual kei early bandomen were mostly chinpiras, bosozokus (bikers) and the likes. They really incarnated the somewhat glamrock aesthetic of riding bikes getting drunk, banging girls, etc. Of course X had their own decadent/romantic taste that made them different, and a lot of influences changed the scene over time. However, visual kei is still remains 99% driven by social outcasts looking for pussy and very rarely by something else.
In Japan we also have onnagatas, who are kabuki actors specialized in female roles that are again 99% straight. Bandoman with feminine looks call themselves onnagata, not josou (crossdresser), implying that the cultural source behind their looks is not connected with crossdressing but just playing a female role in a band,  but again this something that might be hard to completely understand it taken outside of Japanese culture. For example Izam, the king of all onnagatas, married more than once and has more tha one child, and outside of his role in Shazna he rarely did anything ambiguous, just like the kabuki onnagatas out of stage. Both media and fans are everything but respectful of privacy, but I've rarely seen Japanese articles or message board questioning bandomen sexual orientation. That's because the number 1 reason people do visual kei is because the girls like it (well, liked it, I am not sure this is the trend with young girls anymore). 
Soft Ballet/Ken Morioka are closer to Soft Cell/Marc Almond so I would not even count them as visual kei even though they had some influence on it. And of course, there are exceptions as you mentioned. The chinpira bandomen of the 90's almost extincted and younger generations bandomans are usually anime/game otakus. They grew up with different influences and values, and it would make sense if the current incarnation of visual kei instinctively appealed to more people with sexual orientation/gender identity concerns, especially after Japan started talking about these issues in a less obsolete viewpoint.

@ this whole thread
 

Not to sound like a hipster but i usually associate with stuff becoming more popular also becoming more bland and boring (with rare exceptions) so I'm kind of happy with this being as niche and small as it is. Last thing I'd really wanna draw in is crowds that act like kpop or ariana grande fans lol

Well there's many reasons and we've had topics or discussions about this before on the forum so if you do some digging you'll find some decent posts about it. Here's some points tho:
 
1. The Japanese have stopped investing time and money in the western market. The big tours and promotion campaigns and shit are all long gone after everyone ( most likely ) lost their money ten years ago. This situation has actually now started to change slightly with big relevant bands like DADAROMA making the exception for anime conventions for that big anime cash, and also they've been starting to wake up about the potential of streaming services like spotify despite having been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I don't think this will amount to a boom like it was before, but maybe at least it will normalise the situation where our existence is at least acknowledged in some roundabout way. 
 
2. Visual kei ain't doing so hot in Japan either. Now with the hiatus of R-shitei the amount of big bands is only dwindling down and the fact that successful new bands like Raid that, let's be real, are nothing to write home about musically and that would never ever get any press outside the vk fandom because it's strictly for visual kei die hard gyas only, super niche. Also the biggest media draws are getting dangerously close to retiring for good if not by their own will then by time itself. The international rock circuit is not going to recover once those legends are gone and the time is almost here, and I'm open for suggestions as to who'll replace X, GLAY and L'arc and draw like they did. 
 
3.  General culture shift is hugely in favor of music that can be done at home and then toured for fraction of the price ie. rap music and electronic music. Big spectacle pop performers aside, touring a rapper and a singer without loads of equipment is significantly cheaper and easier.  People can start realising their musical ambitions without finding other people even in the middle of nowhere; and then to this you add the reality that rock music stopped innovating for the culture years ago. Nothing came after the metalcore post-hardcore fad, and rock audiences are aging by the year while hip hop audiences span multiple demographics from all male to all female and from young to older and the underground scenes change faces around every six months. Techno is also insanely profitable where the night lives of cities around the world function around the techno economy that can cater to normies and underground diehards at the same time. People ( normies ) go to rock clubs on the weekends as a curiosity to listen to shit that's at least 20 years old and most often between 30 and 40 years old.

Visual Kei was, and pretty much always will be a counterculture movement with a cult following. Things come and go in popularity. That's been the case with Nu Metal, Eurodance, etc.
 
Part of it is the fact that Harajuku culture is dead and J-Fashion is so toned down, and a proper J-Fashion revival is possible, but no matter what, Visual Kei isn't going to be the mainstream phenomenon it barely even was at one point. Its always gonna be a niche movement with niche music tastes. Japanese people and Americans always have, and always will be mainstream taste-wise. Thats the nature of things. No use getting mad about it, because there really is nothing you can really do about it. Just enjoy Visual Kei while it's still a thing. 

Kizu will release 2 singles
Dimlim new album will be diferent but good, their concert in Mexico will have enough success but the band will go on a "undefined hiatus", Retsu will become a Trap producer, Hiroshi joins a random band, Sho disappears till 2021
New The GazettE album
DEG continues on tour and at the end of the year they release a new single, with a remake of Saku or any old song idk
Sukekiyo new single too
MUCC releases 10 demo tapes and 4 random sinlges, why MUCC, just why?
Gulu gulu new stuff will be awesome
Mejibray reunion concert without MiA, Koichi forgets how to play bass
Dadaroma will release the same fucking song again
Xaa-Xaa will release an awesome single, a good and a meh one
Dezert will have an anime opening and become more famous but more appart of the vk scene
Yoshiki will do everything except release the new X Japan album, a colaboration with BTS for sure
Jiluka and breakin' holiday will tour together again 
Madmans Esprit new single but more problems with the band
Diarua will continue being Diaura
Nazare good singles with the weird Issei's production 
3 new bands that sounds exactly like D.I.D, bc 2 of them are produced by Issei
Deviloof becomes more succesfull in the western audience and do a tour in the US with some random american metalcore/deathcore bands and leave the makeup behind 
It's all I have for now, I need to remember more bands

So much nostalgia, hurts my then teenage soul, though that might just be angst.
 
Went and checked, was a tiny-bit surprised Gackt's REBORN isn't up there, though I figured that it's mostly just because it's infamously regarded as a single compilation instead, but it was his last album for 7 years by the looks of it, being followed by Last Moon in 2016.
 
Going through my library for more notes...
And~Eccentric Agent~(However you write their name out) - & -
Born's Abnormal Head Machine
Ha, there's Girugamesh's NOW, would love to see more of the fan reaction to that one.
Merry's Underworld
MUCC's Kyuutai
 
Remarkable though, hm...

the avoided sun is in my top-3 VK albums ever don't try it sweatie x

vk band on a major label syndrome. there're younger and less accomplished bands doing exactly that, and I don't really blame lynch for turning their sound into what you've described.
having no advance hype for their releases really helps digest whatever they come up with nowadays.

Id sell my tit to see this happen but hella unlikely. 

Bruh, everything they released after setsudan as la:sadie's is pure poser music. I personally preferred kyo when he was masquerade /: 

I'm SCREAMING is this youtube comment shade or good sisT genuinely doesn't even know S.K.I.N. made an attempt a decade before The Album announce

well there's also an artist thread so that's where I've moved your posts ^^

raison d'etre is among the top 3 catchiest songs on gauze and i will fight anyone who disagrees (but only verbally because violence is a sin in the eyes of the lord)

mtg crowds don't look like this x
 

I think if you play the same song with a real drummer and a bassist it would sound much better, more powerful. I felt like his voice is too good for this instrumental