Saishu

We all know Japanese bands give absolutely no fucks about ripping off songs.

This is the wrath that WhirlingBlack will face

I bet Kaoru wasn't even in the studio for the cover of Easy Make, Easy Mark. Die probably waved him off and was like, "I got this dawg."

Sometimes I go back and watch that old YouTube clip of Yoshiki going apeshit on some studio engineer just to laugh at it. Also to laugh at all the comments from the Cult of Yoshiki basically praising him for being a douchebag.

Merry, Acid Android, and DEG are the only songs that i want to hear in full. Honestly, all the rest sound like they're coming from the same band.

I fucking hate Yoshiki.

Wow, haven't heard anything from these guys since Gemini. Wasn't even aware that they're officially known as A9 now. I used to laugh at how much of a Smashing Pumpkins ripoff that song "Zero" was.

the fuck...

You're not wrong. And while I like Coda, I think Yoin is the best song out of those three albums.

Toxic, Division, and Beautiful Deformity all blend into one big mess for me.

Ruki starts ripping off Nordic doom metal bands.

They've gone thru an industrial phase, Dogma was the Dark Age... maybe they're entering the ice age now.

At one point I thought NoGod was the best thing to happen to VK in years. Then around the time V came out everything started to sound the same and I stopped listening. I check in once in a while and see that nothing has changed.

It's going to be MUCC opening for Guns n Roses all over again.

I seem to recall years ago that Ruki wasn't interested in touring the west, so he may have gone into it with negative expectations anyway. I saw one clip of him telling a crowd to be quiet before they started the next song, which... usually isn't how western audiences work.

This just in: people outside of Japan act differently.

Well keep in mind that was also when DEG was trying to branch out in the West, so Kyo was writing a lot of mostly awful English lyrics.

Deadman Malice Mizer Rentrer en Soi Sugar 9Goats Black Out there are others I miss, but they're either gone because the singer died or they were starting to get mediocre and probably needed to disband anyway.

If Ruki does the bulk of the songwriting again, I don't expect the music to evolve much.

Ooooo an unoccupied wheelchair in a dark room! Come on, guys...

That set list is mostly tragic.

more darkness.

Way late, but I'm just now seeing this since I don't check outside the news forum very often; Mika's brilliance has always been there. Now, granted, within the context of Sukekiyo (especially on Adoratio) he's given more room to experiment and breathe, per se, but even in Rentrer en Soi it was obvious he wasn't the average VK drummer. He could go balls out metal, but he was able to groove too. And his patterns and fills were creative. What DIDN'T help his case is that most of RES' albums weren't mixed that well. He tended to get buried, and just check out The Abyss of Despair for a perfect example. The speedy double bass licks in the second chorus are reduced to a barely audible rumble underneath the muddy production. I didn't even realize they were there until I watched the DVD of their final live. Also check out Gira Gira, which is the song (along with the orignal Secret Scars) that made me really take notice of Mika. He goes absolutely batshit bonkers in Gira Gira! So I dunno. Maybe it's just me because I play drums and my ear has always naturally picked out the rhythm section, but Mika's performance in Sukekiyo doesn't surprise me. He's one of my favorite drummers in music. Period.

The PV for Revelation of Mankind? I believe that was a continuation of the Saku/Kodou storyline, and the PV implied that the parents were abusive. I think the PV for Obscure was worse though. Also doesn't help that Obscure is almost always the one used in reaction videos because "WOW SO SHOCKING!"

I can see them remaking Zekuu, Kuchiki no Tou, and Houyoku, but nothing beyond that.