Saishu

The sad thing is it's not "they", it's just fucking Yoshiki. 
 
That's his new full name now: Fucking Yoshiki. 

This sounds like a ton of other Merry songs. 

Morrie's last solo album was full of vocal antics as well. It's no secret that his voice has changed over the years, and I wonder if age is forcing him to do weird shit to compensate for where his voice is lacking. Regardless, I still love him. 
 
And I second checking out Sculpture in Time. It's on par with what many consider the best VK albums, though it never seems to get mentioned. Lhasa is great as well, and Magic Theater is probably the last album La'cryma recorded before things got kind of bland. Though &.U definitely has some rockers on it. 

That was nothing compared to their "Dead Rider"-track though. "YEAAAAAH BABAYYY I AM HOOOME TAYTAY...MAMAMAMATATATAAAAAAHH!" or whatever he did there was pretty much the best (fucked up) Morrie moment tbqh
 
@TokageYou definitely should not skim over "Sculpture of Time" which is one heck of an opus from them. Some awesome prog-meets-psyche-meets-kinda-LS-kind of godtier stuff.

He
 
Henseifu is the song that got me into La'cryma Christi, and it was because of Hiro's spectacular guitar work. It remains one of my absolute favorite songs. Period. It's a perfect song. 

RED EM

A fucking selfie stick?
 
Gackt. What?

That would explain why all of Jin's clean singing sounds like he's holding back  a sneeze. 

That would explain why all of Jin's clean singing sounds like he's holding back  a sneeze. 

Jin can still sing with the flu... he's been doing it for 10 years...

Why would anyone in the band use an 8 string guitar when they can barely make sense of 6 strings?
 
god, does this mean Jin is going to attempt writing djent songs? Do we call him Djin now?

Christ, it's like he did a quick "what is Canada known for" Google search before answering. 
 
Thanks, Yoshers. Cant wait to visit Japan. Heard you have great sushi and geishas. 

People often note similarities between MUCC and XAA-XAA, and I hope that doesn't carry over into how often they release material. That is, I don't want a good thing quickly get watered down because they don't pace themselves. MUCC, at one point, was releasing three to four singles (with b-sides) and then an album EVERY YEAR. Hell, in 2006 they released four singles, and two albums. It became overwhelming. MUCC had slowed down significantly, but at the cost of some fans already being burnt out. I know I personally haven't loved anything MUCC has done since Kyuutai. 
 
So, that said, I hope XAA-XAA doesn't follow the same route. These guys have enormous potential and showed me VK may still have some life in it. But, then again, so did NoGod. 
 
Eh. 

Why would anyone in the band use an 8 string guitar when they can barely make sense of 6 strings?
 
god, does this mean Jin is going to attempt writing djent songs? Do we call him Djin now?

something tells me these guys are confident enough to try it (they've been listening to periphery, messhuggah and tesseract for a year or so, saw leda in concert once and suddenly think they can do it) bc its a significant investment to change their rig around to support 2 8-strings and a new bass (idk whether they'll go 6 string or stick with 5 and just re-configure it for whatever tuning). money's on itsuki and jin's diru stanning ass somehow pushing the band into thinking its gonna be a good idea.
that said, even the diru guys from their vk background struggle on their 7 strings and itsuki+makoto are for all intents and purposes more vk players than they are actual metal....so unless they pull a magic act its going to suck guaranteed. leda was incredibly talented well before he donned an 8-string and even then he didn't debut new music on the thing for a few years or so after undivide/babymetal 6-string days (if im not mistaken)
 
i have no clue how anyone thinks this will end well...no one in the band can pull a prog metal sound like this off because they're simply not that kind of a musician. these are vk guys for gods sake, even if the guitar work ends up passable there's no way their rhythm section can keep up. the best result we can hope for is something that'll sound like dss with an extra string.
 

Stephan Carpenter from Deftones uses an 8 string, and I think it's justified because he isn't just strictly chugging his way thru everything. And there's Tosin Abasi who's borderline alien and utilizes the entire fretboard on his 8 string. Outside of that I'm hard pressed to think of other bands that need a use for it. Hell, how do these Japanese dudes with tiny hands expect to wrap their dwarves mitts around a larger neck? Kaoru and Die can barely hold a 7 string. 

Stephan Carpenter from Deftones uses an 8 string, and I think it's justified because he isn't just strictly chugging his way thru everything. And there's Tosin Abasi who's borderline alien and utilizes the entire fretboard on his 8 string. Outside of that I'm hard pressed to think of other bands that need a use for it. Hell, how do these Japanese dudes with tiny hands expect to wrap their dwarves mitts around a larger neck? Kaoru and Die can barely hold a 7 string. 

I don't understand the point of using extended range guitars when you write the majority of your riffs on the top two strings...

Why would anyone in the band use an 8 string guitar when they can barely make sense of 6 strings?
 
god, does this mean Jin is going to attempt writing djent songs? Do we call him Djin now?

I always wonder how a band comes to agree that only one member should be on a cover. 

Why would anyone in the band use an 8 string guitar when they can barely make sense of 6 strings?
 
god, does this mean Jin is going to attempt writing djent songs? Do we call him Djin now?

Okay, I finally listened to this.
First off, be aware that there appears to be two track lists out there, one of which has the titles practically in reverse order. So watch out for that.
Now The Black Swan is clearly Jin just picking up the mess that NEGA left behind, so it's obvious that he had a Ruki-like iron grip on which direction the band's sound was going in. And that's... not necessarily a good thing. NEGA wasn't that great. There were signs of promise here and there, but they were few and far between. The same applies to The Black Swan.
NEGA was notorious for having awful production; listening to a NEGA song was like someone shoving my head into a pile of pots and pans, then clanging on them with a hammer. It's the opposite here. There's almost too much bass at some points. You don't have to be a major band to have good production, so I don't know what Jin's problem is.
The songs come across as tons of ideas just mashed together with no regard for how they fit (and yes, the trademark "NEGA SWOOSH" makes an appearance). The band is promising, but that doesn't matter if they don't know how to compose a song that makes sense. My main problem, though, is the same one I had with NEGA:
Jin
This dude can NOT sing at all. I mean, we all know that VK vocalists are almost always lacking in terms of technique because they just never bother to learn to sing. But with Jin it's not just hitting wrong notes or having no breath control; he lacks creativity when it comes to melody and phrasing. When Jin isn't aimlessly mumbling and whispering his way thru a verse, he sings a melody that he's probably used several times before. It makes everything he's ever done just sort of blend together.
But despite all that, I think Jin is super sincere about what he's doing. He just... doesn't really know how to do it. He needs guidance.

Worst band to come out of 2016. 

Like, seriously, when I listened to the album, there was no indication that anyone in this band has a basic understanding of how music works. The band is explosive aural diarrhea and Mao constantly "singing" thru comically distorted filters is the bloody vomit on top of the shit cake. 
 
Why is this a thing? Why is it being supported enough for it to continue existing? Why did Sadie have to end for this to begin? I am baffled. 

Like, seriously, when I listened to the album, there was no indication that anyone in this band has a basic understanding of how music works. The band is explosive aural diarrhea and Mao constantly "singing" thru comically distorted filters is the bloody vomit on top of the shit cake. 
 
Why is this a thing? Why is it being supported enough for it to continue existing? Why did Sadie have to end for this to begin? I am baffled.