desparejo86

There's not enough interest or market for it.
 
Remember Tofu records? It folded almost immediately. 
 
Things like Babymetal and Psy are novelty acts; they're exceptions, not the rule. There's no market for music performed in non-English languages in America unless you're, say, targeting the ethnic population of a foreign bands home country (like Mexican rock band Mana touring in America and playing the southwest and west coast). There aren't enough Japanese-Americans, let alone Japanese Americans that listen to visual kei, to bother spending the money to push that stuff over here. You'd lose your shirt, guaranteed. 
 
Anime con gigs work because you have every weaboo in an X-mile radius packed together already. It wouldn't be profitable to come to America and tour and hit the 5-10 major cities in the region playing to smaller crowds, but it IS profitable to play the con. The market is not there naturally, but in this circumstance there is an opportunity to make a quick buck. 
 
Rammstein had a global hit with Du Haust and still do really well when they come to America, but did that mean there was a market for German-language rock in America? Clearly there wasn't.
 
The market itself has sorted all this out already: there were some visual kei fans and they purchased imports, someone like Tofu records thought there might be an opportunity to make some money, there wasn't enough interest and Tofu records folded, and fans are back to buying imports.   
Guys in Visual Kei bands know that if they want to make it in America they'd have to relocate here, learn to sing in English, and work their way up from the very bottom. Chance of success is virtually zero, so they're smart enough to stay in Tokyo where there is an interest in what they do.

To break it down:
Rock vs. Pop
Rock made the most profit when culturally it became a part of Pop culture. This started to die off in the 80's but hair metal became a sensation. Hair metal was then killed off for the next wave of acts that were assimilated into the record industries more reliable formulaic machine for hits. Record labels like Mercury began purposefully killing off hair metal bands.
Eventually pop punk, grunge, nu metal and other genres were manipulated in the main stream to become represented by the producer controlled music making machine.
Why have a band completely in control of their music and writing what they want when they want? Would you not make a lot more money having an inner circle of producers who have mastered making hits, and creating the mainstream landscape of what a hit is?
Instead of investing in bands who may go any which direction, it is more lucrative to hire performers who will treat it as more of a job, and sing the songs written for them, dance to the choreography created for them, endorse the products your sponsors give to them, etc..
And if some kind of rock is popular, we'll study the trend with a focus group, then get the producer to hold their hand through a simple track, we'll get a director to come up with a topical video to get attention, the lyricist's will come up with a catchy provocative line that will be repeated until it gets into people's heads, then the people will repeat the lines and memes to advertise for us, for free. Wardrobe will get them something trendy, then we'll get PR to get some interviews, and create some kind of juicy scandal for the group.
Then we'll pay stations a lot of money to play us often, iTunes to feature us heavily, Youtube to recommend our video, etc...
Then we'll make a bunch of money, give a good chunk to execs, producers, lyricists, then pay off all the marketing, and other costs, and we'll throw a few bucks at the band. Oh wait, we 'advanced' the band all sorts of money when we paid for that new guitar, the gas in the tourbus, their catering, etc etc... Better cut down how much we gave them.
Then compare that to moderately successful VK bands filming a PV in the parking garage a thousand other bands played in, in some flame retardant outfit that 99 percent of people would not be caught dead wearing, and a bass player who looks better than most girls, playing a song in a low drop C tuning, over vocals still high pitched as hell, in a style of music that is no longer popular or never has been popular in the mainstream.
Then they take that PV, and include it as a bonus for the limited edition, cd only release not on iTunes, and not uploaded to Youtube unless somebody decides to do it against their wishes. And the majority of viewers are international viewers since Japanese have their own sites and ways of digesting media to choose from as well.
And they compete in the second biggest music market in the world, with a huge amount of other independent visual kei artists, many of them producing their own music, and not having doors opened to them, no big funding, and a lot of bands still survive somehow, and bands like Royz, Kiryu, etc.... enter the top ten of the charts repeatedly beating tons of major produced and marketed acts, despite being the antithesis of worldwide pop culture and trends.
Then you have bands like SID, and lots of older bands like X Japan, Luna Sea, Dir en grey, who have made more money than most pop artists, have been around longer than KPop was a 'thing', and will be referenced as long as there is VK.
But in terms of Youtube and worldwide presence, Korean Pop has a very large presence, has several connections to worldwide pop culture where it isn't such a huge step, they are just rapping and twerking in a different language. The Korean government has also heavily funded Korean media on the global stage, from the Korean Wave of film that had a regrettably short life, to KPop now. Japanese individuals and companies have actually complained about not representing Japanese workson the worldwide stage, I even remember Gackt talking about how they are failing to promote Japanese work outside of Japan. But at the same time, Japan has a much more insulated subcultural make-up, and is not AS rapidly molded and influenced by Global and especially American trends. So I definitely think certain cultural exports from Japan are hard to find an audience for, while some others, like anime, games, manga, JDM, etc... have been some of the most influential things in pop culture and subculture history.
Not sure if I answered the question or even tried to, but ah well.

J-Pop are way behind K-Pop imho.
K-Pop know how to promote themselves, they toured places and use YT as channel to connect fans all over the world.
And they toured South East Asia aside from fellow East Asia countries where the demands and profits are big.
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philipinnes, and so on, all countries that not many J-Pop artists pay visit to, though once they did, it mostly Anime convention than big production solo tour, save for a very major ones such as Ayumi Hamasaki, LUNA SEA, or L'arc-En-Ciel.
No K-Pop artist ever perform in Korean convention, and that helps alot with their image. Which is why DEG had refused to perform in Anime convention in the past.
Missed opportunity in their part.
Not sure why they seem to avoid South East Asia when even major American acts never dare to.
Also, Korean people seems to have better pronounciation with their English, so few of them succeeded touring The States, even Big Bang had toured Australia last year. K-Pop are way more adventurous this waybyo expand their influence, at this rate I won't be surprised if we found K-Pop starts touring South Africa soon. When will J-Pop?

I was just correcting that part because Kpop took from Visual kei; not the other way round.
 
I cannot provide a very detailed explanation for your question, but if you want to compare Visual kei and Kpop in the west, I think there are a lot of differences that keep them separate and experiencing different realities.
 
Kpop is basically western pop, sung in Korean but the basic melodies are in the western style, a bit of English here and there, a bit of skin from both men and women for the sex appeal factor and that's how they made it. Kpop doesn't want to introduce people to something new, instead it gives people the same thing but a bit refined. Now, I'm not convinced Kpop is THAT popular in the west, I might even dare say it may be declining a little bit because it has become repetitive and too westernised.
 
Visual Kei, on the other hand, even in its most mainstream expression is still something that basically appeals to "outsiders", it still retains many attributes that keep it from being totally mainstream such as androgynous looks that basically defy gender roles, thought-provoking lyrics, the melodies themselves are many times an acquired taste, they are not necessarily conceived to appeal to the mainstream, etc.
 
Two different uncomparable genres, one is pop and the other rock and rock isn't as massive as pop is.

Nanase Aikawa is forever bae. Bad girls for the fuckin' win.
 

Yeah, X JAPAN/Yoshiki topics here are always good fun for everyone.
 
Actually I think Yoshiki ruining our banter by actually releasing the album would not be worth it. 

i'm glad that one of the few things the majority of MH's regulars can bond over is roasting the hell out of Yoshiki tbh

You guys kill me, this thread is gold

Man, I was shocked during the AMA (don't know why) when Yoshiki revealed that Pata hadn't even finished tracking his guitars for the album yet.
 
Which confirmed mine and many others' theory that the album was not finished and not going to come out in March regardless of Pata taking ill. 
 
During the AMA I asked Yoshiki when we were going to see Violet UK get released, considering I was waiting on it back in middle school and I'm fuckin 30 now. Didn't answer, of course.

Man, I was shocked during the AMA (don't know why) when Yoshiki revealed that Pata hadn't even finished tracking his guitars for the album yet.
 
Which confirmed mine and many others' theory that the album was not finished and not going to come out in March regardless of Pata taking ill. 
 
During the AMA I asked Yoshiki when we were going to see Violet UK get released, considering I was waiting on it back in middle school and I'm fuckin 30 now. Didn't answer, of course.

Man, I was shocked during the AMA (don't know why) when Yoshiki revealed that Pata hadn't even finished tracking his guitars for the album yet.
 
Which confirmed mine and many others' theory that the album was not finished and not going to come out in March regardless of Pata taking ill. 
 
During the AMA I asked Yoshiki when we were going to see Violet UK get released, considering I was waiting on it back in middle school and I'm fuckin 30 now. Didn't answer, of course.

Man, I was shocked during the AMA (don't know why) when Yoshiki revealed that Pata hadn't even finished tracking his guitars for the album yet.
 
Which confirmed mine and many others' theory that the album was not finished and not going to come out in March regardless of Pata taking ill. 
 
During the AMA I asked Yoshiki when we were going to see Violet UK get released, considering I was waiting on it back in middle school and I'm fuckin 30 now. Didn't answer, of course.

Man, I was shocked during the AMA (don't know why) when Yoshiki revealed that Pata hadn't even finished tracking his guitars for the album yet.
 
Which confirmed mine and many others' theory that the album was not finished and not going to come out in March regardless of Pata taking ill. 
 
During the AMA I asked Yoshiki when we were going to see Violet UK get released, considering I was waiting on it back in middle school and I'm fuckin 30 now. Didn't answer, of course.

are they using pans instead of drums or what? 

I'd wager that the vast majority of people in the world are like this.
 
I used to go out with a Vietnamese-American girl, and at Thanksgiving her mother told me that white people are fine, but no other race besides white or asian were allowed in the home. She and her relatives there all agreed that if President Obama wanted to come over for Thanksgiving, he'd have to eat in the garage because black people steal. 
 
Like, for real. In 2016..

I'd wager that the vast majority of people in the world are like this.
 
I used to go out with a Vietnamese-American girl, and at Thanksgiving her mother told me that white people are fine, but no other race besides white or asian were allowed in the home. She and her relatives there all agreed that if President Obama wanted to come over for Thanksgiving, he'd have to eat in the garage because black people steal. 
 
Like, for real. In 2016..

I can't get into the newer bands, since most of them are screamo nowadays. Not my thing. Plus, many of them are uninspired, copying off of other bands.

I am actually still not entirely sure how kote kei is truly defined. Some use it only exclusively for the era of the mid 90s to early 00s. Others use it for the really early VK bands like Sleep My Dear, ROUAGE, etc as well. And some just tag every band with heavy make-up and complex costumes as such, regardless of musical influences and style. True though, that the late 90s, early 00s bands are far more popular and well known overseas. It's simply that most of the  foreign oldschool fans are probably those who have gotten into VK in the early to mid 00s. Back then the style early Dir en grey, Syndrome, Malice Mizer or old Gazette had a style, which was really well-loved and some even emulated it (I remember the fashion accidents of self-proclaimed “Visus”. They looked more like Hot topic shopping mallgoths, ugh)
 
I also got into VK thanks to Dir en grey and D'espairsRay. From there I discovered some earlier late 90s groups like Malice Mizer or Luna Sea. Only then I slowly went back in time to find and love Laputa, ROUAGE, old Kuroyume, etc. I tend to favour super edgy kvlt VK from the late 90s indies period, but most of the early 90s stuff, especially anything with a heavy post-punk influence, is up to my alley. The problem though is, that apart from a few bigger “must know” groups like X or Luna Sea, the majority of really old VK bands have been forgotten outside Japan. Hell, there are even enough foreign VK fans nowadays who have no clue who Malice Mizer are.
 
I am no VK history expert and I always welcome people to enlighten me with more information. But as I know the Visual kei label didn't really become wildly used until the first half of the 90s, but VK and proto-VK bands date back as far as the mid 80s. So a lot of what we nowadays refer to oldschool Visual kei was originally not seen or tagged as such. Are Zi-Kill a Visual kei group? Many would say yes, because of the way they look and their band connections (and the label they were signed to). Other would say no and state that albeit being influential on the VK moevement, they were just a Rock band. True though, that VK was booming mostly in the first half to mid 90s and not late 90s. If I remember correctly, fans declared Visual kei dead already around 1998.

Does anybody listen to old visual kei, like early 90's kind of stuff? I'm not shure if this "old school visual" label really exists, and if it does, I don't know what years it covers. Once I found a video called "old school visual kei compilation" on youtube, and it included mostly late 90's stuff (La:Sadies, La'Mule, Aliene Ma'riage), but no ZI:KILL, D'erlanger, Kuroyume, etc.I really like that late 90's stuff though. Anyway, what do you guys think? Wanna share thoughts and recommendations?

That moment you randomly find the book you have wanted since its release on a fair. Brand new for 5EU instead of 30EU, thank you.

 

And some other things here. 

 



 

KISS - Alive! II

 



 

Whitesnake - 1987

 



 

Alice Cooper - Hello Hooray

Alice Cooper - Poison

Bon Jovi - Born To Be My Baby

 



 

Alice Cooper - Hey Stoopid

Jon Bon Jovi - Destination Anywhere

RATT - Reach For The Sky

For me this is currently BLESSCODE, there isn't much else I can think of. I absolutely love their own re-recordings of white and Regret love, but unfortunately the rest of their discography sounds like nothing worthwhile to me. I had hoped for a nice, gentle sounding band in them without growls or screams and leaning more towards ballads and softer music (a little heavier occasionally is fine, but when it happens at all times I tire of it), but after downloading their entire discography I quickly realized that this wasn't the case and removed everything — regretfully, because I had hoped to enjoy them further.
 

HOLLOWGRAM×STEREO.C.K live-limited collaborative CD "GLIMMERING" will be released at their coupling live tour "HOROSCOPES 2016" at Shinsaibashi FANJ at 2016/03/12, at NAGOYA HOLIDAY NEXT at 2016/03/13 and at Shinjuku LOFT at 2016/03/21 (2,500yen)

Lovely

It's the second time they release new material as Live only... I hope the trend ends...

their live-limited collaborative CD "GLIMMERING" will include the following songs:
 
HOLLOWGRAM unreleased song
STEREO.C.K unreleased song
HOLLOWGRAM song sung by 瀬音(sena)
STEREO.C.K song sung by ryo