sakuran

they will have important announcement at their live at Akasaka BLITZ at 2016/03/05...I wonder whether new Dr. will join the band at their live at 2016/03/05
 

The Pig Squeal at the end gave me life. Emg. 

My very first love, and one of the first bands I discovered when I was exploring visual kei for the first time, was Due le quartz. I loved their look and their costumes, and I remember watching their PVs all the time. I think they really embodied what attracted me to visual kei at the time, especially in terms of visuals (so I do find it sad that there isn't so much of that to be found these days). I liked their sound, too, of course; it's hard to pick among their discography, but I think Re:plica is probably my favorite song.
 
D'espairsRay gets a special shoutout for writing amazing music and always being a wonderful live experience. I liked their music a lot even before seeing them at a show for the first time, but seeing them live kicked my love for them up to a whole new level. They really held a special place in my heart for many years because of that, and I was very sad to see them go because I won't get a chance to do that again.
 
I love the entire discography of the GazettE, and I don't care what anyone else thinks about them.

One of our missions at RarezHut has always been the archival of analogue VK that might otherwise get lost to the sands of time,  What does everyone think of providing a reduction in fees for cassettes and VHS orders?  We've been considering doing a spotlight section of items that DESERVE to be immortalized in high-quality, and we would waive 100% of fees for these.
 
Thoughts?

Strong rumour mill churning.
Sales peaked at Rank 82 in the charts, lasting one week on the charts; their last three single being their most popular.
Not high enough to be a moderately successful Indie band by chart measure alone, but not a disaster for bands in that stage of their lifecycle. There are many bands who have lasted longer with similar or even lower sales, and have been on a bigger label. They also had no major work to act as their defining moment in early career, you have to sort through shorter releases and receive a mixed bag sound wise.
Though the label has been pushing them producion and promotion wise to gain an audience, and their last PV is not location heavy but has better production than bands in the top ten of Oricon, so I would say there was a lot of expectation for them similar to the expectation that me and other fans had for a band that was so skilled in blending pop hooks into rock music.
They definitely could have gained traction, and been more successful, in my opinion.
First, they had an unpopular release approach, no album and single after single, meaning lower output of songs compared to other bands, also meaning live shows had a redundancy to them since you were always seeing a very similar performance.
Second, hard to pin down Shounenki sound signature, since their releases changed quite a bit, most new acts develop a distinct callingcard first then branch out, developing their demographic then pushing the boundary. Harder to pin down Shounenki sound and attract the market for it, even if there is one.
Then you have the style of vocals and style of band possibly clashing. Differing songs including drastic changes in some B-sides, there is a possibility that not all members always agreed or wanted to focus on making that kind of music. And again, may be hard for some fans to follow,or choose Shounenki as 'their band' when you never know what you're going to get. Most creators with a business plan develop a base first.
After that, they are all young and you never know what is going to happen, we don't know the labels plans, what kind of pressure they were under, if the label can afford all their bands at the moment, if the members can afford it, if there was a strong leader in the band, or if they had differing personalities or some major issue arise, if all members can handle the not-so-easy task of writing songs in great number to meet a schedule, etc...
Anyway, just my speculation, don't know why I wrote this. Great band, hope to hear of a new group forming soon, they could have went places, if the vocalist especially forms a new group, he especially can go places, etc...

13 wa Gekkou by Buck Tick.

Kerrang! posted a list a month before in which you can find 50 albums that you need to hear before you die. To any curious people out there, the list is here.
 
So, what J-music Albums do you think people really need to hear before they die?
 
Maybe we can make a list of 50 albums haha.
 
--
 
As for me, the first one I thought was [coll:set] from D'espairsRay. I'm not sure about the other ones that I thought, but [coll:set] is definitely one that people must listen to.

Siva
 
There are plenty on my list, but lately I've been missing D'espairsRay a lot. Hizumi was one of my favorite vocalists, and I'm quite sad they had to quit the way they did.

There aren't a lot of vk bands I still listen to, but out of those I miss
12012 - I haven't been following them too closely  but some of their songs (opposed to the ones that are downright silly) are the perfect comfort food for me. They're one of these bands I wish I could see live.

Siva - They had a way too short lifespan and made too little music, half of which was singles and mini albums with the same songs ~_~ And I miss seing Cell play bass, though I have a feeling we'll see him again (I hope so).

Viored - same as above, way too short lifespan.

Metronome - Even though I like the members' solo project I would die to see Sharaku and Fukusuke in the same band again :/

And of course Sugar and EllDorado.

Added a description of our Digital Copies service to the OP.  
 
After running more simulations that I can count, we have also reduced our fees from 13/15% to 10/13%!
 
Digital copies: Along with any cassette/VHS purchases, we offer high-quality digital copies made with professional-grade equipment free-of-charge. We realize that not everyone has the means to play these aging formats, but we aim not to let that get in the way of you being able to enjoy them!

Yesterday, late at night several hours were spent shooting the jacket cover and PV segments for the new release of a currently secret band.
Announcements will be made once the band makes their announcements.
Please look forward to it!

Yeah this has gone on long enough actually, I'm Locking the thread and letting the poll speak for itself. We really don't need this back and forth argument to go on any longer.
 
opinions are.... well.. just that. opinions.

what is the point of this poll if you are going to disagree with EVERYONE that prefers RES over Lycaon? Enough with this. Your trolling is cute but it's getting annoying.

i don't think people are blaming the victim as much as pointing out that there are still alot of gaps in what we actually know about the case: was there consent? was there force involved? how much deceit (if any), and on whose part? of course these don't detract from the act being illegal under statutory rape laws (which by the way have attracted their fair share of jurisprudential critique), but depending on the answers to these question the moral tenor of what had happened (as opposed to what we think happened) can be very different.
 
i mean... come on, he just got arrested and even the initial allegations haven't been fully verified, much less the "juicy details" that all of us here are scrutinizing with perverse fascination. tanuki is already doing a good job of feeding our imaginations if that's really what we want.

Thank you very much.
 
In the future hopefully, Not just RiR but any band connected to V STAR will have their music available for legal digital download purchasing.
 
It is one of the simplest ways to make Visual Kei music more accessible to fans from all around the world.
 
So with that being said, hopefully in the near future, there will be a higher number of bands releasing their music onto international iTunes.
I am currently in discussion with another new but popular band about releasing their next single onto iTunes, so please keep tuned in for announcements.
 
and of course, thank you for supporting RiR.

Bought the first RiR single on itunes and was excited about that... now I just saw that their new release is on google play and amazon as well (and for less than $2!)
 
I've said it before but I will again: you guys keep releasing stuff digitally so that the fans can get it easily and I'll keep buying it!

渚 (Nagisa) - Rides In ReVellion
22nd January 2016

Dear god I miss Phantasmagoria and Megaromania more than I should...listening to some of their stuff takes me back to the days when i first started listening to V-K, Im not too broken up about NEGA cause TBS is here. Still their songs make nostalgia wash over me so yea, -OZ- needs to come back </3. They were amazing and Natsuki's vocals were the fucking stuff.
 
 
 
......PLEASE COME BACK CANZEL ;A;

I usually don't say much but I also agree that they were very underrated.
I've discovered these guys in 2006 and since then I've been following them, buying their stuff and listening to their music.
It's difficult to explain but this band brought many good people together from many different countries and we're still in touch even today.
DuelJewel was influenced by Luna Sea, Hide, Siam Shade. Artists that don't need to be introduced.
They were the first Jrock/Visual band to play overseas; In 2002 these guys toured USA and made an US official fanclub called RAG.
In my opinion their whole discography is marvelous, since their demo tapes, but of course that nothing is perfect, there are songs that I usually don't listen or don't like much, just like in every other band, it's very difficult to compose a good song, sometimes it can be an impossible task.
It may sound strange for some people but I started listen to "visual-kei bands" because of its sound and not because of its image, when I started listening to MUCC and Despairs Ray, I didn't know they had a strong image back then, I didn't had a clue about what was vk until I've watched Fool's Fest '03.
Sugizo once said that he can't feel the soul in many vk bands nowadays because everyone is doing just to be equal like each other or to be stylish and not to be different. I totally agree with him, even though there are exceptions.
I'm sure you can feel this soul he's talking about in DuelJewel's music if you care about music in the first place and not only about visual style.
These guys will surely be missed but as long as we keep listening to their songs, their music will never die.

This might be a topic for another thread tbh. But there are a handful of 15-20 year vk bands still out there. I mean how long has Anti Feminism been around, or kra? Mucc, Merry, Dir en grey, SiD? What would you consider "relevant"?

Damn, I'm really sad, actually. Y'all trully disrespectful. This is the end of an era. They've been around for almost 20 years. Biggest achievement of this band is that they were the first indie VK band to perform outside of Asia. Even tough they went major, it's too bad they never got the recognition they deserve. Maximum respect for these guys.

its just you. people say its the apokalypse every year.
 
 
always liked born, even though i always liked their earlier stuff more. shame.

I stumbled across your YouTube channel when I was looking into RiR, and I was (pleasantly) surprised by all of the comment videos. I look forward to seeing what you do in the future!

Hello everyone.
 
Rather than introduce myself as a person, I will introduce myself as a company.
 
V STAR PROMOTION, is currently a small company/organization based in Japan with the following main goals and purposes:
-to reduce the gap between Japanese bands and foreign fans
-provide foreign fans with more access to Japanese bands
-promote Japanese bands to foreign fans
 
V STAR PROMOTION is not a label, nor is it a news company, however V STAR PROMOTION will provide English updates and information for connected bands.
 
Currently V STAR PROMOTION has a twitter, facebook as well as a youtube channel.
On the twitter and facebook you can read updates and see live photography, and on the youtube channel you can watch English comments from bands recorded in connection to V STAR PROMOTION.
 
Twitter: @vstarpromotion
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VSTARPROMOTION/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOdDpLNLoOUeupNpXlxrAbQ
 
However, beyond this V STAR PROMOTION is currently working on several other projects which will hopefully be announced in the near future.
 
With everyone’s support we would like to bring Visual Kei closer to foreign fans.
 
Thank you

Inability to adapt to the 21st century
 
There are way too many bands that have yet to conform to the digital age. While things certainly have improved, there is still a shocking amount of music that isn't available for purchase digitally. Why? I have no idea. It's fucking stupid if you ask me.