diryangrey

there's a practical reason for using japanese anyway, imho
those melodic, vibrato-y, interval-jumping vocal lines vkei is known for are a lot easier to manage in a language where half the sounds are what english calls consonants & half are vowels, and where emphases aren't intrinsic to words/phrases
that's why Kyo singing in english just sounds /different/ compared to him singing the same lines in japanese; i say Kyo bc glass skin & dozing green are recorded in both versions and make for great comparisons like that.

Not to say one language is better than the other - i think on those two diru songs english actually suits them way better and i'm def not saying that bc i can understand Kyo's english better.
There's just different sounds/techniques/styles some languages have less difficulties in expressing than others, so i think there's reason for overseas bands to sing in japanese beyond just the ~aesthetic~ of it.

IN LIGHT OF THIS THREAD....
 
please donate to my gofundme to make the western equivalent of 9goats black out. thank you. vkei is not dead.

This is a very good point and you it's not just vk. You can notice a clear difference in the way a lot of Japanese artists write music compared to Western artists and this is most likely highly connected to fundamental differences in the language. You can notice this especially in choruses of vk/jpop/jrock songs, something that I always felt but fully released when I started learning Japanese.
 
Although I would much rather a Western vk band use English or their native language instead of forcing a terrible Japanese accent. Yohio is pretty good with this but far from perfect. But they should really focus on not writing terrible music first.

there's a practical reason for using japanese anyway, imho
those melodic, vibrato-y, interval-jumping vocal lines vkei is known for are a lot easier to manage in a language where half the sounds are what english calls consonants & half are vowels, and where emphases aren't intrinsic to words/phrases
that's why Kyo singing in english just sounds /different/ compared to him singing the same lines in japanese; i say Kyo bc glass skin & dozing green are recorded in both versions and make for great comparisons like that.

Not to say one language is better than the other - i think on those two diru songs english actually suits them way better and i'm def not saying that bc i can understand Kyo's english better.
There's just different sounds/techniques/styles some languages have less difficulties in expressing than others, so i think there's reason for overseas bands to sing in japanese beyond just the ~aesthetic~ of it.

there's a practical reason for using japanese anyway, imho
those melodic, vibrato-y, interval-jumping vocal lines vkei is known for are a lot easier to manage in a language where half the sounds are what english calls consonants & half are vowels, and where emphases aren't intrinsic to words/phrases
that's why Kyo singing in english just sounds /different/ compared to him singing the same lines in japanese; i say Kyo bc glass skin & dozing green are recorded in both versions and make for great comparisons like that.

Not to say one language is better than the other - i think on those two diru songs english actually suits them way better and i'm def not saying that bc i can understand Kyo's english better.
There's just different sounds/techniques/styles some languages have less difficulties in expressing than others, so i think there's reason for overseas bands to sing in japanese beyond just the ~aesthetic~ of it.

the language thing is pure bullshit tho
i dont think a band or an artist has to sing in his/hers native tongue just because ~*thats how its supposed to be*~
 
there's a lot of swedish bands who sing in english instead of swedish. of course english is more universal so its not going to draw as much attention as a swede singing in japanese or some other language but I think that if you manage to pull it off then that's not an issue (example: chaos from glamscure, and even yohio whos japanese is actually good). the issue is that they dont manage to pull off the vk style, not their choice of language.

not that anybody asked for my opinion, and as a disclaimer i never listened to londboy & have no feelings either way about Rio.
But if the dude's 24 and the girl said she was 18, best case scenario that's still a 6-year age difference between people when there's already the artist-fan dynamic of imbalance.
Just bc someone's 18 doesn't mean they're immune to manipulation, even if the other party doesn't think what they're doing is manipulation.
Seems like sketchy and suspect is the best the situation could possibly hope to be, but that's just my thoughts.

HE INCRIMINATED HIMSELF for fuck's sake she didn't tell anyone! he told the police about it!
nobody is trying to yoko ono LONDBOY ffs

inb4 they come out w/ acapella songs with a beat since there's no guitars/bass

Looking forward to them releasing 2 singles and then disbanding, as seems to be the trend with Kai's last few bands.
 
Joking aside, I really do love Kai's vocals, so I'm actually quite excited for this. Still, I hope this band manages to stick together longer than Kai's last few projects have.

Generally best-of, single and live recorded CD are not included in the number of album that the group owes to its label, and for a label release best-of albums is a easy way for make cash especialy when the band or the artist quit the label like Nippon Crown did the best-of [GIANIZM: Nightmare no Kuse ni Namaiki Dazo] was released some time after NIGHTMARE signed on VAP

Just like @nekkichisays, Avex probably just signed them for a set number of albums. And it also probably isjust  a distribution deal.
 
Their CD credits have not changed all that much since the VAP days and the most key positions in regards to them in their management agency, C-BLOCK are the same too. 
 
Nightmare has allways worked a lot recording and touring. If anything, I would blame C-BLOCK. But The Kiddie was also con C-BLOCK and AFAIK never released as much so I gess Nightmare just like being very productive (?)
 
I mean, thats the most naive thing I could say but I can not think of other reason.
 
On the other hand, Yomi is known for not being very propular with mitsus. ºwº

honest question, am i the only one who thinks part of this hiatus is mea's way of doing like lycaon or alice nine & trying to get out of their label? i mean that's 100% just me with a tinfoil hat jumping to conclusions w/o anything to back it but i dunno, it seems possible to me.

Also for the record i'm i guess one of the other naitomea fans on here; my favourite stuff all comes either from anima or before ultimate circus but i never had a moment or a certain release where i lost interest. World Ruler thru their self-titled is probably my least favourite part of their catalogue but their ballad game was always strong.

Nightmare in general is very despised overall, even though they are much more capable, consistent and proven than most VK groups and quite a few regular Jrock bands. Being very popular (at least a few years back) but not being absolutely excellent also makes them an easy target. I am also quite sure that during the late 2000's when VK was more popular they were seen as a "band noobs like" because their music was a geatway into VK for many people due to anime. Most of the older VK fans at the time started to be actively dismissive in Nightmare topics because they associated the band with ignorance about the scene. The trend has persisted as the band's output has been much less consistant but it still existed in 2008, 2009 when their music was more solid and cohesive.
 
There are also people who just don't like the band or Yomi's vocals. 
 
Also keep in mind that negative reactions are much more motivating than positive ones and people are much more inclined to show opposition than interest, specially on the internet. This creates a climate that does not encourage constructive talk about the band because bad impressions pile up so much that people who may want to say other kind of thigs feel out of place.
 
Happens in every communty in every place on the internet; everything is, to a degree,  a sort of echo chamber of negative feedback.
 
TL;DR - Some peole think Nightmare was too popular for how good they are. Also, it's the internet.

this is really just a drag @ myself but back in middleschool when i was first getting into vk, i accidentally followed a roleplay-blog of Nightmare's Hitsugi, somehow thinking it was the real thing.
I guess i was just totally ready to accept hitsu spoke fluent english and also had the exact personality of a teenage girl?

Also there was a good chunk of time when i was convinced that line in L'Arc~en~Ciel's Taste of Love was "You treat me like a DUCK"

Komorebi already explained the importance of fidelity in translation but i'll just add this: even if you're not "putting it forward as though it was something the artist actually said" a translation by definition finds an equivalent or at least a very good approximation to the original. A translation isn't simply a "review" of the original or whatever happens to be the translator's opinions on it. So it's my belief that every single translator whether you're doing for fun or professionally should have the basic commitment to convey the meaning of the original. As for what you're saying about interpretations: of course it's valid, but ideally a translator would strive to uncouple his/her interpretation of the text from the meaning of the text, so as to allow for readers to make their own interpretation from a translation that's as close to the source text as possible.
 

in all honesty though - it's a song, everything's subjective, most japanese-speaking people probably wouldn't agree on the meanings of every line, i'd assume, cuz everything's made of ambiguity anyway. imho that's what separates prose/poetry from factual statements.

if you get a 'wrong' translation who honestly gives a fuck, as long as you're not putting it forwards as though it was something the artist actually said, if you get some meaning out of the lyrics that interpretation's valid to you however you came across it, imho at least.

not like i remember this 100% correctly but i remember the vocalist from deafheaven saying something about him not having any 'meaning' in mind when he writes his songs' lyrics, he's just putting together phrases he likes, and if the listener gets something out of hearing them that's on the listener for getting to that meaning, & it's not gonna be 'right' or 'wrong' cuz there was nothing to start with.
I'm sure that's not every single lyricist's approach but i still think song lyrics aren't the place to look for an objectively 'correct' interpretation.

TL;DR i wouldn't worry about screwing up translations unless you're trying to pass a poor translation off as their words rather than yours.
If you're just translating for fun / practice / to get a general idea it's reaallly not that big a deal if you flip the tenses or tag some verbs to the wrong subject.
i think things like the moods/atmospheres of a song can still land if bits get confused, & even if higher-level things go right over your head (as i'm sure they do mine) part of learning to translate is you're always pushing your comprehension slightly further & reinforcing what you already know, so more advanced parts of the language are just things you'll get to understanding later.

hey - i'm like, the farthest thing from an 'advanced' translator but i thought i'd try to give my thoughts anyway -

one thing that helps me a lot (cuz i'm still just starting out) is going to jpopasia, finding a track that's already got the kanji written in romaji & translated into english already.
Then i'll try not to look at the english and, using the romaji as furigana if i don't know the kanji's reading, i'll type each 'word' i don't already understand into google translate one by one and then try to use what i know abt grammar and shit to make some sense of the line.
Then i'll compare it to the already translated english and see how close i got and if it's reasonable cool if not, then i can try to match the translator's clauses/phrases to those parts of the jp line, and usually that gives me a better idea of how the parts of the sentence work.

It doesn't feel as productive as taking a new song and coming up w/ an ~original~ translation but as far as something to do when i'm trying to increase my knowledge/fluency i think that approach helps a lot!
Especially bc even if your vocabulary is exactly the same as another person's, you'll probably interpret the grammar differently cuz it's all subjective anyway but imo reconstructing sentences in english is as much a skill as understanding them in japanese.

hope that wasn't like suuuper basic but that's about as much as i'm qualified to offer lmao

Hi. I think song lyrics are one of the hardest things to translate.  For a level reference I’ve passed N2 and have translated interviews from print materials, but I frequently find songs difficult to understand.
 
One of the things that’s especially difficult about Japanese is that so many words are left out which need to be included in English because of our grammar, and that’s even more common in song lyrics. English doesn’t let us leave the phrase as vague as it was in Japanese, so we have to get into the writer’s head and explicitly state what they’re only implying. The use of transitive and intransitive verbs, regular vs. passive form, formality level, etc, are important clues, and non-native speakers tend to have difficulty with this. I have trouble with them too, and it’s not uncommon for me not to be sure who did what to whom until I read an interview where it’s explained in plain everyday Japanese. And I’ve seen plenty of translations by other people where they got that who/whom part completely backwards. It happens a lot.
 
Anyway, my advice is to try to read or listen to interviews about the songs. It’s a lot easier if you know what the band meant to say before you try to translate their poetically incomplete phrases.

The beginning of Crazy Tribe is the kind of stuff that makes you check that nobody in the train can hear the music through your headphones. 
 
 

going through @diryangrey's ipod in the middle of physics class and wondering what this colorful-looking album by "baroque" was and then falling in love with them and then falling thru the rabbit hole. still wondering what a "ガリロン" even is, tho

But I really wonder what fromjapan en tensho will do, who knows they also cut off the plug of avex products.
 
however 2nd hand stuff.. I wonder.. would that still be allowed.
I can't wait until Closet Child etc will give a voice. I guess we will get one tomorrow.

I know, it would still be hilarious if they were THAT adamant about it.

One thing I love about MH is that all topics regarding X Japan always ends up with us mocking Yoshiki.

Depending on how #basic you're fine with you can always try sites like sexpot.jp or algonquins.jp.  SPR ships all their items overseas with cdjapan.co.jp and i'm pretty sure algonquins does too.
You could also try closetchildonlineshop.com - they've got a huge variety at really nice prices, but they're all used so you've got to be okay with checking pretty often to find a certain type of thing. They also ship overseas, from their own site, but i'm pretty sure they've written instructions in english.
ofc if you're broke as i am and want to get creative to make things work, someone i follow on tumblr made this really helpful post

But this is all a non-answer ofc, bc i'm pretty sure bands as funded/famous as Versailles  just have private designers on hand.
closet-child might be your best bet though - i've definitely seen some stuff that at least looks like a cheap imitation of tambi-ish style.
hope at least one of those links helps!