helcchi

Yessss I am seeing a trend on which artists like to get you hooked I have never binge-listened to the first 30 seconds of so many songs just to make a list, so I’m really appreciative of our collective efforts. Thanks guys, keep the music coming! @YuyoDriftIt's absolutely ok for the riff/melody to precede the vocals, as long as the first sung lines are the chorus

While the conventional verse-chorus song structure is the most popular way to approach song-writing, there are several well-known songs that deviate from this formula by starting with the chorus. By doing so, listeners are pulled in immediately and directed straight to the most memorable part or hook of the song. A quick search on google can reveal lists of notable examples. But what about visual kei (and jrock)? A handful of songs also employ this approach and it's a refreshing change to what we're used to hearing. I've compiled a list of the ones I know, but would love to hear some of your favorites. ALiBi - DREAM ALSDEAD - Distrust アンド -eccentric agent- - カラノカラダ・・・ bis - SEASONS born - felony CELLT - star drops CodeRebirth - Remember D=OUT - 青い鳥 DaizyStripper - Dandelion DIAURA - Lost November DIAURA - ホライゾン DIAURA - Reason for Treason DIAURA - REBORN DIR EN GREY - 激しさと、この胸の中で絡み付いた灼熱の闇 DIV - 夏の行方 EAT YOU ALIVE - JENNIFER EVE - エール EVE - 淡色季節 exist†trace - 海の雫 FEST VAINQUEUR - 覇斬 FEST VAINQUEUR - 霞桜 FEST VAINQUEUR - 愛の鎖 the GazettE - 別れ道 the GazettE - SHIVER girugamesh - COLOR girugamesh - takt GOLDEN BOMBER - memeshikute Grieva - true grief Grieva - LOVELESS Grieva - 水中沈む透明な匣 heidi. - レム Hi:BRiD - 1998 Hi:BRiD - 真世界 Irokui. - 摩天楼の雨男 JILUKA - Crossing Fate Kagrra, - うたかた La'cryma Christi - 未来航路 LM.C - 88 LUNA SEA - END OF SORROW LUNA SEA - UP TO YOU lynch. - Crystalize lynch. - ETERNITY Malice Mizer - Beast of Blood MATENROU OPERA - 悲哀とメランコリー meth. - THE LAST SLEEP MIYAVI - 「素晴らしきかな、この世界」-WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD- MUCC - 約束 NEXX - EXISTENCE Nightmare - the WORLD Phobia - La rouge fil RENTRER EN SOI - STIGMATA Sadie - Recall Sadie - Rain fall Sadie - 棘-toge- SHIVA - BELIEVER Shulla - カラス (pm5：48 ver．) SIAM SHADE - 1/3の純情な感情 Sick² - 冬の終わる場所。 SID - V.I.P SID - 乱舞のメロディ SINCREA - 桜舞い散る季節に君が夢見たこと Vidoll - Cloud ViViD - 睡蓮人 ViViD - REAL xTRiPx - glitter Zonbi - 墓場 de ラヴソング

http://shattered-tranquility.net/index.php/category/originals/venue-navi/ http://www.vkeiguide.com/category/venue-cd-navi/venue A lot of the livehouses themselves don't disclose their capacity on their websites, but the above links are good. Pretty much every venue is listed with their cap

lynch. years: 11.5 years unique songs: ≳120 time it takes to listen: 7.2 hours productivity rate: 10 songs / year I thought that was deathgaze lol

So this is something I’d completely forgotten about - Nokubura’s Masa had my artwork as his lock screen one time in 2012. And for some reason, “rediscovering” it four years later, I’m way more excited about it now than I was back then. But not only that, back then the only place I uploaded it to was deviantart with no mention of any of the bandmembers and how Masa was able to find it is anyone's guess. I know many of you will not care and have not seen my artwork, but I was most artistically active between 2011 and 2013, having drawn about 60 bands in that timeframe. One of the reasons for my eternal hiatus after that was the amount of art theft that started to kill my motivation. And as I got older and busier, it’s not easy finding the time to do these hobbies as I used to. However the other reason was my own fault, seeing no real improvement in my art style and subsequently sitting on a shitload of unfinished drafts from 2013. But enough of my life story because I finally decided to pick up that tablet again and so here’s to my first band artwork in almost 4 years - Jiluka If I have the guts, I'll be posting them onto my social media accounts in the following days, but this forum gets to see it first I hope you enjoy this "advanced screening" (Suggestions are welcome!)

Normally this would be counter-intuitive, as bands wouldn’t be able to survive in the cut-throat world of visual kei if they’re not pumping out a steady stream of releases periodically. This prompted me to remember that infamous article from 2010 exposing the vk industry: I won’t go into the finer details as this article warrants a thread of its own (again) but it’s an interesting read and a real eye-opener.

Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusic

xaa-xaa and gossip's reproduction rate seem utterly terrifying, but give them another 2 years and we'll see if they slow down. gossip years: 2.2 years unique songs: ≳44 time it takes to listen: 3.1 hours productivity rate: 20 songs / year SCAPEGOAT years: 8 years unique songs: ≳74 time it takes to listen: ??? >4 hours? productivity rate: 9.25 songs / year and I was looking at mejibray's stats when 420 was released (2014) - they were ramping at a rate of 22 songs/year at that point, with 77 unique songs and 5.2 hours of listening material

We all know that VK bands breed releases like rabbits, so I've been trying to gauge out which bands are the worst serial offenders in coming out with new material and did some number crunching on some of the bands with the most extensive discographies (excluding remixes, remasters, karaoke/instrumental and re-recordings) So far I haven't been able to find a band that even comes close to being as prolific as mejibray with so much material in such short time, not even ains bands. Except maybe Grieva. MEJIBRAY years: 5.5 years unique songs: ≳102 time it takes to listen: 6.7 hours productivity rate: 19 songs per year - almost 2 full albums every year. seriously how GRIEVA years: 4.5 years unique songs: ≳76-86 (too many SEs) time it takes to listen: 4.7 hours productivity rate: 18 songs per year DIAURA years: 6 years unique songs: ≳97 time it takes to listen: 6.5 hours productivity rate: 16 songs per year / 1 album + single per year / 1 EP every 4 months Lycaon years: 7.5 years unique songs: ≳100 time it takes to listen: 5.8 hours productivity rate: 13 songs / 1 album per year KIRYU years: 9 years unique songs: ≳113 time it takes to listen: 7.3 hours productivity rate: 12 songs / 1 album per year DEZERT years: 5 years unique songs: ≳60 time it takes to listen: 3.5 hours productivity rate: 12 songs / 1 album per year girugamesh years: 12 unique songs: ≳130 time it takes to listen: 7.8 hours productivity rate: 11 songs / 1 album per year AWOI years: 9.5 years unique songs: ≳85 time it takes to listen: 5.7 hours productivity rate: 9 songs / 1 album + 1 EP every alternating year list is short because filtering out duplicates is hard. It would also be interesting to see how well some of the longer-tenured bands do on this list.

Retweet Battle

three more Carl Orff - O Fortuna Deluhi: Overture-Yggdalive- (this might be stretching it but it does seem to take cues from O Fortuna) Auld Lang Syne Mix Speaker's, Inc.: My Wish (Horror) Xmas (00:00 & 3:54) Kagome Kagome Paradeis: 楽園のソナタ (1:16) @Peace Heavy mk III hand you these and the monster of the previous post

Nice! So many bands aren't on spotify and it's hard to make a playlist. Will you be updating your list as the master post? I've got some more, forgive me if there are any duplicates 176BIZ Amber Bullet Angelo - mixed with different artists Annie's Black Capella - mixed with different artists Creature Creature CULT the Movie DEAD END Dunkelheit the fool - mixed with different artists GOLDEN BOMBER heidi. Jilled Ray JILLS BLUE ROSE L-Lotus- Lost Ash MirialD NEU Orochi Otogadead RED universe the riotts. SUGIZO umbrella - mixed with different artists Un=(xag) ZIg+Zag ZORO - mixed with different artists V-Anime Rocks compilation Just realised most Starwave bands are on spotify, they're probably all there but I haven't searched them all

Here's some hard data from visunavi, twitter and ameba. Their followers on social media might be a good metric. Athougth Len from TBS has 94K followers on twitter (even more than dir en grey and almost as much as much as lunaseaofficial :O), it was due to his rescued kitten Kotetsu going viral. So individual band members might have more fame, but that fame won't necessarily extend to the rest of the band. Paradeis and Piass are no longer active, but judging by their follower count on their old ameba accounts, they all floated around the 2K number. Live data: Elysion's first one-man will be at Ruido K3 (capacity: 150), but the largest venue they played at is Holiday Shinjuku which houses 450 people. THE BLACK SWAN's biggest one man was at Tsutaya O-West (capacity: 600) and they regularly play at ~300 capacity live houses Liphlich's biggest one-man was at Ebisu Liquidroom (housing a capacity of about 900) The biggest venue Grieva has played at was Makuhari Messe (10,000) for Visual Japan Summit 2016 Scapegoat's many one-man's have played out their finals in ~300 capacity live houses, but they have been a part of bigger events at O-EAST (1300) UNDER FALL JUSTICE seems to centralize their activity around HOLIDAY NEXT Nagoya (capacity: 300) Kuroyuri to Kage headlined a live last year at Shinjuku LOFT (500) Social Media Data: THE BLACK SWAN Twitter: 5795~10.6K (not including len's 94K followers) Ameba: 167-444Insert other media LIPHLICH Twitter: 2234-10K Ameba: ~971 Grieva Twitter: 5872-9349 Ameba: 1630 SCAPEGOAT Twitter: 2304-8643 Ameba: 868-1507 Kuroyuri to Kage Twitter: 3646-5744 Ameba: 774 UNDER FALL JUSTICE Twitter: 1029-2415 Ameba: 52-488 ELYSION Twitter: 1735-2200 Paradeis Ameba: 929-3046 THE PIASS Ameba: ~1268 (Takayuki only)

Not only are the tattoos a dead giveaway, but he seems to have recycled part of his Sulphuric Acid era costume too xD

suuper late to the party, but tomoka is just tomozo in disguise:

Not so much for listening to japanese music, but specifically for listening to vk. You sometimes hear that it’s not real music or that artists focus more on their looks than music. And I get that it’s true for some bands, but not all. I know that the majority of vk fans in japan is female, but theoretically if you’re into a certain style of music e.g. symphonic metal or deathcore, it shouldn’t really matter if you’re male of female to enjoy a band like Versailes or nokubura. If we disregard the visual aspect and focus on the music, how much credibility does vk really have? Can the music produced by some vk artists rival those of non vk artists in their respective musical genres? I’d like to think yes but this is purely subjective

Kaya - Last Snow Luinspear - White Kiss MoNoLith - Kimi he... "if" no uta Rshitei - Dareka no Merry Christmas Virgil - Shirayuki INORAN - not a serious wound (Q.Y.P.mix on this holy night) Kawamura Ryuichi - Merry X’mas and Happy new year Kawamura Ryuichi - Christmas Kiyoharu - Christmas D’espairsRay - Yami ni furu kiseki (classical white version) DaizyStripper - Setsurenka Dear L'Novel - Winter Lover L'Arc~en~Ciel - Yuki no Ashiato L’Arc~en~Ciel - winter fall BUMP OF CHICKEN - Merry Christmas BUMP OF CHICKEN - Snow Smile Daigo Stardust - Holy Holy BREAKERS - WINTER PARTY GLAY - 彼らのHOLYX’MAS Kishidan - SECRET LOVE STORY

@patientZERO I have been to hell with these sets/props and got lost there. And that church. is. driving. me. crazy. No but really, if you squint really hard, they can be an 8-member boyband Because you know... they're friends...

hahaha good point Although these two *just* happen to be releasing new material within a week of each other and *just* happen stand in front of a blue-green CG background. A few years ago I made a blog on tumblr highlighting reused sets in vk, an extension of a thread I first started on my ameblo. I stalled after a few posts due to the sheer amount of material I had to sort out - but worth it to start again. I'm interested to learn where these locations are.

I can't help but to draw similarities between FED's new look and JILUKA's new look xD Both vocalists even have a leg up pose