Tanishi

I'm have soulseek open a lot of the time because I have a large wishlist that is yet to show up. Same username as here but I'm sharing userlist only so if you want to download something off me send me a message first. I still find rare stuff on there every now and then that you can't find anywhere else, usually from users who log in once and then never log in again

I thought they were pretty generic at first but their music has a very hypnotic element about it that keeps me coming back. They were really good songwriters but you don't realise until you give them a few proper listens.

I sort of expected it but I thought they would release one last album and maybe disband next year. Sucks though.

Relistening to Ousia today and I think it really is a fantastic album, much better then anything Nega did. At first I didn't like it because it's really dense and sounds very samey but every time I come back to it I like it a little more. Some criticisms are it's too long and too much metalcore/deathcore chugging but there is really great songwriting all throughout the album. Jin's voice contributes to the amazing atmosphere and he's gotten better since Nega. On all of Nega's releases there were times where his voice made me cringe pretty badly but this is mostly absent when I listen to Ousia. If they released a whole album filled with songs as good as the title track and 流声、相剋の廃と it would be vk album of the decade imo.

Imo Undying was their best song since DIM so I'm feeling overly optimistic about this album. ^Also I checked Ruki's twitter and he uses 最狂 (saikyou) instead of 最強 (saikyou), a play on words saying the album will be their most insane/crazy album yet. Might be looking too far into this but hopefully this means it won't be straight forward generic stuff like Dogma which was alright but far from great.

Hopefully we get some new music this time

Apart from the classics like Luna Sea (still the best 90s band), Kuroyume, Malice Mizer, Buck Tick etc I've only been getting into old school vk recently. Some of my favorites though:

Most of Rouage's albums are really great and they have fantastic song's on all their albums. Favorite album's include Bible, Children and -312604806-. A lot of people really like Soup as well. Classic goth rock vk sound here but they stand out because of their above average songwriting.

This band only had one mini but it's near perfect the whole way through. Their songs sound really 'dynamic' and have great energy. It's a shame they didn't last longer because this is probably the best record released on Key Party.

Laputa was one of the biggest bands from Nagoya back in the day with their dark and catchy sound. Standout albums include Kagerou and Emadera but anything they released before the turn of the century was extremely solid.

Baiser were another prolific band in the 90s I'm sure most people here know about. Favorite album is Ash but their later stuff is good too.

There is so much good stuff from the 90s visual boom that the West doesn't know about that I feel like I'm only ever scratching the surface. Will probably lurk this group a lot for recs.

Is this post visual kei like sukekiyo

This album is definitely gonna take time to digest properly. The production is great though, no matter how much is going on everything sounds really clear and balanced. Could be their best but time will tell.

Edit: love the drop in 首吊り遊具 too.

I'd like to see one of the bands cover Kuchiki no Tou's title track, though I don't know if anyone could pull it off.

3 hours ago, Komorebi said:

is Acid Black Cherry considered Vk? If it is, it's most definitely topping the charts.

I forgot about them completely, though they didn't release a studio album last year, I'm surprised Yasu and co are still that popular. Their last album got to number 2 and the cover album they released this year got to number 3 (I thought cover albums usually do terribly). That's pretty crazy. In 2009 I thought assumed they'd fall off the radar fast and haven't paid attention to them since around that time.

46 minutes ago, violetchain said:

There must be some major bands that sold more, but I can't think of any really popular ones that released albums last year either.

Yeah I've been typing in some major bands but can't really find information. I can't even get the Oricon website to give me first week sales numbers for specific releases or even on 2016 weekly charts. Yet 2017 has it all there. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or it's an example of superior nipponese technology.

Without typing in individual bands into the Oricon website, it's pretty hard to find out sales on the VK industry as a whole. Kiryu's album placed 9th on the weekly charts with 13.245 sales which seems like it could be the highest because SID, Golden Bomber (ignoring compilations) and Gazette didn't release albums. I'm asking this out of curiosity, I don't really want to participate in sales wars.

Overrated:

- Kyo

- Dada

- Tsuzuku (Mejibray)

- Karma (Avelcain)

- Yuuki (Lycaon)

- Hiro (Nocturnal Bloodlust)

- Kon (La'Mule)

- Juri (Deluhi)

- Sono (Matenrou Opera) Might get hate for this one.

Underrated:

- Yukari (Baiser)

- Daisuke (Kagerou, the studs) Him and Aie worked so well together. I can't help but feel the god and death stars would sound better with him on vocals.

- Jin (Nega, The Black Swan) He's an acquired taste but he's gotten so much better. Though I still liked him with Nega.

- Shin (ViViD) This band weren't very good but Shin's vocals while really generic were really great. With a better band he would be amazing.

- Nigu (cocklobin)

- yo-ka (DIAURA)

- Kurosaki Mahiro (Kiryuu)

- Aki (Laputa) Underrated band in general.

- Jui (Vidoll)

- Izumi (Wail)

- Teru (Glay) Though most likely he's not underrated in Japan.

On 4/29/2017 at 9:03 PM, diryangrey said:

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

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.

5 hours ago, crossparallel said:

1. C93 - All the Pretty Little Horses
2. MERRY - Moderngarde
3. B-T - Six/Nine
4. Bowie - Station to Station
5. Coil - Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)
6. These New Puritans - Field of Reeds
7. The Mortal - I am Mortal
8. Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
9. BTS - Wings / You Never Walk Alone (repackage)

The fact that you have Current 93, Coil, Merry and BTS on your list shows you have wide taste in music

Looks like they've jumped on the progressive mess micro-trend like Gazette, Diru, The Black Swan etc. Cool song, hopefully this trend gets big because it's one of my favorites in recent years.

6 hours ago, Bear said:

 I am basically thinking about anime that is much darker and psychological, more violent and gory, features erotica, or deals with themes that'll go way above the head of most teens

This description fits Texhnolyze perfectly. Especially the deals with themes that'll go way above the head of most teens part.

On 3/23/2017 at 0:23 PM, Zeus said:

An entire era of Japanese history was lost when Mega Upload went down. Many places exclusively used that website for all their deeds. It's said that 4% of all the traffic in the internet flowed through their servers at their peak. I say this because there are lots of releases that you just can't find anymore because links are dead and the fans have left. I've learned a valuable lesson about the permanence of data.

There used to be a saying that 'anything you put on the internet stays on there forever' but megaupload's death showed us that its simply not true. If some guy put up an obscure indies vk single on a blog and say 100 people download that file, 5 years later, megaupload is down and probably only 50 people still have that file. Then out of only 10 people that are part of a community where such a file would be shared, only 1 would be willing to put in the effort to share but if no-one requests the file...

As time passes the chances of finding the file go down to zero. It might exist on someone's hard drives but in that case its not on the internet. You could track down the CD and buy it but what if the file was not a vk single but a fan made game or something?

The main lesson here is: back up any files you deem important.

I've watched:

1 litre of tears: couldn't get into it, was way too melodramatic for me.

Liar Game: really good. It's a psychological drama about strategy/gambling games involving incredibly large sums of money. Usually shows like this have crappy games that feel really contrived but this did a really good job of avoiding that. The crazy reveals kept me on the edge of my seat through both seasons and the movie, and the ending does a good job of explaining what happened. Music by Yasutaka Nakata as well (Perfume, Capsule, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu).

Hanzawa Naoki: good revenge drama set in Japan's crazy banking world. I didn't really like any of the characters that much though. Its the highest viewed (2nd highest?) drama of all time yet S2 still hasn't come 4 years later.

Kazoku Game (2013) : this was exceptionally good (only bad part is the music). The premise is basically a home tutor weasels his way in to a upper middle class family and fucks everything up. All the characters are really great and well developed and the acting is good too (even the Arashi member, he was particularly good which was a surprise). If you like twists, eerie uncanny valley atmosphere, suffering or anything psychological you should watch this show. I really wish there was more j-drama like this.

Okitegami Kyoko no Biboroku: couldn't get into this because the mysteries weren't that interesting to me and the acting was bad. I watched this because the book is written by Nisio Isin who I really like. 

Hana Yori Dango: couldn't get into this either.

And others years ago which I can't remember.

If anyone knows any good trippy/psychological/experimental drama hit me up.

Downloading western music: log into rutracker, download the band's entire discography in flac in just a few clicks.

Downloading japanese music: search each album individually on MH, jpopsuki, soulseek, rutracker and random brazillion blogs, then spend half an hour finding the rar password and fixing the tags only to find out the rar was corrupted.

"Apparently iTunes has sneakily added a new DRM field called "owner" which extracts your full name from your OS system files."

Wow that's crazy.  I'm glad I made this topic now. Thanks for the response.

Edit: for anyone reading this in the future the program doesn't work for non english characters so you have to rename the files.

I want to share an album I bought off itunes here. I know they got rid of the DRM ages ago but I was wondering if there was any other metadata attached to the files that could link back to my account. And if there is what program should I use to remove it.

I tried Googling it but it didn't come up with the information I wanted.

I forgot about this. Looks like its on itunes for fairly cheap so I'll pick it up.

I was thinking about this topic today while listening to The Gallo. Most of these have been mentioned already but:

- The Gallo: definitely one of the best bands in the scene right now. They released 2 full length albums in 2016, Diavolo which is an amazing album and Lucifero which is really good too. They are a lot better than what they used to be, I remember checking them out in 2014 and not really liking them. But the whole band has improved heaps, especially Jojo's beautiful eccentric vocals. Really unique band with a dark (but not too heavy) catchy sound.

- Develop One's Faculties: Reincarnation was my favorite VK album of 2015 and what hooked me was their catchy choruses and frantic mathy styled riffs. The two singles they released after were a little disappointing but their newest mini, I WANT MY FREEDOM, while not as good as Reincarnation is a really strong release. They take a light, indie inspired but sort of generic vk sound and mix it with crazy unique compositions.

- The GazettE: Everyone knows this band and while it still had a lot of filler, Dogma was their best release since DIM imo. If it had been a mini it could have been really great but I guess The GazettE are too big for minis now. And The Undying was the best track they have made in a long time too even though it was pseudo-progressive structural mess. But it felt inspired so that's why have some hope for this washed up band (I'm gonna be disappointed, I know).

- Grieva: Early Dir en grey rip off band with some modern influences. They are really good at what they do even though their 2016 was pretty mediocre. Still following these guys though.

- Dezert: Most of the stuff they have released has been good. They've become pretty big now and as many people on this forum has said they will probably get worse. Their sound is quirky nostalgia fulled alternative metal in a modern style. 

- Kuroyuri to Kage: One of the darkest bands on the scene atm, their 2016 mini was probably the most catchy release of the year with every song having me tapping my foot to the crazy vocals and hypnotic compositions. It's refreshing to see a band that is both really catchy and dark at the same time. They're a blast to follow as well, always doing promotional shots in strange places toilet cubicles and restaurant kitchens. Great band and their newest single was good too.

- Dir en grey: While not vk, they are still undeniably a part of the scene and Utafumi showed they are still at the top of their game. The song is a progressive mess similar to The Gazette's Undying, but instead of trying to be epic and 'deep' like they have in the past (and what the Gazette have been doing), they combine a bunch of crazy brutal verses and catchy choruses together that shouldn't work at all, but they make it work. Apart from Buck-Tick, they are pretty much the only long term band currently releasing top class material.

- gibkiy gibkiy gibkiy: Nagoya kei supergroup filled with old people who makes long jazz inspired crazy shit. The band used their experience to bring a really polished, somewhat experimental album in 2016 and you can tell the band put every ounce of talent they have into this album. There is no doubt these guys have a bright future (if they don't disband).

- Kiryu: This band mixes traditional Japanese music with visual kei similar to Kagrra, but they are much darker and heavier. Hyakki Yakou blew me away from the very first track, 日出ズル國 (Hiizurukuni) which was the most intense frantic song of 2016 for me. But the whole album is great and I really love the SPEED and INTENSITY which the band has turned up to 110. The best yet IMO and even though their most recent single was disappointing, I'm still looking forward to what they bring out.

- The Black Swan: Ex-Nega vocalist Jin's new band. Jin has improved a lot as a vocalist and this band are basically a more polished version of Nega + Dum Spiro Spero. Ousia took me a while to get into as all the songs sound really similar the first few listens, but after a few listens I think this is best Dum Spiro Spero rip off album to ever grace the scene. The title track is excellent though, up their with Vinushka and Macabre as one of the best +10 minute vk songs of all time. For some reason I think these guys can do better (probably going to be disappointed though - something I'm sure every vk fan is used to).

- Royz: A giant blend of modern VK trends such as electronic sounds, generic metalcore riffs and J-pop choruses. I haven't really liked much of their stuff but S.I.V.A is a good varied release, even though there is no illusion that you're listening to music aimed at Japanese teenage girls (at least with bands like gibkiy gibkiy gibkiy I can pretend to be mature). You can tell The B.P. Records ghost writer was on good drugs last year with this, Kiryuu and some cool Codomo Dragon songs. Hopefully his dealer doesn't get caught.

- Emmuree: modern Nagoya kei band who aren't from Nagoya. Not much to say except that they are really consistent and make good music. Pretty slow with releases which I guess is how they keep their high quality.

I have listened to a lot of other recent bands but I can't really get into them. Bands like Chanty, Keel, Lynch, Diaura, Anfiel, Unite, Liphlich, The God and Death Stars, xaa xaa, Kameleo, Matenrou Opera (like their old stuff though), Versailles (old stuff and Greatest Hits I like), Nue, Dadaroma, Dog in the PWO, Merry and Mejibray are some that a lot of people really like but not for me.

I cannot understand people who say vk is bad nowadays. There's still good stuff coming out every year if you look hard enough.  But I'm still felling pretty negative about it's long term future.