Tanishi

Yeah this is really good. I think the production is more on point than other recent kotokei bands. That guitar tone and the bass is really great how they mix in and out of each other. Good start to 2019.

Yeah this is really good. I think the production is more on point than other recent kotokei bands. That guitar tone and the bass is really great how they mix in and out of each other. Good start to 2019.

At this point I'm hoping Kazari makes a new band and releases the music with a new vocalist/band. It's a waste to compose an albums worth of stuff and not release it especially when the stuff leading up to it was so good.

🎁As an early gift to the community, MH will once again be hosting the MH JRock Awards for 2018!🎁
 
Now, before you start voting, read the rules provided in the spoiler below, or else Yuyo will ... idk yet but just read it anyways.
 
 
Once you have read the general rules, here's how to vote:
 
1. Copy the list of categories below into your reply
2. Fill in your votes (you can skip as many categories as you'd like)
3. Submit.
(Try to keep your votes organized under spoiler tags in order to save space for other voters)
 
Your posts will stay hidden until the end of the voting.
 
Here are your categories to choose from:
 
 
Voting will last until Sunday, January 13th of the New Year (2019)
This will allow everyone to take their time, since some of us are still waiting on some final releases to come out this month.
 
Note: 
"Album" includes both full and mini-albums. For simplicity reasons, we follow the "Once Visual Kei, always Visual Kei" rule. So yes, that makes bands like Dir en grey or L'Arc~En~Ciel a Visual Kei band, just for the purpose of this voting.  
If you missed/skipped 2017 or are just joining the forum and have never heard of this, then take part this year!
If you have any questions about the 2018 MH Jrock Awards, feel free to contact myself or any of the MH Staff!
 
Happy Voting!

 

That new toe sounds sweet!
 
Y'all both got the wrong song from Chedoara though... the last minute/outro riff of "愛憎につき..." might be my favorite part of a song from this year so far.
 
 
 

The Official Review team is back with the perfect accompaniment to the avalanche of Halloween candy and pumpkin spice lattes you're about to destroy your body with: the best j-tunes of the summer! This quarter includes a great variety of visual kei, J-Rock, and whatever the heck genre you'd call that second track that @CAT5 wants us to listen to. Come discover some new music that we've curated for you, or re-listen to your favorites now enhanced by the critiques of your favorite Monochromians. Let us temporarily transport you away from your boring job (at least in spirit if not in reality). Agree with our picks? Think we're idiots and shouldn't even be allowed to listen to music much less act as taste makers for the community? Good! Tell us why below.
 
 
@The Reverend's picks
 
"くしゃみ" (Kushami) by まみれた (Mamireta)

 
 
 
"Lemoned" by NITRO DAY

 
"New Order" by Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

 
 
 
@YuyoDrift's picks
 
"Obliterator" by JILUKA

 
"Knight of Sword" by Unlucky Morpheus

 
 
"MAD [K]" by DIMLIM

 
"絶縁体 (Zetsuentai)" by Dir en grey

 
 
@Zeus's picks
"Raununculus" by Dir en grey

 
 
"今宵は飄逸なエゴイスト ～ Ego,Schizoid,Beat." by Demetori

 
 
 
"make my story" by lenny code fiction

 
"RED SWAN" by YOSHIKI feat. HYDE

 
 
"GROTESQUE" by DIMLIM

 
 
"Renatus" by lynch.

 
@CAT5's picks
"Etude of solitude" by toe

 
"からかひ" (Karakai) by Sweet William と 青葉市子 (Ichiko Aoba)

 
Thanks for reading!

(Almost) too late
 
 

This album is all over the place and it's quite hard to form a solid opinion of it after one or two listens. I expected something much more generic like a more boring arche but I'm pleasantly surprised that there is some interesting ideas thrown in. Even though the albums inconsistent as heck, there's a high possibility of it growing on me.
CHE DO A RA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> TIW>>NINTH.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

One thing that amazes me about this band is how despite being in the scene for 30 years, they still release better/more interesting music then 99% of other Japanese rock bands. There's only a handful of bands in the world who have kept up a streak that long without turning crap. Their last two albums have been really great imo.

rare solo image of kyo leaked

Madmans Esprit covered DIR EN GREY this time. The chorus is awesome.

The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids.

“Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is.
 


There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor.
 



Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.”
 
Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.”
 


Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise.

Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else.
 



Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei.


Or was it???


Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz.
 


Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.

I knew the visual kei movement was originally inspired by darkwave bands, butI didn't knew that Dead Can Dance was such a big influence! To me is one of the best bands in the history of music: they are just out of this world, and their music has a really strange and moving vibe that's hard to replicate. They just announced a new album ('Dionysus') to be released in November! Really excited: 'Anastasis' is one of the best reunion albums ever, so I have really high hopes.
 

What I don't understand is how small bands like DOF and Dimlim can have much better mastering for their records then one of the biggest bands in the scene.
 
It's interesting seeing this band mentioned here, because they have had an big understated impact on vk influencing Buck-Tick (Atsushi Sakurai), Kisaki,  Luna Sea and the whole darkwave movement in general. 

I've never heard of any of his bands but I like this guy.

Absolutely horrible.

This sounds like it's gonna be the worst produced record they've done by far. It sounds completely flat. 

I'm surprised they didn't reference Undeux and the ordering a pizza through line incident. Maybe they did that in another song?

looking forward to the new Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows record x

This sounds like it's gonna be the worst produced record they've done by far. It sounds completely flat.