reminiscing2004

I fell out of the Visual Kei scene in 2010 because all of my favorite present bands were disbanding or going to shit. I fell back into Visual Kei in the last two years because of a discovery/re-appreciation for all of the gold in the late 90s and early 2000s.
 
While I don't have anything present or new to look forward to, I keep finding new things I love from the past. All of my favorite bands I discovered in 2016 were ones that disbanded 15 years ago! And despite that, they make me feel like I've really gotten into VK again.

u know we can't go without at least two of these topics per year...enjoy ladies n gentlemen!

I am still a big fan of Japanese music and I keep checking new releases for the classic bands like Mucc, Dir en Grey, Merry, Matenrou Opera, nogod etc, but new stuff?

I just watched a top 100 video for the "best" vk songs of 2016, which I guess covered most relevant releases, and man everything was just horrible. 

Is this me just getting over VK, or is the quality lower than ever? Anyone else feeling the same?

I'm sad
 
 

I thought Juliette was an alright band.

Also consider, comparing record sales nearly 10 years apart from each other isn't totally seamless, because physical sales have been on the decline drastically.

Also consider, comparing record sales nearly 10 years apart from each other isn't totally seamless, because physical sales have been on the decline drastically.

Also consider, comparing record sales nearly 10 years apart from each other isn't totally seamless, because physical sales have been on the decline drastically.

I miss prime Alice Nine.

Oh, I'm stupid. Didn't see that :< Best of luck!

I meant lyrics specifically I already have everything almost music wise and none of it that I have has any booklets or anything that might have lyrics. Thank you though!
 

I should probably add a caveat to my request; I will except lyrics for anything and everything you're willing to provide(it doesn't even have to be a translation). Thank you.

Hello, i was waiting for a long time to enter in this forum hahaha

Since everyone's waiting for someone else to kick things off, I'll do it lol. My list is divided into 3 categories, each with 10 of my favorite releases, max 1 per band per section. The categories are (a) singles; (b) albums and mini-albums; (c) non-regular releases, which include live-limited/distributed CDs, digital releases, CDs of session bands, units, shuffle bands, and so on.
 
As before, a caveat: I listen exclusively to visual kei and my list reflects that. Also, this list is called “hiroki’s favorites”, which is to say, music that speaks most intimately to me on various levels and has the kind of sound I'm attracted to. I make no pretense of this being the best that the scene has to offer anyone, since that's something only he/she can seek out on their own.
 
For me--and saying this will no doubt induce significant eye-rolling--2016 was by some distance the best year of visual kei in terms of music released (disbands are a separate matter). It took me incredibly long to assemble a list of 10 per category because in each case I could easily have cited 50 that would ordinarily waltz into my top 10 list any other year. The competition this time was unreal. I considered appending an honorable mention section to each category but I thought better of making an already lengthy list even more unwieldy.
 
Lastly: even though I made this list more as a cathartic exercise than a serious attempt to make others fall in love with my bands, I'll be delighted if you decide to leave a comment. So please feel free to let me know what you think! ^^
 
Since it's apparently no longer possible to embed the mp3 directly I've uploaded snippets on Youtube (already a couple of copyright warnings so far). I'll keep my thoughts as short as possible; it's quite pointless to repeat 'I LOVE THIS SO MUCH' 30 times...
 
Here we go!
 
 
TOP 10 SINGLES
 
 
 
 
#10

 
Blu-BiLLioN / S.O.S.
 
BB leads the way among kira vk bands that have made it relatively big - a tough ask these days. They aren't even in my top tier of bands, but can I just say how proud I am of them?? Please make it to Budokan one day
 
 
#9

 
ビバラッシュ / Merry-Merry-Merry-Go!!-Round☆
 
I'm glad to see the Vivarush guys expanding their repertoire from the signature Fukuoka electro-rock sound that characterized their previous band. 透明な影 is an example of something you wouldn't have heard in A≠ris (Ruimaru spoke of the difficulty he encountered writing lyrics to this song). It seems Osaka is currently experiencing a mini-revival for this style of vk so hopefully that works in their favor.
 
 
#8

 
vistip / CONTRAST
 
Probably the closest post-CHIMERA vistlip has come to giving me that feeling which made me fall in love so hard with them when they started out. The chorus of CONTRAST is classic vistlip; just listen to how Tomo duplicates the same 2-bar phrase over the IV-V-iii-vi progression. But theory-speak  is unnecessary; their sound + Tomo's lyrics pull me into their world like no other band can and that's all the matters. I demand more of this magic for your 10th anniversary this year please.
 
 
#7

 
Purple Stone / 歌舞伎町バタフライ
 
If you've been around MH for more than 3 days you'd probably have realized that I kinda love Purple Stone. I have no freaking clue why they are only #7, but that just attests to how crowded the field is. Anyway, it's nearly impossible to choose between 歌舞伎町バタフライ and パニックパニック！. The latter definitely kills at lives, but 歌舞伎町バタフライ probably has the edge on record so I've gone for that here. The B-side "RIVER" is Purple Stone's grandest song, and "Paradise Dance" a fantastic live track that I've enjoyed every single time.
 
 
#6

 
グラムヘイズ / 妄想スパイス
 
There's only one reason why I’ve picked this single over ラストシーン for glamhaze: its B-side 優しい街 kills me every time I hear it. Satoru's dreamy love letter to a Tokyo that has mercilessly turned its back on him continues to tear at my heart. Musically this song fuses a sparkly cascading soundscape reminiscent of DOF with a controlled intensity to produce an experience at once subtle and epic. It's very difficult for fans to accept glamhaze's imminent disbandment, but at least we have Satoru's solo project to look forward to.
 
 
#5

 
弾丸 NO LIMIT / ソノ嘘ホント
 
I can't believe how much Dangan has grown in such a short period of time. They write memorable melodies with unbelievable ease and Miyuu sounds ridiculously good every single time. I'm also kinda obsessed with Yusuke at this point (oops). Everything about this single is perfect except its album art (what?).
 
 
#4

 
Lydiar / the Elpis
 
I wasn't too into Lydiar's first single, however a friend of mine loved it so much I told myself to stick with them a little longer. It turns out that it wouldn't be long before they decided to disband anyway, which was a real shame because their 2nd single was really everything I love. For that alone I'll always remember them <3 I suspect coyomi's almost-out-of-control vocals would be unbearable to some, but they work for me!
 
 
#3

 
Ank lily. / 解けた糸
 
Every year a band emerges from nowhere and snags one of the top spots in my singles list and along with it a permanent place in my heart. Last year was DiCE and this year it's Ank lily. I've been a great admirer of Rui since Emu. and buccal cone but this single excels on a whole new level. Hopefully Rui comes out of his semi-retirement mode soon...
 
 
#2

 
アンフィル / Step by step
 
Definitely the hardest decision I've had to make on this list. Not with regard to the position, but which Anfiel release? It's almost scandalous that a release like ラヴァ doesn't make it, but a band can only blame themselves for releasing 1 very very good single and 3 very very very good singles in a single year, right? On a more serious note, the split second Shogo's vocals enter this song after the guitar intro has got to be one of my all-time favorite moments in visual kei. The very first sounds he makes shift the mood so dramatically that I’m still blown away each time I go back to the track. Have I told you that I love Shogo??
 
 
#1

 
BLESSCODE / Imperial City
 
If #2 was the hardest decision, this was the easiest. Hyperbole alert: I feel rather strongly that Imperial City is the best visual kei song I've ever heard. SORRY NOT SORRY. Surprisingly I'm not the only one who feels this way *winks* Witnessing this single drop in April was the equivalent of watching a soccer match where one team has scored 20 goals by half-time. It isn’t even close. At this point I don't even feel like describing what is it specifically about this song that I like. I still get goosebumps when I hear the chorus. It has become trite to claim that one "loves everything" about a song, except that's literally true in this case. I simply cannot imagine a song in this style that's done better. 99.9/100, 0.1 penalty for their decision to disband.
 

You should buy some! ^^
 
I live in a city where its impractical to have a drum set in an economy flat, so on days I don't go to a drum practice room, I just 'practice' with the sticks on my bed or something. Better than nothing, and hell, you can find a pair for the price of coffee, so you don't really have much to lose.

New artist will join Chateau Agency at 2017/01/24

But what if a spent counterculture is actually more subversive than an active one?
 
For me, there are two very different ways of thinking about countercultures and the transgressive work they are performing. The first is where you try to build rapport, get more people interested in the subculture, then flag it up as some kind of collective protest. In practice, this has always been the mode by which identity politics operated in the public domain--through aggregation, coalition-building, and ramping up the numbers. There are good reasons for this, but there are problems with it, especially for its cultural parallel. Some of us here might be familiar with a book published some decades ago by Dick Hebdige on British youth subcultures (punks, mods, etc.), in which he observed that every subculture that has historically evolved in ostensible protest against popular/mainstream culture cannot elude the inevitable fate of commodification by social and cultural institutions. This spells the death of that subculture either because the ‘transgressive’ force has by that point been entirely neutralized through its absorption into mass culture, or because the “angry young men” who are in them just to make a deafening aesthetic/political statement about themselves have migrated to another fledging subculture en masse before that could happen. I have a hunch that the "scene culture" today that Disposable alluded to might be linked to precisely this. Just look at how cultural scenes have become increasingly dispersed, and interest groups increasingly fragmented (and alienated from one other) since the last decades of the 20th century.
 
The other way of thinking about transgression, I think, is to simply not concern oneself with it. This might sound somewhat counterintuitive but I’ve always been struck by how it’s actually incredibly difficult in this day and age to be totally useless. Think of NEETs who are sitting around at home relishing how they aren't contributing to society; but by being held up in the mass media as exemplary negative "case studies" that parents ought to dutifully warn their children about, they are nevertheless serving an important social function. All of this is a very laborious way of saying that even as we admit to ourselves that it's no longer possible to be radically transgressive in the way most of us had hoped to be at some point in our lives, at least the Wildean decadent who doesn’t give a damn whether the subculture he’s participating in is still relevant or subversive wouldn’t rehearse the problematic we encountered in the first case--where, by reacting violently against the mass culture we absolutely detest we’re in some sense being held hostage to it and playing by its terms. Which reminds me of something Slavoj Zizek said: sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. He isn’t taken very seriously by most of his colleagues within academic circles, but I think there’s at least a grain of truth in what he said there.
 
In any case...
 
If nothing else, people who stick by visual kei even after it’s no longer the fad are usually those I enjoy talking to the most. I had an uncannily similar experience in classical music: over there, the same handwringing we’re having now in this thread had taken place approximately half a century ago and by this point everyone I know has basically given up trying to ‘make it relevant’. Thankfully, it’s always more fun associating with people who consume a cultural product because they genuinely enjoy it, and not because they want to appropriate it (consciously or not) as a proxy to make a conspicuous statement about themselves.
 

So we all know the GazettE's awesome second single, Kichiku Kyoushi (32sai Dokushin) no Nousatsu Kouza, but does anyone know who the guy on the cover art is?

This came into my head instantly. Early Alice Nine kicked so much ass. 華想夢想紙 is a lovely mini, generally not very nü metal, but this song of course.
7 STRINGS THO
 
Also, if ムック's Kuchiki no Tou is considered nü metal, that's probably the best nü metal record I've ever heard.

A random girl I saw at college. XD
And yes, D is good. Boring, but good. Asagi tries too hard to do something complex and fail 'cause he forget his own potentials.

I feel you on the losing/lost interest in new bands. It's okay though, there is always lots in the past still to be appreciated! Welcome

Don't have any translations, sorry.
 
 
 

This came into my head instantly. Early Alice Nine kicked so much ass. 華想夢想紙 is a lovely mini, generally not very nü metal, but this song of course.
7 STRINGS THO
 
Also, if ムック's Kuchiki no Tou is considered nü metal, that's probably the best nü metal record I've ever heard.