TadakatsuH0nda

Ah, too bad it's a live version...
 
They had some pretty awesome tracks that they never officially released, and the few they did never were reissued at any point, Break the Darkness (they had two versions back in the day, both pretty good), Only Way, Tuneup Baby, Right Now, Stop Bloody Rain, Feel Me Tonight, Steal Your Heart, Lady in Tears, Install and even more than that. It's not likely to happen, just saying it would be incredibly cool if he even considered any of the above, since he's got so many old X songs laying around.

tbh, VK has already hit that all time low in the 90s. It's popularity in Japan is debatable. As many others have noted, VK isn't totally obscure there (though I guess it has a bad rep, so many people wouldn't ever admit to like it) but not really as popular as it was. And no, I don't think Visual kei was always as niche as it is now in Japan. Back in the old times when VK wasn't such a widely used label bands of that caliber used to fill stadiums and had regular TV and radio exposure. There's a reason why some describe the early 90s as the band explosion era, particularity in regards to the Nagoya rock music scene.
 
But yeah, those days are long gone. hell, most of us gaijin folks have no real clue about it, since the time we got introduced to Vk it was already old hat in Japan. You had to be there for yourself in the early 90s to really see and feel it – but how many foreigners, save for a few, had the privilege and luck? When bands like Luna Sea started to kick off and Malice Mizer rose to fame I was in friggin' kindergarten. Sure, I like to diss the modern scene a lot (because I simply don't like the type of music the bands are playing now), but even I know that I am not a special snowflake and a "trvuer" fan.
 
But to get back to the core of the thread: it's true that in the west VK has lost attention and Fans. people in this thread have offered enough explanations and hypotheses for it's fade in popularity. I am just here to give my two cents on the extinction of the local VK scene in my country (if you can even call it that way):
 
As with others, it all started in the early 00s with the Manga and Anime boom. I really doubt any one in Austria and Germany could have known about VK without either moving to Japan, getting introduced to it via websites and communities specializing in Glam- or Japanese rock or Anime/Manga. Most of us peeps were too young and too poor to go to Japan and most of us had no internet at home. So that leaves us with Manga and Anime. I remember I used to buy these Anime magazines of which there were plenty on the market and many of these papers tried to market japanese culture to us impressionable youths. So they had lots of articles about japanese food, society and of course music. 
 
And some might also remember that Neo Tokyo's (a japanese Manga store in Germany) founded their music publishing label (?) Gan-Shin, which brought to us some of Dir en grey's discography. Only shortly after (or before? I don't remember that well) they started playing in Germany. And as stated before in this thread, due to the Anime fad being so closely related to the J-Pop and VK boom many Manga/Anime Conventions went a great deal to get some bands, including bloody the Gazette, to play at their conventions. And it was a self fullfilling cycle that simply worked: people got to japanese music via Anime and Japan culture based media, they participated in local communities; these were lured to leave their money at the conventions and these in turn invited bands to play to bring in the fans.
 
Then there were online communities like Animexx, where we weebs gathered en masse and talked about our bandomen all day and night, spent all our time drawing and writing shitty slash fanfics and Mangas. It was like paradise. But yeah, around 2009 the German and Austrian scene started to crumble like an old ruin. Suddenly all the people crazy about Moi dix Mois (of which there were MANY here. They even called it a "Manamania") switched from VK to JPop and what they deemed "more sophisticated" music. They also sold all their previously well treasured Moi-Même-Moitié dresses and Sexpot Revenge clothes to go either "normie" or "gyaru". I noticed weblogs of people who loved VK previously popping up with lamentations about how stupid they were for liking it, that it was just a phase and that VK is actually really dumb and shitty.
 
And of course there was also the huge amount of people bickering about how the post 2009s scene wasn't as good. Tbh I can kinda related to it, because in that timespan I also stopped giving shit about newer bands. But I still like to listen to my oldies. Many others for whom it was really just a short fad, stopped caring about it entirely. 
 
Indeed, Social media and the way we consume media and music today, compared to ten years ago, factor in this as well. But the once really big German-speaking scenes, which were infamous enough to be featured regularly in sensationalist  TV formats and press, already died before all these changes could have affected the decline of interest in VK. The truth is simply that liking Visual kei was a fad and it's success in the western world a short-lived hype. Most people have since moved on or hopped on the newest trendwagon.
 
And if I am honest: I do not miss it. I think it's just fine if VK stays obscure. I have moved on and no longer care about old skewl VK being dead. As already said, many music scenes have died and never came back, and that's a fate you have to accept . Though I disagree with the notion that the current goth revival is so bad. It's not the same as the 80s, sure, but it has some fun and redeeming qualities and it's not mainstream. So, if it comes back, it will probably never reach it's former glory. And that's okay too.  A friend of mine also once said that certain eras of VK needed a certain Zeitgeist. And that Zeitgeist is just strongly tied to that specific era. If that era is over than the atmosphere that made it special in the first place is gone too. Hence some of those old music styles no longer work outside the context of so called retromania. Of course, VK has the benefit of being a patchwork genre, it can and has to adapt to survive and it will probably carry on existing in some way (or will influence something else that exists in the future). But it will never be the VK we used to fall in love when we discovered it (and that counts for all eras).
 
I also do not think I ever want the local VK scene being as big again, because I remember that it was mostly a large collection of the most immature, hysterical and downright creepy individuals I have ever seen. Some of these self-called "Visus" looked cool, but were really uncomfortable to surround you with.

Cool stuff! I'm not too well-versed in this era, but I occasionally whip out this excellent compilation:
 
 

Oh boy, where to start, just off the top of my head for VK stuff, D'espairsray, Deathgaze, Girugamesh, Deluhi, Anonymous Confederate Ensemble, -OZ-, Amphibian, Kuroageha, Awoi, Since1889 among many others. I wish certain visual kei bands didn't have such short runs, many of the ones above were fortunate in that they were around for over a decade.

Bahahaha. After all that in the other thread about their threatening to break up crap, then they actually go and do it. What a trainwreck this past couple weeks has been for them. It's too bad, but they should have handled it all so much better. I was almost surprised that Starwave didn't chew them out for their little "come to our show or we'll disband!" nonsense. Then again, Starwave may have very well torn them apart for that stunt, just not publicly. It's pretty bad publicity for the label having a band do that to them after they go through the trouble of setting them up with shows and promoting them, so I wouldn't be surprised if Starwave just dumped them from the label, forcing a breakup.

Christ, it's like he did a quick "what is Canada known for" Google search before answering. 
 
Thanks, Yoshers. Cant wait to visit Japan. Heard you have great sushi and geishas. 

He has. back in their indies period they had some special lives where they swapped members on different instruments.
Can't remember if it was good.
 
All I know is, I want a hide-zou solo project to, he has a nice voice :O!!!!

When Misaruka were brand new I thought they were going to progress and grow and actually go somewhere, but naw, they just kinda stayed put and their style never progressed at all really. Anyone else think that's a problem that a whole bunch of Starwave/Darkest Labyrinth's artists are plagued with? I at least tend to notice it with their bands specifically, more than a lot of other J-rock labels, not sure what's up with that, if they just aren't great at finding true talents or if the label forces these bands in a certain musical direction or if it's the bands themselves incapable of taking it to the next level. (I'm not saying all their bands have this problem, but like a horribly vast majority.)
 
Either way it's a lowbrow move basically threatening to call it quits if your show doesn't sell out.
 
 
Exactly. You could also say a legitimately talented band wouldn't run into this issue in the first place because they'll offer a product that people are actually paying to come see more than once. They're shooting themselves in the foot big time, when they didn't have a ton going in the first place, sadly.

The thing with visual kei is that like many scenes it will inevitably fade in and out of popularity. Might it hit an alltime low? Sure it could, but chances are it would rebound in a few short years, just like how the musical styles they play fade in and out of popularity. I wouldn't be worried about it at all, heck, visual kei even met a similar decline in the early 2000s before exploding again.

When Misaruka were brand new I thought they were going to progress and grow and actually go somewhere, but naw, they just kinda stayed put and their style never progressed at all really. Anyone else think that's a problem that a whole bunch of Starwave/Darkest Labyrinth's artists are plagued with? I at least tend to notice it with their bands specifically, more than a lot of other J-rock labels, not sure what's up with that, if they just aren't great at finding true talents or if the label forces these bands in a certain musical direction or if it's the bands themselves incapable of taking it to the next level. (I'm not saying all their bands have this problem, but like a horribly vast majority.)
 
Either way it's a lowbrow move basically threatening to call it quits if your show doesn't sell out.
 
 
Exactly. You could also say a legitimately talented band wouldn't run into this issue in the first place because they'll offer a product that people are actually paying to come see more than once. They're shooting themselves in the foot big time, when they didn't have a ton going in the first place, sadly.

When Misaruka were brand new I thought they were going to progress and grow and actually go somewhere, but naw, they just kinda stayed put and their style never progressed at all really. Anyone else think that's a problem that a whole bunch of Starwave/Darkest Labyrinth's artists are plagued with? I at least tend to notice it with their bands specifically, more than a lot of other J-rock labels, not sure what's up with that, if they just aren't great at finding true talents or if the label forces these bands in a certain musical direction or if it's the bands themselves incapable of taking it to the next level. (I'm not saying all their bands have this problem, but like a horribly vast majority.)
 
Either way it's a lowbrow move basically threatening to call it quits if your show doesn't sell out.
 
 
Exactly. You could also say a legitimately talented band wouldn't run into this issue in the first place because they'll offer a product that people are actually paying to come see more than once. They're shooting themselves in the foot big time, when they didn't have a ton going in the first place, sadly.

Misaruka was never a good band. if they where, then their music wouldn't sound like this.  real good artist want to deliver good songs no matter what.
 
 
and soundbee have a bunch of Japanese fans. their fanbase isn't that small as you think.

Oh boy, where to start, just off the top of my head for VK stuff, D'espairsray, Deathgaze, Girugamesh, Deluhi, Anonymous Confederate Ensemble, -OZ-, Amphibian, Kuroageha, Awoi, Since1889 among many others. I wish certain visual kei bands didn't have such short runs, many of the ones above were fortunate in that they were around for over a decade.

Hey, new guy here, I've lurked this forum casually reading news on bands and stuff for quite some time, and just finally made an account.  I'm a huge fan of Japanese rock and metal, and have been listening to and collecting it for quite a while now, though these days I'm into the older metal acts like Dead End, Amphibian, Gargoyle, etc. I have way too much fun sharing music with people/trying new stuff and talking about it, as well as learning about the history of Japanese music. I also help run a couple forums, including one that was started just a few weeks ago, jpmetal.org which is focused primarily on Japanese heavy metal and its various forms, with everything from 80s bands like Anthem and Loudness to the visual kei acts and even doujin circles, perhaps a few of you would be interested in joining us at some point. 
 
Anyhow that's enough rambling, I'm glad to have finally joined this site and I look forward to sharing music with and getting to know some of you.