Milayou

I was convinced that they would finally click because i'm craving this sort of stuff right now but all I hear just falls uncomfortably flat. Looks like it's Madeth Gray'll time again after all for the hundredth time this month

I think i've officially lost patience with DAS:VASSER, I tried giving their stuff a chance for years but they simply don't do anything for me. A lot of VK is derivative by nature but most bands manage to save face by having a little something special to offset this. I just don't get what that special something is supposed to be for them (and to make things worse the production on their albums sucks). Also this could probably get me beheaded if I told the wrong people, but it makes me furious that the more elitist fringes of VK fandom will hype up middling crap like this yet deliberately overlook an album like Missa because they wouldn't be caught dead listening to DEG. I don't consider myself a hardcore Diru fan at all but "Kiri to Mayu" and "Aoi Tsuki" alone blow anything DAS:VASSER have written out of the water.

Things probably wouldn't be much different if we all collectively gained the ability to read into people's minds and went insane as a result

If we're gonna do video games, Shin Megami Tensei is well known for using japanese youth subculture as an inspiration and Persona 2 (1999 and 2000) happens to be pretty heavy on the VK. One character is a struggling bandman and another one is a gothy girl who sports a classic kotekote era hairstyle (I think Nao from La'mule is most famous for wearing it but you see it on a lot of other guys as well) : Bonus video :

He can do much better than take on his copycat: he can take on himself.

This is psychotic and I love it

Rose Smell Mode

There are some VK cosplay websites from 2000-2005 that are still up out there and it always made me laugh how the girls that are showcased always seem to take their screen names from real VK musicians so you get cosplay credits that go "Sugizo by Toshiya" "Hide by Sugizo" "Emiru by Emiru" and so on

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana

They're one of those bands I never really got until I saw them perform on video. I used to think their songwriting was too simplistic to be interesting but getting a feel for their candor on stage really brings the best qualities of their music across. Also I totally get the hype around Kazuki now. How could you possibly hate that kid?

I haven't actively listened to any new VK since 9goats disbanded, they really were a very special band. I looked through your posts real quick and didn't see a single mention of Plastic Tree, if you want shoegaze inspired VK you really ought to do yourself a favor and check out some of their stuff. They always had a history of flirting with shoegaze and taking elements from the british alternative scene but the most recent music I heard from them really cranked those influences up to 11.

Macabre kind of feels like it suffers from being indebted to Gauze, like at that point in their career they were still concerned with keeping the wind in their sails and replicating their previous album's success instead of letting loose and allowing themselves as much creative freedom as they wanted. There are some less inspired moments on it where the similarities are really hard to overlook, like I could swear Myaku and Riyuu were written to pack the exact same one-two punch as Schwein no Isu and Yurameki. At the same time though, what makes Gauze so notable in the first place is how diverse it is and Macabre pulls that part off just as well imo. They're perfect companion albums because Macabre covers all of the ground that Gauze couldn't cover, and i'll always maintain that they're the BEST window into what was happening in VK around that time as a result whether you're a Diru fan or not.

What are some albums you neglected at first and ended up falling in love with much later after giving them another chance? This happens to me with VK more than with any other genre so i'm interested to see how many people share this experience. The latest one for me is La Féerie's "La Berceuse" which only grew on me after I realized how much it sounds like old Raphael (especially the vocal lines which sound like they were written to be sung by Yuki). The first two tracks in particular feel like a more mature take on what they were doing on Lilac before they started really cleaning up their sound. I guess the key idea here is that I stopped trying to approach it like the generic kotekote album I thought it was (and Raphael never really fell in line with that style of VK to me).

Oh damn I completely forgot Kozi was involved in XA-VAT as well. That's another great example. He was already a legend before he formed Eve of Destiny and he never seemed to entertain the idea of sticking around in VK circles under that banner either. Honestly, artists who are actually serious about dark wave probably avoid any hint of association with visual kei like the plague since there's no way it wouldn't be a huge hit for their credibility. I can't see it being a viable artistic direction again any time soon.

I get the feeling that japanese dark wave artists that openly associate with VK will always be kind of rare since there's already a well established scene for them to operate in and they both already share the same melodramatic elements and extravagant visuals. It's essentially a niche within a constantly shrinking niche. There was a wave of them in the past but aiming to make it as "a VK artist" was a lot more profitable back then and hoping to reach broader audiences probably seemed like a more realistic prospect for the guys pulling the strings. I imagine there must have been more room to try things out and cross into different genres than there has been in recent times. Also Shuji had to establish himself as a scene veteran first before he could start messing around and release music as Goatbed and XA-VAT. Basically you've gotta keep your fingers crossed that another VK daddy will come up with a new side-project where he gets to play whatever the hell he wants.

I wish more songs had 10 seconds of church bells/footsteps/creaking door SFX thrown in the middle

😲😲 Missed that part the first time around, what an insane bit of history. Until someone comes up with evidence of mayor Giuliani doing furi at a band's show that's gonna be really hard to top. Were members aware of this at the time or was it kept hush-hush until later?

Now as for who influenced who.... you have the rest of the day to place your bets

I'm almost certain they share more than just drummers: their guitarist (and main songwriter I believe??) played in Mana and Kozi's first band and there's a neoclassical vibe to their first two albums that's awfully reminiscent of Memoire/Voyage era Malice Mizer at times. Connecting the dots between bands is half the charm of old school VK!!

I'm not too familiar with their stuff but Merry Go Round always seemed like a seminal "dark" 90's band. There's also Orgel who fall right in line with Madeth Gray'll, and Kc+loid which you might like as well. I always feel like the gist of this stuff was released in 2000/2001 rather than the 90's proper by the way so you might have some chance digging just sliiightly further down the line (basically right before the genre went full nu metal/UCP style)

Yes! That's it!

Does anybody remember this band that was put together in Japan to be marketed in the west? They folded immediately after failing to garner interest and instead of listening to the fans telling them "this is not actually what we meant when we said you should bring VK overseas" the promoters blamed piracy culture for the death of their little experiment. The whole period was a hilarious trainwreck on many fronts but that tiny bit of visibility still felt like such a ray of sunshine, little things like the PV for Saku getting voted all the way up to #1 on some european MTV chart really testify to how large and optimistic the fanbase was around then.

Wow, now that's a feel. I played out my home made copy of Aliene Ma'riage's Les Soirée in high school and it was a shock to hear some of these songs again at a quality above 96 kbps when I revisited the album almost 10 years later. By the way, you mention you're french, are you familiar with Tanja? She used to have her own website with live reports going as far back as 1998. That place was a goldmine for me back in the day and it still remains an exclusive source of info outside of Japan for some of the more obscure bands she covered. EDIT: found it again, here's a link for anyone interested https://web.archive.org/web/20120427161556/http://lasteve.free.fr/blog/autres/listeconcerts01.htm