Pretsy

Solid effort! A9 rarely disappoints anyway. Animus preview in case no one noticed it yet:

As much as I know about the fact that some users publicly notified me about me being blocked in their own MHs, I shalt still retain my role as a person with truly random but at the same time not necessarily tongue-in-cheek statements: I noticed lately that I have been slammed as a "bigot" or "racist" for merely hinting about social(-related) labels being too politicized in our modern society, even though I consider this to be much graver of a situation than concepts behind these judgments as they are in 2016. Why? In order to adhere to the norms and ethics of constructive discussion that could live up to "bringing us together", people should be able to refrain from charging themselves with emotive rhetoric with no rational substance behind them - no matter what kind of side is in question. Is someone prejudiced towards your ideology, or maybe yourself? Don't give in to accusations in a heartbeat! Accusing someone for inciting racism, homophobia, and any kind of prejudice proves to be merely useless these days, since we have witnessed how this doesn't necessarily promote understanding and acceptance afterwards but otherwise - your partners in conversation would be more likely to see you as a hypocrite. Why again, you may ask? Misjudging someone's opposing attitude or scheme of things without well-argumented positioning is equally ignorant and "bigoted" as well! Take say, if you are really unable to assess the definition of racism and how person X presents them in their own point of view together, you are doing nothing but invalidating rational aspects of your statement - since racism and other forms of prejudice etc. are very serious judgments: e.g. you cannot say that you "feel that someone or something is racist" - you must thoroughly and constructively state that HOW you motivate your views on something or someone being racist in one way or another. Name-calling is what kids are doing - and we are rational adults (hopefully, lol)! In case such message is avoided and forgotten in the midst of trending hatred and dislike towards specific cults of personality and/or ideologies, people would learn to actually HATE each other in the near future and jump into the world of politicized social constructs and prejudice blaming games instead of conversating rationally for the sake of redefining exactly what "society" stands for. We cannot necessarily satisfy or please anyone, since the world should be multipolar in terms of nationalities, ideologies, religions, schemes of thoughts. However, making new enemies in an instant out of your pure insensitivity and inability to discover at least some common ground with your "opponent" is not going to end well, I tell you. Therefore, I personally think we should ditch accusations and judgments for prejudice in overall IF they are not well-founded at all (since "racist" or "bigot" are becoming more of buzzwords rather than social definitions - and no, they have nothing to do with the privilege). What about me being framed as such? I personally aim (with most of my views) for empowering this message of "actual" equality: the equality of everyone having their own say with grounds provided and without taboo hushing (censors imposed by opposing side or well, politics) or any form of slandering name-calling. This decade will be diverse in the upcoming history books - but how diverse? Depends on how we reevaluate ourselves and our relation towards those with whom we agree and/or disagree. Even the fact that latest events ever since mid-late 2015 have demonstrated how all sides have begun to rejoice over someone's demise and death due to the fact that they represent opposing belief and/or attitude...is disgusting. We are not here to promote futile aggression and privilege superiority - we live here to discuss and understand even those that we may disagree with, as rational people. Let's not give in to "you don't understand"-fallacies either - if someone doesn't get you, EXPLAIN. The random thought of the day, phew.

Leaving this here It's been a while since I have seen top notch unplugged lives. Also: Hyde x Chara duet here is pure love <3

Was rather curious about this release since you were reviewing it (and as much as you'd find this flattering, I do care about VK albums you are reviewing and/or "endorsing" here, Cat)! Not that I'd enjoy a great handful of DIV songs (few favs of mine lie mostly in the "almost Uverworld-ly but at the same time not"-department, e.g. "Point of View"), but I gotta admit I truly appreciated the direction they adopted in "神様がもしいるなら".I am not exactly thinking of Kyary in a heartbeat here but it's not far off from Nakata's later efforts with Perfume ("Cling Cling" etc.). Anyways, I am happy to see that at least some VK acts, including DIV, acknowledge this fact: utilizing synths is not just some kind of background novelty but rather an integral part of the whole soundscape. Dated Yamaha synths (looking at you, Lycaon) and off-beat, drowning bloops (notorious VK blunder) should not be promoted for further practices, and DIV tried hard enough here to go against the tide and prove the hidden potential - no, the hidden value of electronic programming in your everyday rock programming. Everything can work in harmony as long as you are able to ditch this hindering ideal of letting whatever counts for "VK electro novelty" fill the void of creativity behind your songcraft. I will keep an eye on prospective success of DIV in combining trends of today and neo-VK principles together to demonstrate that our loved scene *can be* modern and almost free from hindering 50/50 cliches a la fake horns, gabber bleeps and whatnot. Whereas the formula of EDM(-ish) elements and DIV rock is not ripe yet here (as it was noted above), they are able to master this amalgamation if they truly want to. And I HOPE that they genuinely want this to be practiced further.

Asagi has 2 SHINYAS (!!!) repping their drumming game here! He definitely has some serious connections right there

Rachael Dadd? Never thought I'd see her penning for Japanese artists one day, yay! I knew about this much earlier and still really stoked about this being another potential AOTY.

Thank you! I will stick to this, since "An electronic, almost drum & bass-style intro descends into a murky industrial riff, breakneck drumming" definitely sounds like something Takeshi Ueda would do (see: "Gimme Choco" was crafted by him as well)' I see that Leda is arranging un-Leda-y tracks again!

Did they release songwriting credits yet? I have yet to see whether Leda or NARASAKI will partake in this one or not. As much as you enjoy girls, you gotta give credit to their crew (consisting of well, very familiar faces) Ps. what's with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu? She has nothing to do with BM - different management, different label, different genre setting...LMAO.

The more melodic Mejibray gets, the more of Hakuei I can see Tzk channeling there, lol (not kidding, "to be or not to be"-part won't be out of place in some PENICILLIN song).

Adding: OMG 大森靖子 [seiko Oomori] - TOKYO BLACK HOLE It's that good.

It's fine.

As we all know, various bands have their own Youtube pages for commercial/promotion purposes - but what about bandomen/members of these bands having their own youtube pages, where they'd post something almost irrelevant to their respective bands' songcraft / actual promotion purposes? As with that instagram thread you have noticed lately, post speficic youtube urls of your fav. bandomen's "separate work" (or semi-personal stuff) here, for instance: Shou (Alice Nine) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC381H7iNJLOUiZijZVypPzg (Classical/Flamenco covers w/ piano & guitars*, random comps, specific self-covers and random goofy videos) *yes, he's a multi-instrumentalist! Tora (Alice Nine) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmCmZr5-yw9yoUFCdJnaWWw (Only two self-covers so far) Junichi Konno (Karasu (not the vk band - the indie rock Karasu)) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9VnrfroWDUV6Tfk-vIxuJQ (self-covers)

Tfw you cannot tell some generic K-pop artist and Halsey apart:

Did Ruki even give Tobias Kwan credits for all of this?

If even Gackt and INORAN were "endorsing" their work, then you should be expecting them and others to be the mainstay for their (well, at least guitarists) future career as background songwriters or something like that (for major J-pop/VK acts for instance or so on). Never got into this band but I found their popularity to be very intriguing (which vk bands aside from GB would be e.g. opening up the major baseball matches in Japan with their numbers? Nobodies wouldn't be doing this certainly)

While necrobumping is not necessarily wanted when it comes to sharing this kind of point of view but here's the thing: has this detrimental effect of major label deals been proven to the very extent? Like, has there ever been some kind of "behind the scenes" revelations regarding how these "cronies" push their agendas towards these poor bandomen to churn out the most mellow stuff they could ever do? Or maybe it is just the lack of flexibility and adaptiveness on artists' behalf? Just wanted to throw this here for everyone to ponder since I honestly feel like this is more or less some kind of sad tinfoil bandwagon fashion when we speak of these "evil major labels". There has been a huge variety of cases where switches to major labels simply extended the scope of these artists and gave them more tools to initiate/redefine their ideas in a new, creative light (e.g. Seiko Oomori, Enon's bands, Alice Nine VK-wise)? As far as the history of popular music goes, you can pull out stuff with audible gusto while at the same time give it a bit of palatable flair for airplays and whatnot - all you need is some *cunning creativity* and industry awareness. This has been reiterated to the point of being tiresome but throwing this as a small recap would tone down these "oh no major label" comments I see a lot even these days.

> "HATERS WILL HATE....OO OWNED!!!!!!!!" > "5 years ago" > "Dir en grey = Japanese Korn"-meme Those were the good old days, amirite?

Practically the kind of response I wanted to throw in, thank you tetora. You'd have to take into account the dominant ethos of Japan regarding making music "for the certain group" rather than "for everyone" (see: K-music - and regarding my earlier statements about frills and approaches in K-music, even acts in the vein of Jambinai take many hints from Western alternative (especially post-music) to gain this platform of "international relevance"). This could be truly witnessed in VK where they still try to keep their loyalty towards the (small) visual image-endorsing group intact while forgetting about actually extending their scope! I am pretty sure that there's a certain bunch of VK acts who could go for the latter but the overall progress is so sluggish (hence almost everyone admitting that VK is "way far behind"). The jury is still out on when will most Japanese scenes finally find a way to overcome this idea of "for the certain group" and promote flexibility towards widespread recognition and eventual acceptance. For now it merely seems like they are intentionally trying to stay inside this "shell of PR isolation".

It's too early to point out that A9 became a "better" band after witnessing merely a small bunch of post-PSC repertoire. As much as many monochromiums like to project their contempt/disgust towards anything PSC, we need to acknowledge that a tremendous number of brilliant records have been produced under Tomomi's (President of PSC) wing - in Alice Nine's case it would be obviously Gemini (produced during Gazette's eventual "demise" in 2011) and "9" (palatable continuation to Gemini's otherwise "innovative" soundscape, produced when it became all the rage in MH to call PSC "totalitarian music regime" or in any similarish slurring manner). I used to feel cozy on this bandwagon of usual PSC bashing but at the same time - I learned to question my preference towards this company when I understood PSC's input having a positive side as well (obvious but this seems to be skimmed over). After all, I have to feel happy about PSC actually granting A9 chances (back in 2010) to collaborate with one of the most prominent producers in Japan, Hajime Okano (the lead guy behind e.g. Laruku's pop era, incl. Ark/Ray and Kiss) in order to redefine their sound as something more airplay-worthier, but at the same time "nostalgically creative" (since "nostalgic" is the adjective of success in '10s after all). Until someone actually manages to go hunting in Wikileaks-ish fashion and prove that Tomomi and Co. DO bear hindering regime-like control (i.e. lack of flexibility on songwriters' part has nothing to do with the process) over bandomen's deeds, I would suggest looking into the positive efforts of PSC-era A9. PS. I find it appalling that GEMINI gets little love here, really. Oh, and SUPERNOVA singles weren't bad at all either! On-topic: I cannot see any significant changes behind this move either - D=Out transformed into one-of-a-kind-ish VK act under PSC's wing too, right?

Tesseract-y af. My predictions about VK bands slowly embracing this djent culture have become reality lol (then again, this scene has been known for embracing all kinds of trends constantly). Bad vocalist though - perhaps even worse than Undivide's Kihiro screaming-wise and Deluhi's Juri singing-wise :/ Edit: It seems like Leda screamed there as well (I'd rather see him screaming his lungs out like he usually does in Babymetal's lives and here as well)

Imminent Kaisan - calling it!

ZIPANG wasn't their major debut?

CALM YOUR TITS KOUHAI TBQH

>Ctrl+F >No Gorguts What is this guys I thought they still had some relevancy in this community: At least it's airier and the execution seems to be more "aggressive" than it was on "Coloured Sands" #positivethoughts

Adding: 23/04 Kashiwa Daisuke - Program Music II 13/05 Gorguts - Pleiades' Dust This gon' be good.