sleepy coffee

this may be off topic but this topic reminds me of what i always wanted to say about mh.
 
idk what we overseas fans can do to make vk more popular than what it is, but one thing i think doable is to make mh become more popular.
vk may be dead one day but mh should live on after that. personally i always see mh as a very underrated japanese music forum that has high potential to grow bigger.
 
if the stats on similarweb aren't lying, it's very impressive that we have around 1.3m page views monthly (from 200k total visits * 6.6 page views per a visit). what i mean is mh already has a huge user base in hands but the engagements of the content on the forum are a lot less compared to it. for example, we have very few concurrent registered users online as you can see from the image below. it's only ~20 members online. (700 guests are mostly crawlers i believe). i know that it's taken at a random time of a day but usually it's still not significantly more than this either considering we have over 9.6k members registered. additionally, we can have more followers on facebook and twitter from our daily visitors if we want to. (it hurts to see that mh which is the source of almost everything japanese rock related has far less likes than random j-rock pages on facebook even demon android's one.)
 

 
moreover, traditional forum software like IPB is kinda 2000-ish, but i'm just saying. i have nothing against it. IPB is not bad though. it regularly gets updates and bug fixes. but nowadays there are a number of better open source alternatives as well; e.g. discourse and nodebb. converting the database from one to another is such a pain though if we ever do it.
 
sysops are one of the most important roles that almost nobody notices the effort they put behind the scenes. we have had only 3-4 sysops since the inception of mh and now there is only one left. it's a vital position that needs to recruit too. what'd we do if they're all gone? it'd even mean the end of mh. (not sure about how recruiting a new sysop is going, but it seems difficult to get one to begin with.)
 
at the end of the day, staff are all volunteers. finding a suitable staff member who is willing to spend their free time is hard already but finding one who is dedicated to the community is even harder. one day the current staff members will be rotated as well. so we're not going anywhere if we don't expand the user base. we can find more talented people from a bigger one.
 
this is my two cents:
 
it's time for mh 4.0. sooner or later mh has  to change too. otherwise, the community will be gone if we don't do something beforehand. if i were the founder, i'd rebrand "monochrome-heaven" to something else shorter, easier to type and pronounce, and easy to remember esp for non-english natives. having a dash (-) in a domain name looks unprofessional for a brand imo. just like when "thefacebook.com" becoming "facebook.com". the former is not a professional brand name compared to the latter. they bought it once they had the money to afford it and became the "facebook" we know nowadays.
 
rebranding mh may be too much for those who're familiar with the name but it'd be a big step to be known better. by rebranding i mean changing the look of the forum too whether it be a new skin or even new forum software that's more modern. we can still stick with vk just like before and be more open to the general japanese rock scene which is more lively and has a wider fanbase like ruling it all online not only on here but also on other social networks.
 
yeah, i know that it's easier said than done. it takes a lot of effort and is very challenging to accomplish, but knowing the potential mh has not being used is wasting as well.

Chile now confirmed 

Sho shrieking and growling over a emorap (idk what these nerds call the shit nowadays)  beat

If kyo can do it....

It was also announced that their first minialbum キミノヒーロー (kimi no hero) will be released on 01.04.2020 and will contain 5 songs.

Hueye ヒューイ New Look 2020
 
2020.05.11
EDGE IKEBUKURO One-year anniversary solo performance decision!
 
 

I highly doubt they ever returned, I think it was pretty obvious washow records or whatever they were "signed" to was just an affiliate/sublabel of ains 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2677173385693269&id=1072212069522750
Tickets for their show in mexico go on sale.next week and also if anyone wants to see a video of the band without makeup and speaking in English heres them talking about the show in mexico lol

大衆演曲ケダマ。 (taishuu enkyoku kedama.) will disband after their last live on 3/17 at Ikebukuro Edge.
 

 

I wont pretend to know how long it takes to go from recording something to having it finally mastered and ready for an album but retsu was posting images from the studio of them recording as recent as like last week so idk is this thing even ready. I mean it could be old images or just a short process for all I know but still feels weird this album is just 3 weeks away

What lolmao

wouldn't mind some album snippets at this point tbh

They confirmed they're coming to Brazil on Instagram stories. I can't post a screenshot atm. 

Ah the very american tradition of indie bands having their shit broken into and stolen

Ah the very american tradition of indie bands having their shit broken into and stolen

New song:
 
 

Ah the very american tradition of indie bands having their shit broken into and stolen

Ah the very american tradition of indie bands having their shit broken into and stolen

Kiwamu is fluent in english and replies to his emails so we could probably get an answer if he chooses to respond 

ロマン急行 will be releasing a single this February: "ハロー" (HELLO) and "グッバイ" (GOODBYE). It is unclear at the moment if this is a double-A-sided single, or a two-type single with different names for the #aesthetic, but both releases have different serial numbers. (eg: xxx-01a + xxx-01b vs xxx-01 + xxx-02)
 
 
Both will be released on February 26th. Further details surrounding price and tracklist have yet to be announced.
 
 
http://romankyuko.net/discography/single/321.html

speaking of which they also asked on fb about where to tour in chile. i guess we have to wait to see what the turnout is at in the show in mexico but maybe these guys just have a decent latino following 

They really are huge and have presence in Brazil and Chile. Here's the list of Japanese groups they have brought: (A lot of Kpop too but I'm not puting in it)
°C-ute ( 2015 and 2017 )
VAMPS
Jupiter
DIR EN GREY ( 2015 and 2019 )
ASIAN KUNG - FU GENERATION ( 2015 and 2017 )
SuG
BAND-MAID ( 2016 and 2018 )
GALNERYUS
DO AS INFINITY
Juice=Juice
MAXIMUM THE HORMONE
PLASTIC TREE
SPYAIR
Rookiez is Punk'D
Morning Musume '18
THE GAZETTE (2019)
MIYAVI
MAN WITH A MISSION
ANGERME

コドモドラゴン (Codomo Dragon) new maxi-single "PEST" will be released at 2020/04/01 (3 types)
 
TYPE A (1944yen) will include CD (2 songs) and DVD including "PEST" PV and MAKING
TYPE B (1944yen) will include CD (2 songs) and DVD including "PEST" PV multiangle version
TYPE C (1620yen) will include CD (3 songs+karaoke version)
 
they will hold their oneman live tour "否定ノ否定" since 2020/04/04 to 2020/05/28 at LINE CUBE SHIBUYA