ambivalentideal

Is anyone really familiar with Tenten/Taira Kazuhiro's bands and could recommend some of his stuff? I used to really like Chemical Pictures but fell off with following his bands after that. He has a really unique voice that I always liked and I wanted to see if any of his more recent bands were any good but I'm not too sure where to start.

Extremely excited for this. I will definitely be buying! I'm surprised with their new look but I like it. Ultimately the music is the most important for me with these guys anyway. 

I actually totally love this lmao. The stupid little shorts are actually really funny and I like what I'm hearing with their song! Looking forward to what they'll do  Interesting concept, pretty unique!

3 hours ago, psychonnect_rozen said:

I first heard Clint Eastwood just randomly on YouTube and I instantly fell in love. Demon Days is still one of my all time favorite albums. 

 

Damn! I wish I could have met Damon! I've wanted to tell him how much his music has inspired me and get my Plastic Beach CD signed. 

 

My emo phase started with Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails but then slowly progressed as time went on. Visual Kei basically awakened my goth obsession. 

Clint Eastwood is the best, I remember my friend showing it to me on YouTube (when it was really new) back in like 2005, I was in awe lol. Oh man, me too. Demon Days is one of my all time favorites too! Definitely in my top 3, if not my top favorite. 

It's actually fairly easy to meet him, as weird as it sounds I just sort of waited after the concert outside until he walked out. It was at a music festival and for whatever reason no one else waited so I ended up being the only person waiting there to meet him, and he and his bodyguard were really cool about it. He hugged me a bunch of times and told me how he's really grateful to all the fans for always supporting him and how cool it is to him to see all the younger kids in the crowd even as he himself is getting older. He was kind of drunk (they had been partying after the show for a crew member's birthday) lmao so he was really chatty, we talked for like 10 minutes and I told him how much Gorillaz means to me and stuff, which should have been really embarrassing but he was just really sweet about it and insisted that it wasn't weird when I apologized for being weird lol. His bodyguard even offered to take pics of us. Damon is a super nice guy, I hope you get to meet him one day. :') 

Haha, same. Once I got into VK everything else was all over for me, lol. VK 4 lyfe

9 minutes ago, psychonnect_rozen said:

Thanks!

 

Speaking of Gorillaz, I was convinced when I first listened to them I was the only fan in my entire school and that me and my best friend were like the only ones who listened to them. I ended up managing to get my friend hooked on them around the time Humanz came out. 

 

I eventually got the opportunity to see them live with my friend. Probably the best concert I’ve been to. That and Panic! At The Disco (don’t judge me)

Aw, I love that haha. That's amazing. I got into them in 2005 when I was 10 after I heard Feel Good Inc., then when they came back with Plastic Beach when I was 15 I got super into them again. And then of course when they came back with Humanz I became obsessed with them once again haha. They'll always be my favorite! 

Oh that's awesome!! I agree with you, their concert in Philadelphia was one of the best concerts I've ever seen! I've seen them three times total, and I even got to meet Damon Albarn after one of the shows. He was super nice and signed a copy of their first album for me. 

Haha, no judging here. :'D I think most people had that emo phase at some point. My emo phase started out with Evanescence until I got into VK and it all went from there lol.

4 minutes ago, psychonnect_rozen said:

I have the same shirt! Gorillaz was one of the first bands I was obsessed with. I would never shut up about them back in eighth grade lol.

oh nice!!  I love Gorillaz, they're my favorite band other than the GazettE lol. I've loved them since 2005. That's awesome you like them too! I was gonna say, in your pic you look just like your icon :'D

Why not, so y'all can put a face to a username I guess. :'P Here's me normal mode and VK mode lol

everyday look

serving lewks (at the GazettE concert in Dallas)

アヤビエ (ayabie) - -EquAL pRayer 2aLL- Limited Edition

アリス九號. (alice nine) - JEWELS Limited Edition

I'm really pleased with both of these and got them super cheap. Thanks RarezHut!

Welp, I guess I'm going to enter the bidding wars for a copy of the live limited CD on Yahoo Auctions. Wish me luck lol. I wish the money could go to the band instead of the person who bought it profiting off of it but 🙃 What can you do I guess. I'm going to be buying all of their subsequent releases to support the band as best as I can from abroad. Hopefully I can go see them live sometime next year. If no one gets to it before me (given that I actually win a copy) I will probably upload it on here.

I'm a bit surprised about this new look from them, but I don't hate it! They look pretty cool. Really excited to hear about another album. Did anyone manage to get the live limited release? I'd kill to hear those songs right now 💀

Honestly, I don't 100% understand the need to pick it apart and try to figure out how certain genders are supposed to or tend to like vk. I wish we could just sort of enjoy it and leave it at that but I guess that's not realistic. As a trans person (I bring this up because I used to be a "typical teen female fan" and am now a male fan, so I've been on both sides), it was always a mixed bag of loving the style and wanting to be like/dress like them, being attracted to the pretty members, and loving the music and the scene in general. It was like that from the beginning for me and honestly I would bet that it's mostly mixed of a few or even all of those things for most people. It's true that I used to be more into the members back then, but I think that had more to do with me being a teen than my perceived gender at the time lol. I still find a handful of members good looking but that's not much of a draw for me anymore (I am gay though, and js but I'm getting sick of seeing the claim on here that "gay men aren't attracted to androgynous men" lmao speak for yourself henny). Now I love the music and I guess I am pretty into the collecting aspect of it, but I think I have always been. I've always been into the aggressive, harsher sounding bands (UnsraW used to be one of my favorites back then) so idk if that really has anything to do with it. I'm more into the style than ever too, I started trying out my own vk looks within the last year. That's my personal experience anyway. And as others said, of course there is a difference between western fans' experiences/tendencies and those of Japanese fans. Also, I think the culture is changing over in Japan surrounding male fans. I think they're becoming more common and band members in newer bands are becoming a bit more open minded about it. Especially backed up with what Paraph was saying. The whole vk culture has changed so much even from when I first got into it and I definitely think that's part of it that has changed for sure, even if just by a bit. 

Cool look on this band! Just checked them out, I really like their whole cursed aesthetic lol the whole if you listen to it you'll die/get cursed or whatever. Under their videos there's even a disclaimer that says basically to listen at your own risk because if you die they can't be held liable lmao... The vocalist is doing some really weird stuff on the mini album vocals-wise but I don't hate it! Looking forward to their new single. 

This is just SO bad. If I was their fan I'd be starting a riot right about now WHAT IS THIS. This is worse than 2010 VK-lite host kei

Welcome to MH!! It's really nice to see newer people joining. If you want any recommendations or anything like that, you can totally message me  

13 hours ago, Kami_no_yume said:

Thank you 😊 yeah haha, but everyone is the same, even if it was 20 years ago or just yesterday that they started loving VK

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I agree! 😄 We all love VK here~ 

Welcome to MH!! It's great to see people who are relatively new to VK here too!  Hope you have a good time here~

This should be interesting! I'm seeing people say they don't like his voice. I guess his voice is either love it or hate it lol. I love Sui so I'm definitely looking forward to what they'll do!

On 7/29/2019 at 8:12 AM, Kaile said:

@ambivalentideal Checked out DIMLIM last few days and i must say thats definitely the band i want to follow. I did like the new single the most though, especially 離人.  His clean vocals are so addicting, i would love to hear more songs like that.

My other favorites are アハレワタ, The Invisible, GROTESQUE, Innocent passion, Malformation and D.Hymnus. I guess that is a lot  of favorites considering the amount of songs they released but i really liked them all. I also like how some songs give me that DEG vibe and at the same time they are something else. Looking forward to see what they come up with next.

Nice!! I'm glad you like them! I agree, I'm obsessed with his vocals. Both his clean and harsh vocals are so diverse in what he's able to do, and interesting too. They have a ton of great songs, so I don't blame you at all for having a lot of favorites. Mine are probably Malformation and Shigarami, but the entire CHEDOARA album is my favorite right now haha. I agree with that too, I think they're definitely inspired by DEG but they're also doing some cool new stuff of their own, imo. Same here! 

I read on another thread on here that Natsuki (ex -OZ-) now runs an avocado farm which I guess is his family's business. He was on TV about it and everything. 

16 hours ago, Kaile said:

Unfortunately not, the tour was right during my exams period and i couldn’t find the time to go since there was no concert in my country. May was alright but ticket to states was not, haha, hopefully i will get to see them during their next tour and for now i will get the world tour blu ray when they release one.

 

I haven’t heard anything from DIMLIM but i already saw some people praising them here on MH, i will surely check them out later today. 

ah, I see. I have a feeling they will be world touring again at some point in the future, so hopefully you can catch them then! True, I hadn't though about there being a blu-ray but I hope there will be one. 

Yeah, they're amazing! Hope you will like them  

Welcome to MH!! I'm also 24 and have been in it for 10+ years so maybe we'll have something in common. :')

I'm also a really big fan of GazettE! Were you able to see them during the world tour this year? I saw them in Dallas in May and they were amazing. 

I'm a huge fan of lynch. as well, as you might be able to tell from my username haha. Glad to see another fan here! 

If you're looking for newer bands to try, and you haven't heard them yet, check out DIMLIM's album CHEDOARA. They were one of the first newer bands I checked out upon coming back into vk and they absolutely blew me away with this album. Maybe you'll like them too! 

Wow, I was just thinking about this shop yesterday and how I used to go there. I was even thinking wow, I'm so glad brick and mortar vk shops are still open.  This is really sad. 

All VK pickups from this year so far. Super happy with all of these!

From left to right:

the GazettE:

MADARA

STACKED RUBBISH

DIM Ltd Edition

Tour 2006-2007 [Decomposition Beauty] Final Meaningless Art That People Showed at Yokohama Arena DVD 

TOXIC Ltd Edition

DIVISION Ltd Edition

NINTH Ltd Edition Box A CD&Blu-Ray

Dir en Grey:

Withering to Death. CD&DVD US Pressing

The Marrow of a Bone US Pressing

UROBOROS US Pressing

The Insulated World EU Pressing

lynch. 10th Anniversary 2004-2014 The Best

DIMLIM:

CHEDOARA 1st Press (Extremely happy about this one. Paid a lot to get it [5845 yen total shipped] but ...worth it lol. My new favorite album)

Rijin

MALICE MIZER Bara no Seidou

Canzel NeO PRESENCE E.P.S.

AND -eccentric agent-:

1st Full Album -&-

AGENT FILE

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/MDN-141771593?s_ssid=e335705d2fdb9855d7

CDJapan has pre-orders up for a new batch of the Blu-ray.

Here is the info about it they provided:

"[Important Notes for Orders Placed After July 16, 2019] 

Pre-order Deadline: July 31, 2019 (Japan Time) 
Orders of this item placed after July 16 will be shipped after the release date, and there is a possibility that your order might be shipped in early August or later."

Seems like they are manufacturing more on a made-to-order basis. (?) Price is:

15741yen

(US$ 146.12)

4 hours ago, jaymee said:

 

JET may put you waaaaay out in the boonies so you can’t do lives since JET costs more money for Boards of Education to contract and your experience is still up to how well you get on with your school, but yeah bc it is run thru the government you will be a proper full time worker with subsidized health insurance/pension benefits and the pay is better.

 

I agree if you don’t plan on making Japan a home for more than a year or two do study abroad. Working society in Japan is really a bummer in most job sectors (even outside of teaching) bc of the huge wage gap for women, sexism, and forced overtime.

That's true, you don't exactly get to choose where to go but you can always travel. It might be expensive to get out of the inaka and with time constraints and stuff but I don't think it would be completely impossible to go to lives occasionally. Not in Tokyo or anything but in the closest major city or something. I think it makes more sense to go through JET because of what you said about the benefits. 

Definitely. Everyone always asks me why I don't want to teach in Japan or work there and that is exactly why. 😕 I'm not a woman but as an LGBTQ person I feel like that would be another added thing that wouldn't exactly be great for me.