R/O

I ranked TIW at the bottom, but that’s mostly because of the production disaster. DSS... oh boy the songs on Uroboros are better, but the way DSS flows together more than makes up for that. And Macabre is the album that introduced me to their music, and the title track is amazing.

https://images.app.goo.gl/97V471frruWRgryf9 What do you think of this guy?

1) YES. They fascinated me since... approximately forever. I remember first hearing about them... I was about 12 dare I say? For a while all I knew about them was that someone in that band got worshiped like crazy and everyone who wasn’t a rabid fan thought it was pure madness, but they still intrigued me. Then I read up a bit about them and... well, you can’t deny no screenwriter could come up with that storied a story. By then I’d made up my mind to actually listen to them. And then I heard “Rose of Pain”. They immediately became one of my favorite bands. 2) I feel like most haters hate the fans more than the band. Hating X Japan is like hating Black Sabbath—they were the ones to make a musical tendency into a true genre. Also, there’s a difference between disliking someone’s fans and saying that person couldn’t play an instrument despite ample evidence to the contrary. 3) Should get off his high horse, but quite the artist nonetheless. I understand neither the boundless love, nor the boundless hatred. 4) See what I said about 2. They didn’t “invent” the genre, but they gave it an identity. And that’s a big part of why it didn’t peter out after a few years. 5) Again, they gave VK its identity and a point of reference which still stands to this day. And their classic lineup was startlingly good. One of the world’s fastest drummers, the best bass player in Japan, two world-class guitarists (with complementary styles to boot), and a genuinely impressive singer. And the songwriting was extremely good. They deserve the love. That being said, individual members can be overrated and over-worshiped. I think that’s disrespectful. What makes artists great is that they are people who bleed like us, cry like us, laugh like us, do stupid things like us, die like us... they’re not gods. And it’s sad seeing a human raised on that kind of a pedestal. It’s a disservice to that person. 6) Musically, hide all the way. Sugizo is very good, but he tends towards generic shredding a little too much. Overall... see what I said in 5.

Certainly not as harsh as it was at the beginning. Mixed quality, not atrocious like someone else said but certainly inconsistent.

Gonna have to watch!

I let it paint a picture in my mind—how much I like music tends to be closely associated to how much I like the image and how detailed it is. Videos and lyrics/translations can be a good guideline, but sometimes the image conflicts with them. There’s generally going to be characters, who may or may not resemble the artists (generally the more theatrics in the band, the higher the likelihood they will). I may be “in” the image, or just watch it happen. If a song is supposed to be a memorial of some kind, or even just about a real-life deceased (or otherwise victim of a great tragedy) person, I generally will only listen to it when I can give it full or near-full attention, and keep tissues handy. Same thing goes if it was published posthumously as a homage to the writer.

We should organize a scavenger hunt of references in Spawn

Probably just a coincidence lol... Quite a funny one though!

..? Is there something I’m missing? The guy’s a damn good singer. I would see. It would be funny asf. Lololol

Would be twistedly awesome. He doesn’t sound operatic at all... but that might be what makes the idea of him singing over opera great. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! One VK vocalist turned into a mechanical abomination is already one too many. Nonononononono... let this not happen...

Underrated af. I swear, it’s such a good song—the melody, the bass, the drums, the guitars, the vocals, the clever insertion of distorted backing vocals, the chiptune-y thingy which you might hear at some points if you’re careful and lucky, and the bells.

Blue Blood’s cover is about as simple and effective as they get. If VK was a country, this cover would be the flag.

Musically unpredictable to the max Heavily associated with a color Can’t really sing but sings anyway Tends to get stuck in projects of dubious merit Quite clearly a Bowie fanboy Did I mention musically unpredictable to the max?

I haven’t yet heard all of them, but WHY SO LITTLE LOVE FOR DSS??? It’s one of my favorite albums honestly. It just paints this picture of being in a forest, chased by some Lovecraftian being... and then that ending. Did you get out? Did the monster kill you? Who knows. Yeah it’s a bit dense... but it needs more love imo. TIW... eh. It’s their weakest of the ones I’ve heard yet, but it’s still a good album. It would be way better if not for the brickwalled (and generally atrocious) production. By the way, what do you guys think of “World of Mercy”? I think the song itself is up there with Macabre and Vinushka. The production is eh, but oh well.

Ok this one was weird af. Also really fun. I was in the Ocean House Hotel from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. There were a few other people there, most but not all of whom looked pretty nondescript. I think it was for some TV thingy or something. Anyway we had to explore the hotel (to anyone who hasn’t played the game: it’s haunted and an early quest requires you to investigate the haunting), then (minor spoiler) the stairs gave way like they do in the game (end of spoiler), and I wound up trapped underground with another person who bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain long-dead VK icon, improbably styled magenta hair and all. That bit is not particularly unusual—random people in my dreams tend to resemble real people (people I know, people I see on the news, people I listen to)—but I remember noticing it and thinking “oh ok there’s no way this is a coincidence, most likely scenario is that this person likes the same music as I do, so we might be able to chat about it and keep each other sane down here”, while I normally don’t notice those resemblances until after I awake. But we didn’t really talk about music, we mostly talked about getting out of there. We were down there for a while actually, and I remember we talked about whether the others were down here as well or if we’d just been unlucky. Music did end up factoring into it, mostly when the other person pulled out a music-playing device (looked like an aging MP3 reader, but I’m not really sure) and started playing The Doors’ “When The Music’s Over”. Then we managed to get out of there, but the ground floor was filled with such pleasant critters as spiders, worms, moths, cockroaches, maggots, etc. We just looked at each other and went “to hell with the prize, we’re getting out of here!” before doing exactly that. Outside of the hotel there was the TV host, and the other person screamed something rather uncouth (I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it involved the words “motherfucker” and “go to hell” among a string of profanity) at him before we just ran all the way back to Santa Monica (the game’s main setting). Then it kinda became a little blurrier, but we were at the Asylum (which is a nightclub in the game) talking about the whole ordeal, mostly laughing about it. Then we kinda started talking about the sea for some reason. Then I awoke just as we were finally introducing ourselves after the whole misadventure. Edit: a few additional details tl;dr: a suspiciously magenta-haired person and I had to get out of a haunted hotel in a videogame. I probably shouldn’t listen to “Rose of Pain” and play Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines immediately before going to sleep. Or maybe I should, because that dream was fun as hell.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Over this time of the year I tend to like odd things, and “century-old Expressionist movie” qualifies as odd in my book.

Makeup-wise, my eyes are the centerpiece. I tend to go for heavy, dark eyeshadow above my eyes and pale eyeshadow below. Highlights are invariably silver. I generally connect my eyes to my eyebrows with eyeliner (helps that I have long and low brows). I wear dark lipstick and foundation that matches my skin tone about exactly. Occasionally I will use pearly white eyeshadow (the same I use for my undereyes) in lieu of powder to give a slightly unreal look to my face. The color I currently use is blue, but I’m in the early stages of forming a band and there I will have purple as an assigned color. For the most part I tend to look pretty old-school, mostly because many of my favorite bands and artists (and fashion influenced—my style tends to reflect my musical tastes closely) are very high-theatrics and... well, I can’t exactly strut into a school with pale foundation, fake lashes and whatnot. My hair is curly and black, in a slightly overgrown sideshave. It generally does what it wants, so I don’t try to style it too much. Attempts to bleach it have proven futile (and very orange) in the past. It is, however, almost invariably sprayed with blue or silver temporary dye. Fashion-wise... every bit as old-school as my makeup, and for the same reasons. I’d look like a particularly loud glam metaller if not for the makeup. That is rapidly changing though—I’m trying to incorporate more “loony gothic” looks in my outfits.

Not necessarily unexpected because it’s Final Fantasy, but I believe Kuja deserves a mention. https://images.app.goo.gl/WS4PCdy2yMAdYu8s7 Right down to the faux-angelic smile.

I find Versailles’ “Marionette” to be inordinately creepy (in a sad and even kinda sweet way). Yes, I know the lyrics are absolutely PG, but the implications of the second stanza... and the “trailed by threads” bit... and the conclusion (which is also where the sweetness comes into play)... Shock value-y creepiness doesn’t get me half as much as the subtler kind. The implication that the titular marionette might be made from a corpse is about 10 times scarier than over-the-top inappropriate or gory lyrics.

Tl;dr (tl;dw in this case): The bassist has had a Dracula persona since forever, one of the guitarists enjoys mixing fanservice and nightmares, the other guitarist is a statue, and the singer looks like the protagonist of any Gothic horror movie. Someone thinks that it might be a good idea to run with it and make a movie. Despite the special effects unit probably being an average laptop computer (in 2001!), the acting being all over the place, and the mostly cliched plot, the movie inexplicably and actually turns out good. As in, legitimately and mostly unironically enjoyable. Probably because it’s highly stylized and because it takes itself with just the right balance of seriousness and lightheartedness.

Mine is my name on here: R/O. Pronounced any way you like. That’s pretty much it. Language-less, genderless, brief.

It’s alright!

...I don’t get it... what’s this gotta do with anything?

Serves her well. If anyone’s the real hag, that’s her.

I totally get where you’re coming from... I suspect they, for one reason or another, worked more with Hitomi than with the others. Or that there simply was some kind of chemistry at play. With Shuji and Kamijo they sounded way more scripted than with Hitomi. Plus, I feel Shuji would be redundant—any formation that could be called in good faith “Malice Mizer” would already have a high-pitched, aggressive vocalist anyway. Shuji is a few miles better than him, true, but it’s not a vocal style I see any kind of a reformed MM doing too often.