Mr Bacon

Tokyo Heroes - Easily my favourite "recent" band. Even though their work after Iwan left wasn't as good, I stil enjoyed it.
 
eight - With Kyotaro. illational was great, and the few songs they released after that were pretty good too.
 
Werkmare - I love NeoCrimes and the re-recorded songs, so I keep wondering what they would've sounded like after that.
 
Rentrer en Soi - They were still going strong, so yeah. And to make up for how disappointing Satsuki solo is.
 
I really want to agree with D'espairsRay, but their post-Mirror stuff was pretty mediocre. I don't think a comeback would do them any good.

I love Akito as a vocalist (especially his work with Meth.), but notice that every band he seems to front disbands and never makes a formal album.

Cool thread, and I definitely have to agree with Radwimps and Dir en grey(especially Red Em).
 
Here's my picks.
 
eight - illational of the people
Eight had some killer riffs, and they picked one of the best to open the album with. It gets even better when the slap bass enters. Apart from the intro riff, this song is one big combination of awesome riffs, and they work so well.
 
 
girugamesh - Gokusou
Girugamesh's riffage isn't spectacular, but they still have some cool stuff going on. Back in 2005/2006 I was in love with the opening riff of this song, and it's still good.
 
 
MaveRick (Eat You Alive) - Want to be connected
The only album this band released under the name MaveRick had some really cool riffs, and I just love the harsh guitar tone. This first proper riff on the album is just so damn powerful.
 
 
Byee the Round - Rockstar
I just melt when I hear that opening lead riff. God, so good.

Cool thread, and I definitely have to agree with Radwimps and Dir en grey(especially Red Em).
 
Here's my picks.
 
eight - illational of the people
Eight had some killer riffs, and they picked one of the best to open the album with. It gets even better when the slap bass enters. Apart from the intro riff, this song is one big combination of awesome riffs, and they work so well.
 
 
girugamesh - Gokusou
Girugamesh's riffage isn't spectacular, but they still have some cool stuff going on. Back in 2005/2006 I was in love with the opening riff of this song, and it's still good.
 
 
MaveRick (Eat You Alive) - Want to be connected
The only album this band released under the name MaveRick had some really cool riffs, and I just love the harsh guitar tone. This first proper riff on the album is just so damn powerful.
 
 
Byee the Round - Rockstar
I just melt when I hear that opening lead riff. God, so good.

This is an awesome idea! Definitely agree with Miscast. As for Dir En Grey, for me it simply has to be the opening riff to...

So, we have this "Rate this riff" thread posted by @Zeus like ages ago, but we never had any kind of thread where we could just sit back and think of our personal "top choices" in terms of "j-rock" riffs? I am gonna fix that!
 
So the point is very simple - post max. 5 of your top choices when it comes to your essential/most cherished riffs/riffages in Japanese rock/metal (VK or not, doesn't matter!), and make sure to open up on your choices: what makes it great? What makes it memorable/"essential" in your case?
 
Mind those questions before moving on with MAX. 5 choices, so you guys better refrain from spamming 10 youtube embeds without any further explanations. PS: use spoilers for YT links!
 
My example:
 
1. X JAPAN - Miscast
(intro/main riff)
 
It's not a big surprise that most of my all-time favorite vk riff-rockers (Hyena, Unknown...Despair...a Lost, G.) actually stem from this banging number by X! While the main riff itself is nothing short of similar to something you could hear quite often in 80s glam acts, I still consider it as an important 'mold' for definitive vk influences: groovy, rocking guitars that easily adapt to sinister-sounding verses, yet to poppy hooks and choruses as well! So it's more or less "definitive nostalgia" to me
 
2. Dir en grey - Ryoujoku no Ame
(intro/main riff)
 
I had a bit of hard time in exploring Dir stuff that I liked a lot with PROMINENT RIFFING! Ironically enough this came out at the time when their catchy guitarwork was at its lowest and favored Western-ish drop approach instead, so I still consider this to be a "black sheep" of MOAB singles.In addition,  this is one of the few Dir songs where you could just cut a riff or two from any part, and I could name you this exact song as a response. But all that fussy talk aside, fans might disagree with me when it comes to discussing this exact riff (fun fact: Dir songbook(s) even define that verse chugging as part of that "melodic" intro/outro) but I felt that this is where Kaoru and DIe's cooperative guitarwork is done RIGHT and with a good, unique taste - as in not taking a leaf out of Luna Sea's book.
 
Oh, the song itself is a bonanza of melancholic, yet melodic and memorable "Dirriffs" in my case too
 
 
3. Radwimps - Oshakashama
(intro/main riff)
 
 
I usually tend to disregard standard J-indie/"emo" tracks due to superior, technical capabilities in any other department than guitarwork (e.g. drumwork in AKFG), but Radwimps proves me wrong: rhythmic, synchronized tap riff (a.k.a main riff) that actually emphasizes the backing instrumentation rather than takes all the attention away from them (you know that moment when guitar riffing literally makes you forget about bass, drums and perhaps even vocals? It's nothing surreal tbh). As a result, we get a grandiose, yet playful entirety of instrumental expertise by each member. Hands down one of the most definitive "J-indie" riffs to me (well I don't know where to lump Radwimps anyway?) .
 
 
I cannot think of other numbers for now since there are way too many, urgh.
So feel free to share and discuss!
 
Ps. timestamping is appreciated! Don't mind me though...

Overseas Fukai stands at 0 plays, Asunaki at 1 and New Age Culture 2, none of them would qualify as "commonly played" in terms of overseas performances, but both more "common" than Fukai.
In terms of total times played, New Age Culture is at 94 and Asunaki at the slightly lower 79, both a pretty negligible difference compared to Fukai's 95.
So I'm not sure what parameters you're using, but perhaps a preferable one would be "songs I'd like to hear live"? That's the one I use and it generally serves me pretty well.
If we're talking rare you might as well just beg them to play Toriko. It's not going to happen but at least that would qualify as rare using your parameters.

Hope Wataru's influence won't . . . suffocate them~ *ba dum tss*

i hope they include 矛盾と空 in the dvd, it's one of my favorite songs from them!

Just waiting for the announcement of a macabre themed tour now. Probably won't happen but it'd be nice if the Gauze thing wasn't a one off deal, and their ticket sales haven't been higher in many years than it was then so, one can always hope.

Well, they started in 1997 didnt they?
Not even going to get my hopes up about a return to that sound tho lol

Mr.unknown will resume activities at their live at Hiroshima NAMIKI JUNCTION at 2015/07/03

i'm so happy to see that there was no hate at all between October 2012 and April 2015... the visuel key community is really one of the most open-minded, non-judgmental and loving ones

A potential market is a potential market only if it has potential. I'm going to guesstimate some numbers now to arrive at my conclusion from earlier.
 
Let's assume three things to begin with to make math simpler:
Monochrome Heaven is the only community on the internet that cares about visual kei. Everyone that visits MH is a gaijin. Everyone on MH is active and interested in visual kei. MH has 7588 members so let's round that down to 7500. That means that the likelihood of an indie band gaining a fan overseas out of a total of 7 billion people across 196.9 million square miles is 0.00000107142%. If this were distributed across all 196 countries evenly, each country would have approximately 38 fans. Even if I were to estimate the number of fans that would show up to a live, one concert for a reasonably popular visual kei band would have "two overseas countries" worth of fans supporting them (approximately 100). And the band doesn't even have to do anything except aggressively promote themselves within their prefecture(s)!
 
Those numbers are a reasonable representation of the popularity of visual kei in the world. We aren't even the 1% of the 1%! We are not a potential market. We aren't even a market because it's not like there are droves of people lining up to buy their music. So why would a band care about overseas fans when they can see 3x to 4x the returns in a single concert at home? Like any other small-time band, local fans take first priority. Live-limited releases are for the local fans. We're just lucky if one of them happens to share it with us.

Supply and demand.
Also, for most indie bands overseas fans are not of the utmost importance. Some indie bands give no fucks about overseas fans at all, and why should they? We are an unreliable source of income. Indie bands have little money to work with, so they need to cater activities and funds to where they get the most return for their money to continue band activities. Teenagers halfway across the globe do not factor into that at all.
 
If enticing people to come to your concert by releasing a CD available only at that concert brings fans into the hall, more power to them! At the end of the day, continuing band activities takes prime precedence. I don't like them as much as the next person but it's a more viable way to boost ticket sales than releasing a single in multiple types. In that context I can understand why they exist. If the song were made more easily available at a later date, there would be little incentive for live-limited releases. They would lose almost all their "appeal".
 
Now what I don't like are predatory practices in which you have to spend way more money than the song is subjectively worth but this isn't common. A good example of this is during Lycaon's erotic era, where you had to attend three different concerts and bring the stubs to the tour final to get a CD. That sounds like a gigantic pain in the ass and they're using the lure of an exclusive song to get fans to part with money. This kind of activities I don't like, but I can't find it within myself to care if I'm not even the target audience to begin with.
 
Really, the only reason why none of us like them is because it's a pain in the ass for us to acquire most of them. But I don't remember anyone complaining when ALSDEAD released Fragile only in Europe during a tour so it goes both ways.

Eh, they've changed lineups pretty often already in their like... ~15 years of activity, i'm sort of cautiously hopefult

It's probably a new single.
 
I'd love it to be some sort of Werkmare revival, but I highly doubt that would ever happen.

Boring song. They should rejoin DANGER CRUE and let the guys over there manage their sound again. MOTS and the scarlet single were so good.

Still not feeling it. Mostly sounds like any generic American metalcore-poppunk band. The riffs have been done many times before and the drums are so cheesy.
The melodic break is decent at least, but not nearly enough to redeem the song.

I keep hoping for something as awesome as Mind of the Sun, but I should accept that that's never going to happen.

I think crowdfunding can definitely be done right. A while ago the VK band Lacroix Despheres started up an indiegogo campaign for their 3rd album. It was going to be released either way, but they were raising money in order to increase the album budget and hopefully work with Video Game Orchestra to get a live orchestra on their new album. I ended up tossing in $35 to get a signed CD and some goodies, which I though was a pretty fair price. Unfortunately overseas VK fans are uber cheap and they only got a total of 33 backers with an average amount of about $35 per person totaling up to $1140(with ~$6131 donated through the Japanese crowdfunding site MotionGallery). Now they didn't end up hitting their goals to record with a live orchestra. I guess you could say that the campaign "failed", but they still get that money to help increase the production values, which is good.
 
The way I look at crowd-funding stuff like this is just a glorified pre-order system where you get to choose your own pre-order bonus. I think it's a great system for smaller bands who can't get the backing of labels, but still want to do the best that they can. Honestly, I would absolutely love it if more indie VK bands would jump on the bandwagon.

Well that made it obvious that PSC turned this band into the giant heap of turd that it was.
I liked Givuss, and I liked A9's early work, but man the stuff they released the last few years was horrible.
 
This new song shows that they can write songs, and definitely can play their instruments (that bass was pretty awesome yo). I'm intrigued. It's not stellar or amazing, but it's heaps better than their previous stuff.
 
As for Diawolf, not bad. Some cool riffs and the vocals are good, but that shitty pronunciation... meh. Also, no way in hell did Shou write those lyrics by himself, haha.
 
 
Oh, and I also hope they can get this crowdfunding thing going. Respect for their stance on (their) music and the way VK labels whore out musicians.

Well that made it obvious that PSC turned this band into the giant heap of turd that it was.
I liked Givuss, and I liked A9's early work, but man the stuff they released the last few years was horrible.
 
This new song shows that they can write songs, and definitely can play their instruments (that bass was pretty awesome yo). I'm intrigued. It's not stellar or amazing, but it's heaps better than their previous stuff.
 
As for Diawolf, not bad. Some cool riffs and the vocals are good, but that shitty pronunciation... meh. Also, no way in hell did Shou write those lyrics by himself, haha.
 
 
Oh, and I also hope they can get this crowdfunding thing going. Respect for their stance on (their) music and the way VK labels whore out musicians.

Well that made it obvious that PSC turned this band into the giant heap of turd that it was.
I liked Givuss, and I liked A9's early work, but man the stuff they released the last few years was horrible.
 
This new song shows that they can write songs, and definitely can play their instruments (that bass was pretty awesome yo). I'm intrigued. It's not stellar or amazing, but it's heaps better than their previous stuff.
 
As for Diawolf, not bad. Some cool riffs and the vocals are good, but that shitty pronunciation... meh. Also, no way in hell did Shou write those lyrics by himself, haha.
 
 
Oh, and I also hope they can get this crowdfunding thing going. Respect for their stance on (their) music and the way VK labels whore out musicians.

Well that made it obvious that PSC turned this band into the giant heap of turd that it was.
I liked Givuss, and I liked A9's early work, but man the stuff they released the last few years was horrible.
 
This new song shows that they can write songs, and definitely can play their instruments (that bass was pretty awesome yo). I'm intrigued. It's not stellar or amazing, but it's heaps better than their previous stuff.
 
As for Diawolf, not bad. Some cool riffs and the vocals are good, but that shitty pronunciation... meh. Also, no way in hell did Shou write those lyrics by himself, haha.
 
 
Oh, and I also hope they can get this crowdfunding thing going. Respect for their stance on (their) music and the way VK labels whore out musicians.

Wow.
 
After 9 and then Supernova I became much less of a fan of the band, which was possibly my favorite up until (and including) Gemini.
 
From then on I saw that the band changed a lot, and always seemed overworked while having uncharacteristic output gaps in content (same as SuG before they left).
 
Now I see that they are making a statement about themselves and how they feel, and I not only like the music more, and have that old feeling back where I can`t wait to see what they do next, I also respect them much more.
 
Rebellion is obvious in terms of what they are saying, as is the Phoenix title. But I could also interpret the mask he is wearing as another form of `rebellion` as they started really pushing Shou as a pretty-boy for fans, and started heavily marketing their looks more and coming out with different editions of CD`s with designs based only around each member`s faces (similar marketing started for ViViD, based all around their good looks). So I find it cool that they made a PV not showing his face, putting more emphasis on the music.
 
As for the crowd-funding, I was not sure how to feel, since I know they are still a huge draw in terms of CD sales and tickets as well as merchandise, so I wondered why they needed to do this, and checked out the official page for it as well as some more info.
 
On the page itself, they talk about not agreeing with the way sales are done, getting people to buy the same stuff, and charting etc... And that they were being moved away from what they felt was an emphasis on making good music, to an emphasis on something else. So it seems they are using crowdfunding to have more control over their own work, and develop a new kind of relationship with their fans.
 
My main issues would be that we are kind of paying twice for the product, since we already buy the albums, tickets, etc... And that some fans would pay larger amounts, although it`s their own money and their own decision, and due to the size of their fan-base, if theoretically 50k people put in 100 yen each, then the project is fulfilled. I`ll see how it develops.
 
Just my thoughts on the news.
 
EDIT:
 
Crowd-Fund Project is to fund the recording, PV shoot, and other things like promotional material, so they can do it all independently. When they reach their target they will also make an additional PV. Any additional funds raised will be used to `increase quality` of their works in terms of recording, equipment used, etc... They will show all financial data, and gifts for supporters include early access to tracks, HD tracks, track data (such as vocal only, drum only tracks, etc...) And I just noticed the page has an English option so everyone should be able to read it.