Tokage

I don't think that's necessarily the case here. CHEDOARA had a handful of more 'atmospheric'/non-heavy tracks and people seemed to vibe with those a lot. I wouldn't even really call Rijin all that heavy and that one ended up on many people's ''best of the year'' lists (of course with some obligatory ''BUT WHERE ARE MY SCREAMS'' exceptions here and there but you can never really escape from those). I feel like it's rather the fact that all the messy behind the scenes stuff ever since those 2 members left has already created quite a decent amount of bad will among people coupled with the fact that the sudden sound change is executed rather awkwardly in places. Like you said in your own post, if they'd taken some more time to develop their ideas a bit further I'm pretty sure the finished product would've already been a whole lot better, but at the same time, considering the reported state of the band I kinda feel like there might not have been any band left if they'd put things off for too long.

i have a feeling they're only gonna only play stuff off MISC tbh. maybe throw in rijin as an encore or something to throw the fans a bone & that's it

ANGURA KEI IS BACK (again)

glad they managed to find someone. here's to another album next instead of a million singles plz :^)

dressing up as girls x in fact ban all forms of dressing up other than shironuri makeup & cool uniforms imo

The second half of the album waaaaay outshines the first half IMO (with the exception of Before it's too late, which just feels like the obligatory tacked-on ''WE'RE STILL HEAVY GUYS'' tune). Tick tak and out of the darkness are probably my 2 fave tracks so far. First half suffers too much from a combination of ''I wouldn't really be able to tell these songs apart if you played 'em for me randomly'' and anisong-syndrome. Overall, I feel like I'd appreciate this album a lot more if it had been released out of the blue by some total newcomer band. Taken completely as its own thing it's definitely not garbage all the way through & I do welcome the new genre influences for bringing in some stuff that isn't very common in the VK-adjacent scene, I just feel like it doesn't quite cut it when you match it up against the highest highs of CHEDOARA and Rijin in my opinion. Sho has some of the best and most versatile vocals out there among the newer bands and I can't help but feel like his abilities are severely being underutilized here w/ this type of stuff, the wildest it gets is some whisper-singing and sorta half-yelling. Dude deserves his own sukekiyo-type project to go wild at this point lol

The unfortunate truth right here, bands that manage to nail the gloomy style for a while always either seem to gradually move away from it or simply end up doomed to forever dwell the Ikebukuro Chop purgatory / disbanding due to underexposure. Anyway, I'm looking forward to at least downloading totally legally purchasing this one when it drops just to check it out

i'd much, MUCH rather take this noodly math rock stuff over deathcore any day of the week for sure, so from that POV i'm definitely not as disappointed with the samples as I could've been (plus I'm somewhat glad we didnt get any xXx_sadboigoth_xXx shit thrown at us, as unintentionally hilarious as that would've been).. At the same time, anyone who's ever listened to even a bit of non-vk j-indie probably knows this particular brand of pop math rock sound has already been done to death in that scene to about the same extent the nu-VK scene's dredged the swamp of mediocre xxxcore-influenced sounds, so I can't really see this ending up being anything other than yet another album to add to the ''vaguely sounds like cinema staff/sokoninaru/the cabs/tricot'' pile based on the samples.

i can't shake the feeling this is gonna be their final album somehow & idk why

imagine how much better visual key would be if all the musicians really were female girls (female)

fwiw though i'm at least 99% certain the extremely shit audio quality can be blamed on twitter because literally every single audio preview i've ever heard off the twittersphere sounded like it was recorded through a series of interconnected tin cans

as it should be

we out here with the one ok rock b-sides!!!!!

i cant believe people are willing to pay for what essentially amounts to a karaoke show at this point lmao

i really love that photo of madeth gray'll in the op

- Retsu tries to score drugs while Dimlim's abroad in Mexico cuz he heard soundcloud rappers mention about them. Accidentally gets in trouble with a cartel somehow. - Yoshiki DOES release a new X-Japan album but it's just instrumental piano covers of old songs. - One of the long-running bands (Dir en grey? the Gazette? cali gari?) gets a tribute album. Most of it will be mediocre but there will be a handful of leftfield covers that carry the entire thing. - deadman drops at least one more new song aside from their cali gari collab single. (PLEASE GOD LET IT BE SO) - Some aie band super-concert takes place featuring KEEL / deadman / gibkiy gibkiy gibkiy / TGADS - cali gari and goatbed both release at least fifty live-limited releases. Only seven of them are actually brand new songs. - Siding with @platy on that 'Kisaki will try to worm his way back into the scene on the sly' thing. - sukekiyo goes even more electronic on their newer material and will release at least one new single and an overpriced live dvd tied to INFINITUM. - Plastic Tree goes on hiatus/disbands after finishing touring in support of their upcoming album. - The Gallo either release a new album or go on hiatus/disband. - Liphlich finally release something again. - 8P-SB surprise everyone by dropping one legitimately good song out of the blue and then proceed to release nothing but garbage again after that. - A random VK-adjacent band inexplicably becomes popular overseas due to another freak Youtube algorithm accident. - Klaha found dead in Dubai

y'all motherfuckers gettin upset about the psychobilly thing now but you'll eat those words when it turns out their next album is gonna be straight up horror punk/psychobilly

Forever and ever one of my faves 2bh

this is better than dimlim x

the rerecorded version of 10 :^)