Tokage

kinda wonder which songs will be the ones they'll stop performing tho, i'm guessing it might be some of their older stuff?

pretty sad this dude's trying to coast by on his 5 minutes of fame as a dir en grey producer tbh :/

sharaku, what the FUCK

:( but also yeah - i'm surprised these guys managed to stick around and keep playing shows for like a decade or more with just 3 official albums lol

it got like exactly two days of attention or something before people got tired of it, tbh i've played it like 3 or 4 times tops front to back in its entirety and it's just simply not a super amazing album. i do think the way some of the songs transition into the next tracks was pretty well done and i'd like to see 'em try that some more, it at least gave a feeling of the whole thing being a little more than just a handful of selected tracks thrown together (which is kind of how the previous 2 ones felt to me, even though i quite liked most of the songs on those anyway)

Any of y'all ever play the horror game DreadOut? It's supposedly some kind of Fatal Frame knockoff, looks kinda interesting, just curious if it's worth playing or not

i missed out on seeing Plastic Tree in my home country cuz i wasn't old enough at the time, and of course they never came back after that one performance. there's a shitload of western bands i like whose shows i retroactively found out i missed out on due to the fact i moved abroad lol

Another one from my end: Oto-Oni: Over the years there have been quite many VK bands going for the whole 'traditional' aesthetic. Prominent examples include bands like the aforementioned Kaggra, but also more recent acts like Kiryu, Memento Mori and many, many others. Still, among that particular crowd, I think Oto-Oni definitely stands out as one of the more unique bands going for such a sound and aesthetic. While their music does feature the kind of weird artificial, synthy takes on traditional instruments (at least i THINK they're not real ones) on some occasions that can be found in the sound of bands like Kiryu, Oto-Oni's sound has less of this.. 'samurai'-type of vibe to it and more a sort of 'nomads wandering through the wilderness'-feel to it, something tribal. Many of their heavier songs have these pounding drum beats to them that can kinda make you imagine people dressed in rags dancing around a fire. The only other example of a song with a vaguely similar sound I can think of off the top of my head is '913' by Coaltar of the Deepers, but even that one has a totally different vibe

oh shit, hope this means we'll be getting that proper new 'sound collection' sooner rather than later

I wanted to make a topic dedicated to the bands and artists in the Japanese music industry with a truly 'unique' sound of their own (within the sphere of the Japanese music industry anyway), ones that as of yet haven't been heavily imitated, homaged or whatever. This isn't just about the VK scene specifically, non-VK bands and artists are more than welcome as well. Still, I think it'd be interesting to first of all look at some VK acts that can be called relatively unique within the scene as well - so many people write off VK as a whole because of its supposedly homogeneous sound, but I feel like there's quite a few bands out there that definitely did do their own thing. Note that 'unique' doesn't necessarily have to equal 'good', so extremely bizarre examples of shit kei are also more than welcome I'll start off with a couple of examples of my own: cali≠gari: I honestly don't think I've ever stumbled upon all that many bands in the VK scene with a sound similar to these guys, at least none that weren't side-projects connected to any of the cali≠gari boys anyway. Although the 90s VK scene especially was pretty strongly influenced by music from both the Western and Eastern post-punk and goth scenes, I don't think all that many groups in the VK world ever did blend influences of post-punk, noise rock and synthpop quite the way they did. There's also this particular guitar tone Ao uses in quite many of their songs (I don't know exactly how to explain it, but this kind of 'scratchy' sound like in Hakkyou Channel) that I haven't really heard much in other VK bands. Schwarz Stein: Pretty clearly a bunch of odd ducks when you look at them within the context of their other goth-y peers. While they definitely still feel like they could be just your typical symphonic metal-influenced VK act if you just take their aesthetic at face value, their sound is something I've never really heard any other VK bands try to attempt, especially in that early '00s period before their hiatus, when quite a lot of bands were gradually starting to adapt to this more nu-metal / alt metal-influenced sound. Even nowadays in 2018 I think you can probably count the number of well-known acts with a sound like theirs on one hand.

In a more serious example, I guess technically Leo Imai (Metafive, Kimonos etc.), Ken Lloyd (Fake?, Oblivion Dust) and the dude from MONORAL would count but as far as I know they're halfbloods anyways and presumably raised bilingually?

Mana (of Malice Mizer fame) speaks fluent English, but inexplicably has a very thick cockney accent

there have been rumors that dir en grey got into a massive fist fight with literally the entire lineup of korn's family values tour when they went on their first US tour and that's why they've never been back to the US ever since

cant wait until all the members collectively decide to go bald tbh, we need that happy hardcore aesthetic

A Tree or a Person or a Wall: Stories by Matt Bell, a short story collection full of rather dark and weird stuff. I can honestly say that occasionally the stories have been kinda hit and miss, but in general there are a lot of interesting ideas in this one. Recommended for anyone who enjoys their fiction weird, dark or a bit bleak.

Remember his previous one being pretty good, this has potential

dude literally lookin like some unnamed background actor in a yakuza flick

also > album is called '14' > only 10 tracks NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I've always liked the Reiketsu Neriseba pv just cuz i like the collage aesthetic but it is pretty fucking goofy honestly... Child Prey is pretty fucking ridiculous on a conceptual level in its entirety but somehow the whole thing works (granted, the song is still ass, but still)

'audio' vs 'high quality audio'? damn, better bring out the laptop speakers / shitty car speakers again, everyone

BEST DIR EN GREY PV AESTHETIC? discuss (quality of the songs themselves doesn't matter, i'm talkin solely about visuals and video concepts here) personally i still think dozing green is high up there among their best, dunno what it is about that one, but everything just feels good, even the kinda out of nowhere stop motion bits