Wonrei

^ Actually I'd say it was the best decision in his entire career. He seems to be working with tons of cool people with different styles that can only contribute to his music, not to mention getting the chance to play big concerts/festivals with some well-known bands within the rock scene.

This.

+1 this.

Also, he played hanabi during the billboard live:

https://vimeo.com/49540253

Sounds good already. Will probably be even better with shamisen and flamenco style guitar

His voice always manages to amaze me. Here it's almost kind of scary.

damn I remember these guys

Damn, that's quite a lineup. He did manage to get artists from lots of different genres there. Awesome to see Takeshi Hosomi, Seiji Kameda and Hiromitsu Agatsuma(shamisen player), for example. Guess I'll need to buy this one.

Sorry for the double post, but longer Gloria preview

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I liked Created Beauty(My favorite actually, I hope the rest isn't just hizaki guitar-fapping, pls), Holy Grail -Amoroso-, Brave. So yeah, almost all those new tracks. Funny how I disliked almost all single songs with exception of Illusion and now I like this.

text is hideous and that picture looks like it was taken by a 15 year old for their photography class project.

also not looking forward to this single; the cover and title make me think this is a ballad and matenrou sucks at ballads. more faust/coal tar stuff pls

there's a preview on this thread already... and it's more of a symphonic power metal song.

they had announced this on twitter some months ago

there's also a split with a folk guy

no release info about any of them though

Man that Yasou song is good! I don't remember them doing this kind of thing for quite a while.

i hope it will be a full-length album not another mini. XD

It will probably be a full-length 10+ track album. In this scene when they say they're going to release an album it usually really is a full-length LP. I've noticed that in Korea it's not exactly the same haha.

If I remember it well last time he announced an album it ended up being a mini. Though I'm not sure, I may be confusing artists.

what the fuck

is this even real life

THANK YOU RAPHAEL YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

^well I believe they've been on that path for quite a while now. And I think that's better, their old albums were good but I always thought they had quite a "trying too hard" thing. Just see their old looks, so dark and edgy lel

tribute album

first live dvd in years

oh god yes

^Well, they've mentioned on interviews and stuff that the new album is shaping to be similar to karma, but with more of a "band" sound, so I wouldn't doubt if it ended up sounding somewhat like sakanaction

pls do some shoegaze again plastic tree

or some post-rock shit like anten

pls

The song is really long for a single (six minutes and something) so I'm expecting some variations on the full version. I'm already enjoying it, though. Concerts are amazing, as always. Acidman always pulls some really energetic lives.

I like these new songs a lot, and they somehow remind me of how they sounded before going nu metal

Pre-13's reborn shit I mean

And I also prefer how they aren't trying to be dark and edgy, it just doesn't suit them

pls girugamesh keep up the good shit

Lareine is just some amazing shit. Not only they were good at what they were doing but I'd also say they were a lot more varied. Just on "The Last of Romance" album there were lots of different music styles going on. From freakin' lambada on emeraude to some bossa mixed with french stuff on パリは秋色 and the list goes on.

While listening to Lareine I'd just get surprised on every track. With Versailles I have to search for actual good tracks on their discography, because there's really few tracks I like. Versailles just made me so bored that I took really long to actually try Lareine. Before actually listening I imagined they would sound just like a 90's Versailles. In the end, I was really wrong, thank God.

Really shocking. I actually thought they´ll be together for 10 years more or so.

But I hope their final album will be amazing as f*ck.

Well, it's a hiatus, not really their final album. They will be back. Maybe they might come back next year, or in 2014, we don't know but they're not disbanding.

That's what I usually think but then I remember Malice Mizer is on hiatus.

And the way they mentioned it, sounds more like they are going to be out for quite a while. Maybe they already have side projects on mind and this kind of stuff.

Is this Hitoki the bassist from Kuroyume and Creature Creature? If so, great.

I actually tried thinking on a VK band but it just didn't come to mind... Maybe Dead End counts, as their drummer left because they were becoming too close with the VK scene. But yeah, both their old and recent releases are pretty unique on the heavy metal genre. They've always been quite an atmospheric band and have awesome guitar work by You.

For non-vk, I'll have to mention two. First, Acidman... they mix LOTS of genres. Started more of a punk band, but they really show their jazz and bossa nova influences - not only on their acoustic and second line reworkings of the songs but also on their main stuff - their sound becomes sort of post-rock with the epic song structures and everything, but also somewhat influenced by indie rock and punk in general, bringing some pretty unique stuff. They should be a lot more famous here.

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For their jazzier side:

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Second, Dragon Ash. I don't really know much about their western fanbase... but hell they're a really varied band. Starting as your typical 90's japanese punk band, then becoming the band who introduces hip hop to your country, mixing digital hardcore, getting flamenco and samba influenced, adding some electronic influence... they are pretty different.

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Their most recent PV, which is a tribute to their bassist who passed away recently. There's also some sort of tribute to Hide on the bassist amps. It's more of a hip hop song.

If I remember it well they've already said Stella is the metal song which was originally part of Balus. Cool name, by the way. Brer Rabbit sounds like it's one of those weird songs.

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing these days. I just don't get. They're two completely different genres. Normally, I'd think "If someone likes this modern visual kei, maybe they'd also like listening to nu metal? Or maybe metalcore?" As it's somewhat similar... But then I find out that most of these who like vk because they reject the "western trash music"(sigh) go listen to kpop. And Kpop is far from being that different from the western pop. Well, it just makes no sense at all. The same thing goes to people who only listen to kpop or only to visual kei, it's just weird. Maybe it's because I always like finding new music from every place in this world...

There's also this funny thing that if someone like that sees this thread they will probably go "why are you judging me for listening to this???" while most of them judge people who don't listen to asian music.

Oh, whatever.

I wrote this while listening to the album, so it's most first impressions. I generally don't change opinions on albums, though.

Depth - Actually pretty beautiful. Wasn't expecting... gives this pretty depressive vibe... maybe would have worked better as a closer? Let's see. sad/10

歪 - At first I was like "this is pretty generic" but it's somewhat better than the other gazette songs from the same kind. The guitar is awesome on the verses. Full version ended being fine as I kind of expected. Damn, that solo! damn/10

籠の蛹 - What? This intro... is this Gazette? Oh, the female voices, it is. Overall it's giving me a huge DIM vibe. Also liking it. The part that led to the ending was pretty lovely. Is this reality? Am I listening to a recent Gazette album and enjoying more than 2 tracks? I missed you Dim/10

ヘドロ - Weird stuff. Somewhat straightforward rock, but I kinda liked that thing before the breakdown, whatever it was. The guitar is pretty cool too. The vocal melody is kinda weird, not sure if want. At least you're trying Gazette/10

影踏み - Gazeballad. Reminds me of Pledge. Probably will only listen to it again if I'm listening to the full album, didn't see anything that screamed originality. The solo and the guitars before it were beautiful, but I've also seen that on other ballads by them. More originality pls/10

余韻 - DIM vibes again... lol symphonic synths, that's somewhat original for gazette. Symphonic Dim. Oh god that guitar work before the chorus was fine. I felt this could be longer. Favorite on disc/10

[DIPLOSOMIA] - At first it was somewhat ambient like Depth but then the beat comes. Let's see what waits for us on disc 2. why is there a pv for this/10

Halfway comments - No WUB WUB, I'm mad. This disc was a lot better than I thought it would be - really reminiscent of DIM overall. Now let's see the rest

[XI] - Here it comes. Maybe it should have stopped before this. OH WAIT, WUB WUB/10

DERANGEMENT - Now I can actually hear the wub wub right. Oh yes this is the WUB disc, now I get the concept thing. Even the aggressive section was fine. I already thought it was going to be good though, so no surprises. I would've preferred a WUB WUB breakdown than the solo though(I just think it would be more fitting to the rest of the song, for whatever reason) DEDEDEDERANGEMENT/10

REQUIRED MALFUNCTION - This is sounding like a Gazette attempt of a Mad Capsule Markets song. The verses and chorus specially... the bridge not really. Sounds a lot like Takeshi's solo work, AA= too(guitar really reminiscent of his melodic AA= songs). I like it, what the fuck. Lots of auto tune and vocoding/10

DRIPPING INSANITY - Better than the other ballad(even if I don't know if I can classify this as a ballad specially with these harder sections), at least. Even with the hard guitars on the verses the synths and the overall vocal melody are as pop as you can get. 6/10

ATTITUDE - Somewhat reminiscent of the Dim aggressive songs, I'd say.The electronic segments do add interesting stuff to the song. I didn't like the chorus though, just thought it sounded bad. Is that someone saying bass halfway on the song? Gazette meets Skrillex/10

GABRIEL ON THE GALLOWS - Somewhat good, but I didn't get putting two aggressive songs one after the other. The verse awkwardly reminds me of Ricky Martin though. Livin la vida loca/10

[MELT] - Impressive. They should actually try something like this sound. Sounds somewhat industrial metal. Awesome siren thing at the end, gave me that impression "this isn't the end" Marilyn Manson/10

So yeah. On the overall? I was actually impressed. I thought it was better than most of their albums. I was never a fan of their really old sound, and I don't even know why I always followed their news - the only Gazette release I actually really liked was Dim. The first part of the album sounds like Dim and the other one like a REALLY better Toxic. It seems they actually tried to get something different this time. Special note for the solos, almost all of them were really good. Silly ratings aside, I'll give it a 8/10 and is as high as Dim on my favorites list.

There was more WUB than on Toxic too, and I liked that. It's interesting that this was a lot more aggressive than Toxic. Now I've actually got expectatives for whatever they release from now on.

Highlights - 余韻, 籠の蛹, REQUIRED MALFUNCTION, [MELT](really)