Zeus

Totally understood about the Linux part. I'm dual-booting Windows and Linux but trying to find a way to make the Windows and Linux partitions more equal. I was originally going to only use Linux for programming but I ended up liking it so much that I made the switch last week. I also had to do it to work in a lab that I'm at more efficiently, since it was a Unix place and not an MS-DOS one. Finally, I also took a class on it so I felt more comfortable using the command line to install stuff. The switch was utter hell though because Kubuntu is a buggy piece of shit and updating took hours but now that I'm all settled and I have my music in place it's been great so far. I don't do much gaming though so that's not a problem for me :U

IMO Linux is a lifestyle and it's not for everyone. If you're thinking about it though, I'd go Ubuntu/Kubuntu or Debian. Anything else and trying to get help is like pulling teeth. I'd also boot it up in a virtual environment to see if it works/you like it before you do it. It's like the Mac OS but much less user-friendly haha.

I still have Windows for the same reasons you do though.

Fairly straightforward topic here. I'm just curious as to what operating system you use and why you like it. General options are Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu, Debian and then if there's something else that I missed out on there's a button for that. Seeing as how I've programmed on all four that I've listed above I've got my preferences for which ones I like best but I want your opinions as well.

You can select more than one option if you dual-boot.

The only reason why I visit is because Google is my preferred search engine. If it wasn't, I'd never log on.

I had a feeling that this was coming.

VERSUS vs. ROUGE isn't even a hard pick for me. VERSUS, which was a bit repetitive, was just such an awesome album. It had an awesome feel and most of the tracks were great. ROUGE just didn't do anything for me, I listened to it a couple of times and just kind of forgot about it.

I agree. The more I listen to ROUGE the less I like it.

So two questions:

1) Is he releasing every track from that album as a single? If he is, it defeats the purpose of buying one if you have the other.

2) Did d'eiz ever finish their consecutive singles release? It seems like I hear bands start these all the time and then they don't finish them for some reason.

I've now lost all the little remaining respect for them ^

If I had any left, I'd be inclined to agree. I have no idea why they're pulling all these gimmicks out. Gimmicks are for talentless bands. Talentless they are not.

^ vulgar era diru is one of the best things ever happened in VK imo

amazing visuals, great music, probably the highest VK shock factor, backed up by good budgets and stuff

NOTE: The following isn't directed at anyone in this thread. I just need to vent my anger and I've been waiting 5 years to do it.

This. All of it. I never understood why fans count Kisou as their last visual kei release. VULGAR was definitely all types of visual. Maybe not this kind of visual:

or this kind of visual:

or even this kind:

but this is still pretty damn visual:

and so is this:

I was going to identify these pictures to show the eras apart but my memory is shaky and this band has such an extensive catalog of PV's with so many small intricacies that they change from one outfit to another that I can't be damned to figure out which ones go where anymore. Also, they're hardly ever featured for extensive periods of times in their videos even when they were visual, so looking at videos to place them is difficult too. Putting all that together, I never did/do understand why people obsess over visual era Dir en grey. The visual kei days weren't the "glory days" by any means. They were an awful, awful time flooded with flame wars, hyper-elitism and weeaboos who so desperately wanted to be Kyo's tsunagari yet couldn't shell out 60 bucks every two years to pick up the new album.

To this day, I still cannot figure out why everyone flipped out right after Kisou. It's not even as if Dir en grey put up a sign on their OHP saying "hey guys, we're not going to be visual anymore". They announced six Ugly, fans were happy, fans saw the artwork and got angry. Fans heard the music and renounced their fandom. Some people say it's because they "started sounding American" but to me they started incorporating Western influences as early as Macabre and Kisou leaned even more in that direction. The only thing they did different on six Ugly was that they changed the tuning of their guitars, which is the same tuning employed by literally dozens of visual bands then and now (and which they had been doing since GAUZE, which was completely in E-flat). Others say it's because Kyo started screaming more like Western artists, but what do you call songs like Pink Killer and Hydra? Is it because they started sounding nu-metal? MUCC was nu-metal for the longest and visual fans ate that shit up. Some others would claim they've been fans forever and have you believe that they started going Adidas-kei immediately after Kisou and that they were totes glamorous 100% before then. That's not the case and here's why:

I can tell you for certainty that the last visual picture I put up was from the Filth-era and the one after it was from the OBSCURE era, so logic states that if the first one was pretty visual and the second one was pretty visual, the era in between must be pretty visual. It's also ridiculous to even think that they dropped them for one release, because no band does that. So there, we've proven that they were still visual around the six Ugly era using a variant of the Squeeze Theorem.

So Mei, you can go back, paste everything I just wrote to them and have them explain to you (or me) exactly how they stopped being visual at Kisou when they were still visual during VULGAR. If any of them even dare to try and tell you that they weren't visual around the VULGAR era, ask them what they think of nagoya-kei, because bands like cocklobin and Calmando Qual employ similar looks to the last picture and they're widely considered visual (and here are some pics if you need them):

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/4 ... Qual+0.png

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/3 ... e__002.jpg

As I said before, they started pulling away after Kisou but (and this is my personal interpretation) they simply started going towards a more mature look and to quit wearing ridiculous dresses and dying their hair 5 or 6 different colors per CD release. That eventually evolved into them officially severing all ties with the scene at The Marrow of a Bone. Like pretty much any other visual kei band that goes major, they dropped the look slowly. I have proven this.

QED bitches.

: ( Take care!

I would go with Withering to death. era as well but pushing it off to TMoAB is also understandable. I say WtD. because even though they were wearing make-up, they weren't expressly visual. Not every artist that wears make-up in the Japanese music scene should be associated with visual kei immediately. This is probably not the best comparison in the world and I'll get shot for it profusely but here we go:

This is Kyo circa WtD era:

This is Manson circa whenever era:

To me they seem to be wearing the same type of make-up and going for the same "look". Most people would be quick to jump to calling the first visual kei and the second glam metal and you could do that, or you could just call both metal artists that use make-up to accentuate their features and you wouldn't be far off either.

The reason why everyone points to the six Ugly/VULGAR era as the split is because that's when all the earlier visual era fans threw a shitfit because they were no longer wearing ridiculous wigs and outfits and strutting around in thigh high bitch boots. Claiming their music got "Americanized too much" was just an easy way out of admitting their shallow attachment to the band (which I think is why they began to pull away in the first place). Compare Kisou to six Ugly/VULGAR and you see a natural progression. Had they stayed as ridiculously visual, they probably would have released a very similar album and all of those same fans would be salivating over it calling it "their greatest work ever". The cognitive dissonance of some fans are astounding really.

The problem with defining when they stopped being visual is that the definition of visual kei is hazy and no one can ever come to a consensus on it. I prefer to go by what the band says and if the band identifies themselves as visual I'll go with it no matter how visual or not they may look. They stopped associating themselves with the scene at that point, which is why I cast my vote for WtD.

^ Heck yes!

Oh and Wata from Boris can make some great solos as well. *waits for Zess or someone else to post example videos*

DID I HEAR MY NAME?

Unfortunately their greatest works with guitar solos tend to be songs that are ridiculously long that no one will listen to, so here are a collection of some songs that do have nice ones but aren't ones that I like the most:

alRcF-1y9X4

tb0xkgE97b8

1CjsaFBQA1Q

Also, Evil Wave Form and The Evilone Which Sobs both have excellent guitar solos

I'm not sure if people are getting the point of this considering that Deluhi was after all, LEDA's band.

Direction, lyrics, music, everything. It's no surprise at all that they came together to help their friend.

I'm curious what he does though. How different his song writing is from Deluhi.

Came here to pretty much write this. DELUHI broke up because Aggy didn't want to be in the band anymore and they felt that they weren't DELUHI without him. Sujk is doing his own thing now independent of DELUHI and needs the help of friends to make the music he wants to make. The friends he enlisted just happen to be the members of DELUHI. It's nothing mysterious or strange - when bands break up on good terms band members help each other with getting solo projects off the ground all the time.

I just wonder if this is going to be visual or not. Considering that DELUHI was somewhere in the middle it's interesting to see where Sujk is going to sit on the spectrum.

I'm glad for them that there's no double action strike form on there. That was a terrible, terrible song.

Um...WHAT?

Does anyone else find it weird that Apple announced it and not the family?

People will always expect anything from a band until they disband . With that said I really didn't expect them to go back to depressive nu-metal but I'd have liked a guitar oriented track again.

There are some drums and bass in there but far under the bar of quality that I set for MUCC upon hearing gems like Houmura Uta, Zekuu, Kuchiki no Tou and Kyuutai. This band died for me with Karma and upon the announcement of this single there was a glimmer of hope in me that this band would realize that Karma was a really, really bad experiment and they'd return to their roots a little bit and branch out in a more suitable direction. All that preview has done is solidified the fact that this band intended to make Karma and that there is no hope for them returning to anything that even sounds like Shion-era MUCC.

Arcadia seems like a lame attempt at a band past their prime trying to stay relevant by incorporating the sounds of whatever happens to be popular at the time into their music, which often doesn't fit. Much like KoRn and dubstep, MUCC seems to want to switch their style into a more electronic field whilst trying to erase years and years of a sound that they've built up and accumulated fans with. They've gone full over to the electronic side and their music features seems to feature steadily more and more synthesizer and less actual instruments. It's a shame because the members are actually talented musicians that can play quite a few instruments, but it's obvious Miya is out of ideas. He's grasping at compositional straws now.

Truthfully, I haven't liked a single song of theirs since Kyuutai and this song won't help to reignite my fandom for this band. The phrase gets tossed around way too much so I hate to use it here because I'm going to piss off someone, but I think it's about time MUCC looked at permanent retirement and had the members move on to other projects. The charm is all gone.

Oh well, at least we'll always have their earlier stuff to enjoy (and Tsuuzetsu's a hidden gem no one ever seems to talk about :\).

I'm legitimately excited about this.

Trombe's going on vacation!

Have fun!

A ballad? Surprising. They don't normally do many of those, much less make them singles...

As much as people like to demonize Facebook while they're on the internet you do more harm by posting your entire birthday, resume, life story and stupid posts on Facebook than you do letting them know that you visited Cracked 3 times in one day. If anyone is really that anal about someone knowing all their details, they shouldn't have a Facebook.

*cough* im a pro keep-it-indoors though... */cough*

If you mean what I think you mean by this though then I agree no matter what sexual preference anyone is. I feel uncomfortable when I walk out on the street and see two guys kissing. I feel uncomfortable when I'm out and about and see two girls kissing. I feel uncomfortable when I see a guy and a girl kiss. Outward, obvious, somewhat exaggerated acts of physical attraction unnerve me in public. I don't want to see it no matter who it is.

Sometimes I hate some of the people that live in my country.

Welcome on board the single train? I don't know what to say. People in love say being single is better. Single people say being in love is better. I just want cake. .___.

Now I know in the thread that we exaggerate the bands we find and put up mainly the worst of the worst but the following band encompasses everything that this thread stands for. It pretty much is the title incarnated into a really crappy indies VK band.

w3i3SzeiNcQ

Crappy? Yes. The worst part is that they honestly try. Minus the Scotcore x schoolgirl outfits they wore to the filming that day the guitarists actually try to lay down some melody on top of the questionable synth that this song is soaked in. There's even a guitar solo thrown in there, no matter how cheap it came off as. The vocalist is just the kicker - seven bands into his career and he still can't hold a note? GTFO.

Cheap PV aesthetics? Very. This is probably the cheapest way to film a PV (one location, spin around and around, etc) and I know the trick of slowing down random portions of videos to fill out the time because there simply isn't enough footage to fill the entire song. This looks like it was shot in three takes (and it most likely was). You want to know when they hit the climactic peak of the PV? They shredded up some construction paper and threw it in front of a fan to simulate falling leaves.

Cheesy VK cues? Yep. The peace sign, random touching of one's self, raising your hands 180 degrees in-between every note that's strummed on the guitar...all there.

Eaten up by the fans like it's the best thing since sliced bread? IDK BY BFF JILL, check the last.fm (and also the comments of the video while you're at it)

This is probably tame in comparison to some of the shit that's been dredged up and pasted here like a moldy fish but that's extremely awful examples of things that shouldn't be called "music". POPCORE is pretty much the poster band for really shitty anime theme songs that play at 11:28pm after some awful anime finishes playing that 12 year olds get hooked on that no one should listen to in any context. Ever. That's why I think they deserve to be here.

Got to say though, anyone willing to buy this band's CD's are dedicated.

I also spent way too much time perfecting this post...