Zeus

I don't expect Jesus to blow me away but if it's decent I won't mind. I hope Pierrot is promising though. They're one of maybe 5 visual bands I still listen to. Let's try to not make that four guys.

Totally need to jump in on this ;D

Dir en grey - Quite arguably the MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY of mine ever. Their music alone helped me get through some rough times as I lived in a very conformist society from which I was excluded, so I was basically a social pariah my entire life. As much as I tried to conform to the stereotypes of what a man was supposed to be, I wasn't allowed to. That, and the music that I was prescribed to listen to was and still is utter shit. I discovered them at 7 due to an acquaintance of mine blasting Cage over her Walkman and they were interesting. It wasn't love upon first listen since I still thought they looked really stupid and was stuck on the fact that they were Japanese but subsequent albums went a long way towards fixing that. It was a few tracks here and there, a little bit of Audrey a few years later, then Filth and 24 Cylinders after that. It wasn't until I was a teenager with consistent internet access and an MP3 player that I went around the internet starting my illegal downloading escapades and remembered Dir en grey. Grabbed Ash from the Myaku single and OBSCURE from VULGAR and it was all smooth sailing from there as I rediscovered them. These guys opened up the door for Visual Kei as well as other types of metal and also went a long way towards making sure I was receptive to change in the bands that I chose to listen to.

Amesoeurs (or anything by Neige and Fursy Teyssier) - Truthfully, I haven't been listening to black metal for much of my life (started last year due to a recommendation from a user here over last.fm). Demon Burger deserves to be up here since they were the first "black metal" band that I listened to but I really listened to Death Cult Armageddon and not something like For All Tid or Stormblast (OK that's a lie; I tried Stormblast but couldn't get over the production values) and Dimmu aren't really black metal as much as they are symphonic metal. Amesoeurs was the first band that I put on heavy rotation that wasn't Japanese and the first legitimate black metal band that I was introduced to. It's a shame that they're no longer making music but from Amesoeurs I was introduced to Neige's other projects such as Alcest (which I remember seeing on Vurtox's wall not too long before I started listening to him), Lantlos and Les Discrets.

Les Discrets is a terrible connection on my part since it's Fursy's band and not Neige's but Fursy was in Amesoeurs as well so mentioning them here makes sense. Amesoeurs opened me up to the French metal scene, got me out of the Japanese Box and introduced me to some new artists I need to keep my eyes on. Really epic stuff, as your moderator I demand you all give the "Ruines Humaines" EP a try.

ELECTRIC RED - Let's be honest - this man needs a better drummer than himself and some of his arranges aren't the best thing in the world (I'm looking at you Rotten Leaf), but it was through a random download from Wind that I was introduced to Touhou arranges. Other than that, this solo artist was really instrumental (pun intended) in my growing fascination with math rock and really unusual time signatures in my music and that's spilled over into quite a few other bands that I've started listening to since then. Some really good stuff on some of his releases, I'd really suggest the RED RECOLLECTION album though. Get's 2/3rds of his demo release in re-recorded, more smexy form.

Mono - If this wasn't what got me into exploring more post-rock music, it was Les Discrets. Either way this band is fantastic. Part of the reason why I don't listen to much post-rock is because after listening to a few other bands in the genre, I realized it can't get much better than this. I have to be in some bizarre mood for instrumental pieces and long songs to truly enjoy their work but songs like Yearning and Com(?) are just fantastic pieces of art when I am into it.

Boris - Fuzz overlords of the deep here need some respect as well. They have one of the most inaccessible discographies out of any band that I've ever met and I've still to figure out what I'm missing and what I'm not from them, but the bits and pieces of their work that I DO have are amazing. From tracks like Absolutego, which is just a complete fucking MONSTER of a doom/drone track that you feel kick you in your gut to work like the hypnotic I'm-going-to-submerge-you-slowly Flood to the fuzzed out rock tracks like Kane -The Bell Tower of a Sign- and I Just Abandoned My-Self to even the new pop side they've displayed with Party Boy, I have to say this is the most flexible band in my library. Most importantly, they've dispelled that myth that a clearer recording quality equals a better band and better music. Not only are they not overproduced to all hell, their music has an authentic, raw quality to it a lot of modern music is missing. They even make their mistakes sound good!

Considering that I just got into many of these bands within the last year, consider my musical taste impressionable and incomplete

That just gave me retinal cancer.

Eh, the title's fine.

I can contribute one I guess (I was going to do AF, but you beat me to it):

陰陽座 - orthodox style heavy metal music mixed with Japanese folk themes and pop music elements. I also really like their outfits, even though I don't think too many people view them as "visual". It's probably because they don't look like sluts.

EDIT: @OldCheesey: The board's beings screwy right now. I'm completely aware of what's going on and the mods are working on it.

95% of fake visual kei profiles are obviously fake. Fans are supposed to be able to spot that from a mile away. If you can't, you've immersed yourself too deeply into the scene and border on the precipice of obsession. With that being said, nothing any of these profiles are doing are of any harm unless they're taking money and promising to deliver goods and then don't. It's just a fantasy by one deluded fan to other deluded fans because people have too much time on their hands and too little sunlight on their skin.

My apathetic self can tell you that there may be other people that care and you may be able to gather enough people here to get a functional group going so I won't stop this topic but I can vouch for a good chunk of us not caring either way. I personally distance myself from the hyper obsessed visual fanatics anyway so I wouldn't be of much use.

I can't help but think I'm the only one that has disbanded bands blocked into a section of his brains separate from other bands. How does everyone else view them? Are any of your favorite bands disbanded? Do you find yourself avoiding getting into disbanded bands because of the lack of new releases? Are there any bands that you used to listen to actively before they disbanded and now hardly listen to?

I used to actively avoid bands that disbanded because I liked getting into a band and following bands as they released new material. I couldn't get the experience of being a fan of a disbanded band because there was very little hope that most of them would come back and make more music. As I get older though, I start appreciating older bands for their static discography and the knowledge that if it's especially good they can't do anything to screw it up (like Amesoeurs). As for me, I now no longer listen to UnsraW and VanessA anymore even though I used to listen to them both often this time last year. On the same note, I only truly started appreciating HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR after their disbandment.

Does anyone else have any stories? ^_____^

omg...

I was thinking about this in the shower the other day! It randomly popped into my head and I had to think to myself "Who thought this was really a good idea for a song?". Then I remembered that I enjoyed it when I was younger and that answered my question so I promptly shut up and finished my shower.

http://seraphimvisualkei.blogspot.com/2011/03/versailles-philia.html

Wrote a more in depth thing this morning. I took a lot of what Zesshoku said to heart, actually.

Must read this then

I would have to say that I don't really have any embarrassing CD's that I've ever bought because I didn't get into CD buying until maybe two years ago. By that time my tastes were solidified and I knew I liked J-Rock and such so I don't have embarrassing CD's from when I was 13, hormonal and confused.

However I do own UnsraW's GUILTY EP and Hyde's FAITH full-length (both were gifts), so I'll put those here since those are the only albums by the two artists that I don't listen to much anymore.

Haven't downloaded this or listened to it, but I came in here to spew my opinion everywhere and say the major force holding this band back before this release is Byou. As much as I myself heard the transition from X-RAYS to DUALITY in terms of his voice he's still a way below-average singer as opposed to just terribad like he was in their earlier days. If he hasn't improved, I don't honestly understand how SCREW could be "getting any better"; the composers aren't terribly inventive, their past songs have been standard VK fare...you know where I'm going with this. Does someone want to prove me wrong and tell me why I should download DEEP SIX?

@jun I've been thinking about that a lot and the only reason that I can come up with is because SCREW's composers do three different types of songs: the ear-grating wall of shit type songs like dust box and HEEL, the decent to good songs like FIREFLY and KAIROS and then the aimless in between that's the rest of their discography. An entire album of that is bound to get boring and repetitive, stretched thin of ideas as the band struggles to make 10 songs that sound somewhat interesting instead of three or four really good ones and 6 or 7 shit ones. With such a short release like this one, it can sound more diverse because they can put more ideas into less songs. I might be off though: let me know what you think!

Personally, I think SCREW would develop stronger albums if they stopped putting out singles and put some of their B-sides on their albums, since most of the time their B-sides trump some of the weaker tracks on their albums by FARRR.

I was wondering if Yori was going to go back seeing as how Synside's disbanding too and all.

As for me, I don't consider a song longer unless it's over 10 minutes long. I base it off of my morning walk to class. If I can finish the song before I get there, it's not "long". Some of my favorites are in here, starting of course with:

Mono - Com(?) 15:56

Mono - Yearning 15:38

Boris feat Merzbow - 無き曲 14:08

Nightwish - The Poet and the Pendulum 13:56

Electric Red - 大空魔術～Magical Astronomy-EP- 24:43

Amia Venera Landscape - Marasm 14:36

Martin O'Donnell - The Covenant 19:09

Amesoeurs - Au Crépuscule De Nos Réves 11:17

The Black Mages - Darkness and Starlight 15:36

Boris - Loose/Red 21:30 (I listen to them combined since I don't have a badass system ; o

Boris - Giddiness Throne/ Evil Wave Form 20:11

Boris - Interference Demon / The Evil One Which Sobs 21:18

Boris - Absolutego 65:34

Boris - Flood 68:49

I have a ton more but these are my favorites out of all of them.

This might just be my opinion, but Hajime was pretty good in THE GLADROW.

The main characteristic of “quaff” lies in the twin-vocal style of “uta” (melody) and “tuzuri” (rap) - a rock band with heavy emphasis on the very essence of being Japanese. The underlying epiphanic message is obvious in the lyrical content as well as in the unique melody.

So some nu-metal visual kei band no one here cares about.

Love the DVD cover but not the album cover.

tracklist new cd 2011-03-30

CD:

慟哭

Juggernaut

LOOSING MY EAY OF THE PROUD

砂漠のシンドローム

棘-toge-

deathtopia

ドレス

Graceful Angel

霞に消える華

GIMMICK

クライモア

瞼の憂鬱

Sadie's version of AUTO-MOD deathtopia... AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Implying that different bands can't use the same title for different songs?

Hizaki, Masashi and Yuki make a fucking excellent work

Y U NO LIKE TERU .

'Cause Teru didn't play in this song as far as I know.

EXPLAIN YOSELF!

I've been waiting for a Philia review thread so that I could gather my thoughts and see if everyone else is feeling the same way that I am about this release. It seems that in some respects I'm pretty much alone on this one.

I will give Kamijo some points for finally being able to sing in that deeper register with full force. I liked his voice from before but the progression from Noble to Jubilee showed that he had improved and the progression from Jubilee to now shows further improvement. I have to take some of those points back though because he makes a few really bad calls here with his vocal lines. I'm particularly not a fan of Philia's chorus because Kamijo equates going higher in pitch with getting louder in volume. His semi-shouting singing doesn't work and I hope that is on their upcoming album. While I'm on that note, he hits a really raw note on Judicial Noir (around 3:29) that the producers should have corrected. It sounds 'ew' and not at all fitting. It was halfway between getting spit caught in his throat and sounding raw and anguished. It's not enough to make the song unenjoyable but it is of note.

I do equate Philia with being a continuation of Ascendead Master because I see them both as singles that played it safe and the single versions of the songs have vocal tics that annoy me (like Ascendead Master, where Kamijo's K's were emphasized to the point where it sounded slightly clipped and grainy every time he said "kakumei wo utsukushiku" during the chorus). In terms of structure, Philia is much more forgettable than the song I just referenced it with because the guitars and their intricate melodies do not stick out as much as they have on previous releases. It seems like they've taken more of an approach of balancing everything as much as they can as opposed to having the lead guitars, organs and vocals at the front of every track. The guitars are more fuzzed out and subdued, the drums mastered better, the symphonic elements pushed way to the back and the bass more prominent and with more challenging lines. I can't say it's a bad decision as much as one I'm not quite used to.

If I gave Philia (the song) a few more spins I'm sure I could grow to love it as a nice, safe Versailles song with a rather memorable ending. Judicial Noir ranks lower on my scale and along with select songs from NOBLE it's one of my least favorite Versailles tunes. That's not to say that it's an outright terrible song, because it isn't, but it's definitely what I would call "B-side material". On first listen, it sounded like a more aimless version of SUZERAIN. It starts with a path that it wants to take and a sound that it wants to define but around the chorus it starts losing steam and around three minutes as the solos come to a close it falls apart. The reversion to the chorus sounds like the composer didn't know how to progress and then returns to it to keep the momentum going, but the chorus itself doesn't exactly fit with the progression of the rest of the song. Once the chorus goes off into a completely different direction near the end, it trips up and becomes muddled. This song could have used two things: an extra minute and some crunch in the guitars. Versailles has tipped their hand before and shown us that they can deal with turning up the heavy but here the guitar lines, especially the intro, sound sparse as if there was some room that they needed to fill in. I would much rather see GLOWING BUTTERFLY or LIBIDO make an appearance on an upcoming album if they need tracks to fill it out.

Desert Apple is a great song for the sole purpose that it does a good job at breaking the "Versailles mold" of what all their songs are supposed to sound like. I wouldn't have expected something like this to come out of them and I would have sworn the first minute was lifted right out of a Moi dix Mois song if not for the fact that 0:23 and onward is too derivative of Mana's composition style. 1:05 onwards provides a nice contrast with the beginning and uses one of the oldest compositional tricks in the book but I would have much preferred that the entire song followed in the vein of the beginning. Desert Apple sounds like two different songs (beautifully) smashed together: one half full of synth Versailles hasn't touched before and the other half full of all the airy guitar wankery we love them for. For that alone I'd take off a few points but nothing else about the song irks me. I prefer this to Silent Knight because this is straightforward, whereas Silent Knight sounds like the group recorded band practice.

Overall, I say this single's slightly above average with Desert Apple leading the pack, then Philia, then Judicial Noir. I'm not into numbers but if I had to pick one I'd give it a 7, maybe an extra half just for Desert Apple. I prefer it to DESTINY but for upcoming releases they need to hire new people to master their tracks. The balancing of some instruments on this single are unforgivably off and for a band that considers itself a symphonic metal sextet, downplaying the symphonic part on all three songs is a questionable idea.

Unless they're trying to distance themselves from that because they view it as a limiting factor in Hizaki's compositional skills, in which case this shows that the metamorphosis of Versailles is incomplete and this is a snapshot of them in some ugly, larval stage that we don't want to see before they emerge as a GLOWING BUTTERFLY. (hurrhurr)

/walloftext

A whole lot of bullshit. Just because it's a SuG topic doesn't mean you can troll here. Stay on topic or get deleted.

EDIT: Apparently I wasn't clear enough. If it's not a review or a comment about the album, don't put it here. Take your little spats to PM.

Boris - Heavy Rocks II

Boris - New Album

Boris - Attention Please

Alcest - Le Secret 2011

Lantlos - Babel

Lynch. - I Believe In Me

These basically + NoGoD's Raise a Flag, even though Kakera was disappointing I still have faith in them.

That title. I don't even. What?

http://community.livejournal.com/nanbungaku/7509.html

Translation of Yuuki's blog post.

Oh, it was late at night when I wrote that. I didn't realize they were hyperlinks and thought they were simply underlined. I'll check them out now, thanks!

You should put a song up. I'm way too lazy to search xD.

I can't speak for other people, but they seemed more authentic as a band when they took their music seriously and didn't try all this fanservice bullshit. Sure, they were a visual band and the looks had their place but the looks weren't there so Yuuki was super sexy and Satoshi looks like he's three decades out of place. The music was the focus of first-era Lycaon. Now they look terrible and generic opposed to the striking and more provocative pictures of first-era Lycaon (I'm seriously not BS'ing, pull up EROS-era picture opposed to the Ambrozia-era picture and tell me which one jumps out at you more). It's disappointing, since along with a few other bands they're the only good bands left in the scene and no one's going to give them a shot if they look and act like every other visual band.

EROS wasn't the best showcase of their talent but the previews of Jesus were promising, even if it sounded familiar. I'm looking forward to it. I'm anticipating the B-side more, since I like their B-sides more than their singles.