Spectralion

DUDE DRUGS LMAO

Btw, Ryo is the person who recorded, mixed, and mastered DEZERT's new songs, Hentai and Ghost.

But isn't that a good thing? Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is Jim Carrey's last superp performance, and not even in his wildest dreams will Neil Patrick Harris be close to doing something as good as that. And by going with a different Count Olaf you'll get something way different, rather than a remake of a good film. It's an excellent choice IMO! And you have to remember that Count Olaf was a humorless villain in the books. He was the opposite of Jim Carrey's version in the film.
 
But as far as I know, A Series of Unfortunate Events will be much closer to the novels with its dark, dramatic mystery-approach, rather than the dark comedy of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I think this sounds good. It's got massive potential and I am really looking forward to it.

Hey, everyone. I thought this might make for a pretty cool match-up. The most obvious difference between both of these bands is that one is visual and the other is not, but I actually think these guys have a bit more in common than what meets the eye. For lack of a better term, both cinema staff and chanty play similar styles of "indie-rock" with faint midwestern emo influences (the riffage, guitar tones, and even random, yet scarce screams that both bands employ). Both bands are also really poppy, opting for big, catchy hooks, accessible melodies, and mostly straightforward arrangements - all while maintaining a subtle balance with their more raw, aggressive sides. Both vocalists are also fairly melodramatic, haha.
 
On a more trivial tip,  I think it's interesting to note that I've often seen chanty described as "a vk band that sounds like J-indie", while I've also seen J-indie fans describe cinema staff's vocalist as "sounding vk". Whatever the case, I think it's clear that both bands have a decent amount of crossover appeal. Which band do you prefer, and why?
 
Chanty

 
Samples:
 
 
 
VS
cinema staff

 
Samples:
 
 
 

Recorded this when I saw them live back in 2012 and it was too good not to share :'3

I've been leeching and hoarding music since like a decade ago...
 
Why am I not even knew a damn thing about What.CD?!|

My life is full of lies :/

Something they do on arama often but i haven't seen here before, a timewarp. Since that oshare post got me reminiscing, what was happening in the glorious world of visual kei (JAPANESE BANDS ONLY) 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago? if this does well i'll update it monthly? if it bombs then..... 
pls contribute important events that i'll miss accidentally and purposefully!!
 
5 YEARS AGO! 11/2011
9goats dropped draw and everything was right in the world   mucc dropped arcadia and they should've kept it that bizarre brief fad of visual kei cover albums gave us album number 2 with a moran cover of malice mizer no one knew they wanted but needed   kuroyume's comeback album bombed  
10 YEARS AGO! 11/2006
Angelo dropped their debut single AILE disbanded megamasso's line-up was revealed tomo (oh him!) left pashya (oh them!) daishi from plc crept back onto the scene after a little meth incident mucc peaked and released horizont  
 
15 YEARS AGO! 11/2001
not a great month???    
 
20 YEARS AGO! 11/1996
x japan dropped their most recent studio album to date, dahlia! kuroyume! did! that!!!   l'arc~en~ciel! did! that! too!! technically this came out at the end of oct 1996 however, guniw tool's debut single deserves to be with these iconic releases fanatic crisis dropped the Marble album  
25 YEARS AGO! 11/1991
Sleep My Dear formed when some silver~rose roadies got together and realised they can play better than them justy-nasty dropped a single and it wasn't bad buck-tick did the same with jupiter ladies room didn't with "sex drive" clutching at straws here tbh visual kei was invented in 1993 by cali gari

Remember when back in the proverbial day oshare kei was considered by some circles as the uttermost depths of shit this scene ever delved into. If you were a frustrated male between the ages of 12 to 18 in 2005 to 2010 and enjoyed Dir en grey on more than a few occasions, such as myself, then you surely took part in this folly. 
 
Well now in retrospect I think anyone with a lick of sense has realised that we've rarely had it better. The best bands of the oshare bunch carried the torch of florid guitar noodling, big colorful outfits and nasally eccentric vocalists into their new ventures, all the while the rest of the scene was playing catch-up in black 50 dollar suit jackets with Dir en grey's angryman vocalist and nu metal stylings. Oshare's debt to older visual kei I think is often unjustly disregarded and the style largely considered as the scene jumping the shark, when I think this couldn't be further from the truth. That moment when all the Unsraw's in the world were stinking up the place, there existed a scene where one could Image an alternative reality where Japan had shut its borders in 1999 and the bandmen had to make due with their old Luna Sea and Kuroyume records. 
 
A good cutoff point for this fad I'd say could be Royz' debut ( prophetically named as "the new age". ) That kind of bijuaru did definitely exist prior to that, but I still consider it an important turning point from whence we've really hit the shits in way I'm not entirely sure we'll ever recover from.
 
I confess immediately that I'm definitely not an expert, but I know for a fact there are people on this forum who are. Some bands that were formed prior to this date, but continued after 2011, will surely apply in this topic such as Cindykate. I'd say the range is broad enough to include bands like early Dolly as well, though suppose someone could dispute that.
 
Please post and link away ( and save this thread from bombing ) because even at its very worst, this shit was at least infinitely more entertaining than all that new royzcore shite. Going to kick things off by posting some entry-level stuff 
 
 
 
Irokui never got shit in my opinion, which is quite a marvel. Stayed very consistent and their musical trajectory I thought was very logical for them, and it brought us classic tracks like Sakura Seven
 
 
Their early output was so sexy. Essential of the rainbow vomit bands that got progressively more domesticated as they went along.
 
 
Incredible from the first release until the que:sera single. They musically progressed and amassed fortunes for fancier recording equipment at a blazing speed that made me very optimistic about their future. Then the very moment they had chiseled their musicianship to almost Kiryu levels controlled chaos, they dun fuck it up with some menbas leaving and Emoro blowing his indie rock wad all over the final couple releases. Still I suppose not even at their last breaths, they never sucked.
 
 
Early Paradeis needs to be linked, not only because of what a shellacking it got on this board, but because they were unironically pretty good. If you don't like the vocalist, then you have no business listening to vk in the first place.
 
This is merely a scratch on the surface. There are tons and tons more to choose from like the earliest attempts at the style like Vinett, the more "acquired taste" like Dragonwappppper, left field like doginthepwo and the entire baroque influenced strand. 

Tonight was FoLLoW's last Tokyo shusai @ Shibuya REX
 
Set list:
 
I was basically bawling the whole time. How does one cry during Uppercut? I honestly don't know. I think Masashi stepped on stage and i just died. haha Every time I calmed down, Masashi would start singing again, or sing a lyric a certain way and I'd die all over again. FoLLoW's furi is really fun though! I just wish I wasn't dying the whole time haha <3
 
Honestly this was a first experience to be so torn apart at a live haha
 
Masashi got really choked up occasionally too. He lost the lyrics during Alice in Wonderland and you could just see it in his face and hear it in his voice the whole time. During guitar solos and whatnot I'm pretty sure he was wiping away his tears when he turned around. And he kept slapping his face (like how Japanese people do when they say something wrong) saying that he wasn't being like himself haha <33
 
Sorry I was pretty much only looking at Masashi the whole time so not sure how the rest of the members were 
 
For the encore he said they really thought hard about which song to play. They played LAST DAY in Nagoya the other night because that's where they made the song (something like that). So on the same train of thought, they decided to play Planetarium cos they made that song in Tokyo (I think? Sorry, it was difficult to hear/comprehend between sobs). He said something about seeing a star. A SUPER small star super far away, but that even if it's a teeny tiny star something something something. Probably something really profound but I just lost it cos I could kind of tell where he was going with it lol. Plus he was on the verge of tears himself while telling us about the song. 
 
He got really emotional during the song and by the end he was like "what's wrong with me?" kind of thing and then went into Let it go. I'm glad they ended on a happy note <3
 
Junsei and Masashi were at buppan again! I was really lucky too cos at first it was only Junsei, but Masashi came out right before it was my turn. 
 
FATE. 
 
<333333333333
 
I bought 6 cheki and got NO Masashi though. Junsei was like "what?? no Masashi??" (cos I was obviously a Masashi fan lol) so I bought two more and the LAST one was Masashi. And he was like yay!! haha <333
 
Their next live is November 25th!
 
The next FoLLoW shusai is November 28th!
 

What's visual kei?

Idg why [REDACTED] has a post minimum and not a karma minimum for access like KMC used to have 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

What's visual kei?

What's visual kei?

Disgusted that they would not only threaten this safe space but they would also steal the first chapter of my eroguro novella

for historical purposes
 

I love how everyone still thinks that m*npha is a teenage girl and not some predatory 30 yr old man 😂😂😂

If I can be frank for a second, I'm disappointed how easily distracted people are.
 
It's only been two days and there are already countless arguments about the merits and harms of file sharing. That doesn't address the real point of why we are currently in the situation we are in right now. Our hand was played and the staff was not happy. One member who goes by the name of @Kawaii_Minpha decided it would be cute to troll the staff and the website by threatening to report us to the RIAJ unless we gave in to her demands, which among other things called for banning members she does not like. If you read the messages sent to us, it turns from funny to sad in an instant. What pisses me off personally is how someone would try to ruin what we have going here for kicks. Even threatening to do so is worthy of an instant ban and I should not have to explain why.
 
As an aside, I don't really care how you feel about file sharing - facts are that if you are here, you are guilty by association - but these last few days have proven that without Monochrome Heaven there's nowhere for anyone to go. Downloads can always find a new home but to find another place where you can have mature, constructive discussions about Japanese music in an open environment will be much harder. And that place could never exist without free music so people can talk about it, because the barrier for entry is too high. We have to recognize the role that piracy plays in all our lives. That's why saying "buy music to support your favorite artists" is not the be all, end all answer. It's a good answer, but it's more complicated than that. No one here woke up one day and decided to buy Dir en grey albums on a whim. Japanese bands became our favorite bands because we pirated music long enough to become devoted enough to pay for it. Some people are at different stages of their fandom. This website has found the perfect balance of both piracy and discussion while also managing to be inclusive of all styles of Japanese music and there's nowhere else on the internet that even comes close to this. That's awesome.
 
That's why this situation has the staff thinking about what we exist for. This website may not mean much to many members here beyond downloads but the staff has poured countless hours of time and energy into investing in the website and the community. Are we harming the scene? Yeah, no doubt. But we probably do a lot of good as well. With the countless messages I've gotten over the last few days about "where all the free music went" I'm not convinced we can do good without doing some harm as well. The tools are not in place to promote visual kei globally without piracy, and I doubt there ever will be. The scene wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for all of us here. We either take the good with the bad or abstain entirely.
 
There is more to this website than just downloads and the constant activity over the last few days proves that this community is strong. Stronger than even we may have realized ourselves. This is awesome, keep up the good work! Having said that, I've thought a lot about Kevin from Batsu and how he freaked out and deleted the download section when he thought the feds were coming for him. His approach was blunt, but I understand how he felt. He figured Batsu could weather the storm and would be better for it...and that unfortunately did not work out. If push came to shove we would make a similar decision, and that's why for the last two years we have been working hard to provide other reasons for people to come back here. While the download section is offline I implore you all to go check out the News, Rumors, Review, and General sections to start. There's enough tea there to keep you sipping until things are finalized.
 
The staff is still ironing out the details so expect more information soon. I can confidently say that the news will come as a shock to everyone but some people will not notice and others will.
 
Consider this an early morning rant.

Eyelash Weave 2016!

@Uglymouthfor tea spilling queen of 2016
 
i was wondering who was behind bloom (they produce my kusofavs vrzel) so thanks for that