Pandabear

The Egyptian breakdown in this is awesome as fudge. The instrumental version these guys have of their album is even more amazing.

The band does get a lot of hate from metal elitist's so maybe perhaps that's why. They also did have sort of an emo look when they first came out although they've always been metalcore. Their 1st album did have a small emo influence to it. I get that. Danny' vocals were rougher and darker with each progressive album, including his cleans. Although I don't mind Denis's cleans, they remind me of the cleans from Stand Up And Scream. But he definitely has a much lighter timbre than Danny. I got my copy of the album. So far so good. It's heavier than From death To Destiny, but It's also a pensive album. Will be back with further thoughts once I'm done listening to it. Also. Love that Fronz inspired vocal breakdown.

Regarding howard leaving KSE, I feel like him leaving wasn't just him leaving, but also being forced by the rest of the kSE members. Maybe it wasn't done in aggressive way but in a passive way. I'm with people who say, the rest of the members could have waited for howard to get better, but instead choose to move on without waiting. Don't know what prior obligations they may have had, but I feel they could could found some better solution than forcing howard out. Anyway, I love both jesse and howard for different reasons but I would have loved to have heard howard on Disarm The Descent seeing as it was written for his voice. Jesse was good on it, and it was a good album, but there was something missing. They have a new album coming out and so far the songs sounds more like oldschool melodic KSE mixed with Times of Grace, which is great, because The Hymn Of A Broken Man was AMAZING and so ahead of anything KSE had done in their last 2 albums.

Album cover and track list revealed 1. Prayers/Triangles 2. Acid Hologram 3. Doomed User 4. Geometric Headdress 5. Hearts and Wires 6. Pittura Infamante 7. Xenon 8. (L)MIRL 9. Gore 10. Phantom Bride 11 Rubicon Most interested in hearing Acid Hologram, Doomed User, Geometric Headdress, Xenon, (L)MIRL, Phantom Bride, and Rubicon

And this just became my most anticipated album for 2016. I will be waiting for April 8th to come. The song is great and it proves the band is one of the few bands around that are continually consistent in quality. And considering how on top of their game these guys have been with their previous release like Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan, I'm expecting another masterpiece and contender for album of the year. I can't wait to see what new sounds the band has been exploring. The hype is strong.

I don’t understand Japanese and I didn’t watch the video, so I’ll leave it at that. That being said your argument is very flawed. While it might be true to some degree, that isn’t the case for the vast majority. Most U.S metal bands that are in their 40's and 50's as you describe are still functioning because of good business decisions. It isn’t because they’re being supported by their spouses, but because they’ve been in the industry so long that they have been able to streamline every aspect of their band. This way they maximize profit and keep expenditure low, everything from touring, recording, merch, endorsements, etc. Once you’ve been around in the industry long enough and you’re not a complete asshole or idiot, you’ll learn good business acumen, get good connections, get better at your craft and learn valuable skills that can be applied outside of music or across other platforms to function as other streams of revenue. Not only that, but any smart band pre-internet probably made a good deal of money. This is especially true of bigger acts who pretty much made their fortune back then and secured their financial future. It’s also very likely that those bands and the members in them, have other jobs in the music industry other than being in said band. This can range from everything to mixer, engineer, producer, composer, band manager, song writing for other bands, becoming a studio musician, or even becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own non music related business. All of which supplements or can even be more lucrative than the band they actual play in. Of course all of that pretty much flies out the window if you start a band in the current day. Particularly with metal, you’ll either always be broke, or close to it. And unless you’ve been working at some decent place for years and are in your late 20's or 30's when all of sudden you decide to start a band, you won’t have that stable dayjob with good benefits to rely on. And $50,000 is a lot for a single musician to make in a year especially in metal. You’d be on the higher metal tier with that, which most bands aren’t. Even mid tier metal bands barely make enough to get by. But yes, japan is sexist, unfortunately.

I'm going to agree and say that the majority of disbandment's are money related. Being in a band isn't easy and it takes as much business savvy as it does perseverance and talent, if not more. It doesn't matter what kinda of genre you play or where you are, it's still hard. WIth japan in particular I think most of the disbandments come from the VK scene. Actually, it might only be slightly more frequent than any other scene in japan because I do think making it as a vk band is harder, but the amount of disbandment isn't out of the ordinary. The reason it probably seems like more vk bands disband is because the scene gets more attention than other non vk bands. At least on most j-rock forums like this one, when in truth a lot of non vk bands disband just as much. I have noticed a lot of vk bands that came out around the 2000's have disbanded in the past year or two, or have plans to disband for this year. I'm going to say 99 percent of those bands made that choice because the money isn't there. If after five, eight or ten years, you're still not making enough money to make a living at it with your bandmates, something is clearly wrong. And regardless of the passion one may have for music, ten years is a long time to be broke so I definitely don't blame any of those bands for breaking up. That Aldious story is pretty cool. I love the DIY approach they had. Although, I disagree that that same approach wouldn't be possible in the U.S when a lot of bands already do that. Of course if you're talking about touring the entire U.S than that's a different story, but I don't think it would be possible to tour all of japan with that same approach either. To me, the self released, independent and DIY approach is the way to go for most future musicians and artists. There should be less record company involvement, only what is needed, and at the appropriate stages for an artist/bands. It may be harder, but the profits are greater. Japan is a little behind on this, and is probably harder to do this there than in the U.S, but I feel this will eventually catch up there as well.

Sold off all but one amp. Picked up a 61 keyboard and about 4 other guitars since I lasted posted. 2 acoustic Takamine guitars, which IMO are some of the best acoustic guitars you can get that don't break the bank. And 2 ibanez guitars whose pickups I'm currently debating switching out with bareknuckles or seymour duncuns. Aside from that, a ton of recording gear. Headphones, monitors, Pre-amps, D.I Boxes, mics, mogomai cables etc. Love the Recabinet VSt guitar plugin. It's probably one of the best guitar plugins on the market right now. Same thing with Joey Sturgis Menace. Although I use Menace more when I want a sick metal tone fast and easy. I've been wanting to try out S-gear and Rosen Digital too, but right now I'm satisfied with what i have. Currently the only thing I've really wanted is an SM7B for some scream/growled vocals. I'm going to have some cash up for that though. And some Steven Slate plugins, however, those require an ilok and I really don't want to purchase or go through any trouble installing and using an ilok. I really hope Slate comes up with some other form of DRM. I use Slate Drums and those are fantastic, but thankfully those don't use ilok. Hell yes to Reaper. It's my go to DAW. Tried out cubase, protools and others and I went with reaper. It has all the functionality and necessities of a pro DAW without the absurd price tag. Same with Fl studios. While I use Reaper more for actual live recorded tracks, I love FL for working with purely midi/sample/vst based music.

Discovered these guys recently. They're pretty amazing. A good mix of melodic and technical death metal. Miasmic Mutation was a great and surprise underground release for 2015. Brutal, technical and evil. Love that tasty riifage.

You are right about that, but I guess I'm just getting tired of it. Same. I had a person watch the first episode with me and fell asleep. I sort of liked it, but for some reason it did seem to drag. At this point i like the 2 female characters better than the main character. I'm on the fence on whether I will continue with it or not.

^ Same. I enjoyed their third album, even if it strayed away from their original sound. However there was something missing about it. Not to mention there were a lot of production problems on that album for some odd reason. The most disappointing thing was the track Howard Jones was on. It sucks they got what is essentially one of the best metalcore veteran vocalists yet messed up his vocals so bad. My top tracks from Death To Destiny Killing You The Death Of Me Run Free The Road I also really liked the bonus track they released for the European and Japanese release, "Dead". I was kinda hoping more of that album had been in that vein.

Finished One Punch Man - Hilarious and action packed with sick animation. Nisekoi Season 2 - Not as good as the first season. The first few episodes were rocky and the majority of the episodes were filler. However that being said, I still enjoyed it because of the hilariousness. And there were some minor plot and character development just as not as much as I would have liked to see. Can't wait for season 3. Accelworld - First half of this series was strong but than the 2nd half was weak. Much like Sword Art Online, yet not to the same extent. I quite enjoyed this, it's better than both sword art online seasons, mostly because it's more well rounded yet it's not without it's flaws. I don't understand why the 2nd half of the series focused so much around an antagonist and his evil plot, that could have literally been resolved in 3 to 4 episodes instead of 12. Still, the voice acting was great, the plot and main character had some originality and I liked the animation. I don't regret purchasing this. I'm looking forward to see what season 2 will be like. Young Blackjack - This series is amazing. It's a medical/drama series which is the first of its kind I've come across in anime. It focus on a young medical student in the 1950's, who is trying to become a doctor. Despite not being a certified doctor yet he routinely performs complex surgeries and procedures and is shown to be on equal skill level or sometimes even higher than the actual doctors around him. I love the combination of medical trivia,/info you get from watching this, how the show goes about explaining and animating the surgeries and the overall plot and story. Recommended. Watching Erased. - Without a doubt the best anime out right now. Incredible animation, great writing, characters and plot. If there's one anime series people should be watching it's this one. Go watch it now. Bubuki buranki - The animation style of this series caught my attention. The monster/weapons reminded me of something out of Eureka 7 or Xamed. The use of 3d models within the animation also intrigued me and it gives the series a unique style. That being said the plot and some of the characters seem trite so far. I wanted to love this, but so far I'm just mildly enjoying it. Gundam Iron Blood Brothers - Another new gundam series that pays way too much homage to its numerous series beforehand. It's not bad, but it's not great. The first half was a slow start, but it got better. I'm surprised this a 24 episode anime when it isn't even that strong. I'd rather have another season of Terraformars, One Punch Man, or Prison School. Something that merits another 12 episodes. Schwarzesmarken - It's got gundams, killer aliens and nazis. So far so good.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Denis's look in that video. The song is pretty good though. I like what was going on in the verses. It's definitely heavier than their " I Won't Give In" single, but I'm still waiting for that balls to the wall heavy material like on their first 2 albums. I'm guessing they are saving that for the album. It's funny because Denis's ex band reminded of all the good things I liked about AA. His look was better suited for AA then too. I'm still curious what is going to happen to Down and Dirty. They only released 2 songs but they were very promising. If the new AA is anything like DD I'll be happy. All ready pre-ordered AA's new album.

I’ve always been curious on this issue so I’d thought I’d make a post. While I feel the reign of giant evil record companies is no more, and that there is indeed no longer a need to be signed to a label or sign crappy contracts, Japan is a bit behind on the times. Considering how many artists and bands are now do it your self bands that start off in the studio home, and with hard work can easily write, record, publish, promote, and distribute their music all by themselves, I find it curious how this trend has yet to catch on in Japan. At least to my knowledge. I know there most be some bands and artists who have gone this route, but it isn’t certainly widespread yet. Is it merely that the trend has yet to catch on in Japan, or does it have to overcome cultural obstacles, established views or is the recording gear not cheap enough yet? I don’t know, but I feel it would be really cool to see more bands and artists go the independent and DIY route. Especially, since Japan, is one of the few places where record companies and labels do seem to have a lot of power and treat their artists and bands very unfairly. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories of artists being overworked, underpaid, not receiving royalties or being blacklisted. At the moment I feel the music industry in Japan is bit retarded in the above aspect. I would love to see more power go back to the musicians, and the DIY route would do that. Not only would artists have their own destiny in their hands, but should they ever decide to sign to a label, they would have more bargaining power and be less likely to get a crap contract. What does everyone think? Would you like to see more DIY bands? Do you believe it’s heading down that route or down another route? What changes would you like to see happen in the Japanese music industry? On a sidenote I would love to see a DIY VK band. A group of cool musicians, who learn how to record, mix and master and self release an album that surpasses the content of all their peers, and aren’t pressured to follow trends, or release a single every 3 months.

I don't care what anyone says, Emmure is pretty cool.

Had no idea they even released one. Will have to check that out now. I've been busy and out of the metal loop these last few months. But 2 albums I've been jamming is the new Born Of Osiris Release, Soul Sphere and Gorod's A Maze Of Recycled Creed. Soul Sphere a step in the right direction and a good hybrid of old and new BOO. I definitely appreciate their effort to offer something a bit more technical this time around. And one of my favorite metal releases for this year was Gorod's new album. Technical groove death metal. So awesome. And I'm still super hype for the new faceless album. Whenever that may drop. These guys never disappoint.

It’s lynch doing what lynch does best. Alternative metal. They would have had a pretty solid album on their hands if it wasn’t for two things, some filler tracks and the production. Most of the tracks here are enjoyable and there’s enough variety to keep songs from blurring, although it isn’t completely free of that. To me they could have gotten rid of tracks like ghost or Invader, which don’t really add anything to the album and broke away from the mood of the other songs. The most glaring flaw of this release to me is the production, which I’m surprised nobody has mentioned considering how many people complained about the production on lynch’s last album. This album is slammed to hell. It’s probably one of the loudest, if not the loudest album I’ve heard all year. Way to destroy your dynamics guys. This is pretty obvious on a song like Antares where the snare rolls sound terrible. It also make the album fatiguing and distracting when I can clearly hear the compression clamping down on the instruments. Despite the production problems I’d give this a 6 out of 10. Probably would have been a 7 if not for the loudness.

Went to see the faceless. It was awesome. Those guys are on point live. And their new drummer is insane. Also saw After the Burial, and Rings Of Saturn open for them. They were both heavy and brutal \ m /

Anyone here a fan of these guys? i discovered them a few months ago and have been obsessed with them since then. They're like an awesome hybrid of electro-pop, edm, trip-hop, and future bass. They've only got 2 albums out, Shrines, and Eternity, and I love them both for different reasons. I'm really looking forward to that 3rd album they have in progress.

Even though this seems to be only a FPS online game, I'm still hyped for it. I hope someday somebody will make a proper Ghost In The Shell Game. The closet thing to that right now is Deux Ex Human Revolution.

Sometimes it does. Than again I was never really into VK. When i discovered Japanese rock i listened to the bands I liked because of their sound, it wasn't until later that i discovered some of those bands i liked where vk, and found out what vk actually was. For a while ( a couple of years) i went through a stage of checking out and discovering a lot of vk bands and Japanese rock bands. I did discover some awesome vk bands but I'd say I ended up deleting 99% of the vk in my music library. Mostly because the music wasn't appealing enough for me and it was just taking space on my HD for no reason. I don't really listen to vk unless they're one of the few bands whose sound I liked from the very beginning. Or if they're putting out new material. Occasionally I'll go check out a new band everyone is raving about and it can be a hit or miss in terms of me liking it. For the most part though, vk doesn't do it for me. Especially most bands that are starting out, or that are trying to be brutal. A lot of the time, the music is just not there for me. The instrumentals/vocals are bad to ok, compositions are meh to passable and the production is usually terrible or amateurish. That and I don't get the whole metalcore influence. Bands who end up going the core route rarely do the core genre any justice and get stuck being an awkward hybrid that fumbles around with the 2 sounds its going for. I'm actually a huge metalcore and metal listener so I tend to hold those genres up to a higher standard. I do agree there's great variety in VK, so there's more to it than just rock or metalcore influenced copyandpaste bands. Sometimes I come across those few new or old interesting bands, but for the most part, I don't go searching or discovering for vk bands. I don't really have the time, or interest anymore and I get my musical fixes from other scenes.

So this reeks of google from a mile away. I have no problem with youtube trying to make some cash, seeing how it is a business and all, but I do have a problem with how they are going about it. First of all, the majority of the perks they are offering for youtube red should of have been free in the first place or aren't enough as incentives. A feature like background play for the mobile app should be free, while the rest of the paid features can be easily be obtained using other free services as many others have already pointed. Don't want ads? Install adblock. Want to download youtube audio or youtube videos? Use third party sites. I've used all of the above and don't plan to stop. I have adblock 24/7, I don't have time to waste, sorry. it might be because I'm getting old, but time is valuable, and I choose not to waste those precious seconds wasting away on some stupid non related ad. And although I do subscribe to some content users, I have and will continue to support them through other means, whether that's buying their merch, product, service, or whatever else. The inclusion of google music is neat, but then again I don't use streaming services. I actually have amazon prime and part of that offer is receiving free online streaming from their collection of music, which is cool, but I don't even really use it, even though I have access to it. The other problem is the price point. $10 seems like a lot to pay for features you can already get for free, or simply being able to to play youtube in the background while on your phone. Then of course is the issue of how much youtube, or rather google actually gets from from that subscription fee. I know they say a good portion will go to youtube creators, but I have feeling that ratio will be highly skewed in youtubes favor and not the content creators. Whether content creators receive more revenue from being on the paid subscription rather than simply using ads will remain to be seen. Then of course there is youtube exclusive content you can get from being a paid subscriber. But I'm not a big fan of anything or anyone on youtube to pay $10 a month to see a video of. I'm sure there will be special films or episodes or something like that eventually happening, but again I don't see that as a huge incentive, especially in a market that's already over-saturated and you already have competitors like netflix and amazon, and others who offer a ton more value with a lower price point, or both. The biggest issue I have with the way this has been handled is the fact that youtube pretty much bullied content creators to sign to youtube red or have all their videos be listed as private videos and be blocked from public viewing. It really calls in to question their claim of saying 99% of content creators were on board with youtube red when they were actually forced into it. This forced agreement may be so paying users don't have to watch ads on channels not signed to youtube red, but it goes to show how badly this paid subscription service was planned out. There are several other ways youtube could have gone and tried to make revenue for their business rather than this mess of a plan. It's already starting to affect the community as certain videos, and entire channels are starting to disappear because they haven't, or won't agree to the youtube red services. I am not an original content creator per say, but it does worry me to see how this will affect royalty payout for music as a musician and for other musicians as well. Personally I will not be a subscriber. Sorry, this service isn't worth it at all. And I fail to see how this is for content creators benefits when there could have been a number of ways to implement services that helped out creators more without bullying, but then I'm guessing youtube wouldn't have seen as much revenue for themselves as they wanted to. I see two ways this will go. The first which I would like to see happen, is no one will pay for this BS service and it will fail miserably. The second, which seems just as likely, is a very small portion will pay for this, although it won't be as much people as youtube hopes it will be, but it will be sufficient enough for them to continue with the service until more people start to come around to it and youtube red eventually sticks.

The above was pretty much my thinking. It's not the fact that they draw influence from linkin park, who I love, but the fact people having been comparing That's The Spirit to LP, when like I mentioned before, none of the songs sound like a LP song. The only things they have in common is that both bands are alternative rock now and use electronica. However, each band still has their own sonic identity. BMTH may be influenced by the band, but they always have sounded like BMTH, even on That's The Spirit. It's this exaggeration of the bands new release to LP that rubs me the wrong way because their album really doesn't sound anything at all like LP. And I find most of the people making this comparison are those who aren't pleased with BMTH's new direction, which is fine, but I find it a very very large stretch to compare That's The Spirit to LP. It's like people are just grabbing at straws.

I love how polarizing this band has been throughout their career. And while I feel some of the negativity they received was unfounded or exaggerated, it was that negativity that helped them get bigger and bigger and it seems to be continuing with That's The Spirit. I admit I was disappointed the band did not continue with the direction of Sempiterenal. For me Sempiterenal remains the best album they've done, but I actually did enjoy That's The Spirit. I know the band gets flack for dropping the whole metalcore thing but if you can get over that fact, you'll realize That's The Spirit is actually a pretty good album. At this point they're pretty much alternative rock, but its still enjoyable. I do miss oli's emotional screaming like furik mentioned, and I kinda wish the lyrics were better, but they fit the songs and direction of the album more despite not being as deep. I feel like oli was listening to Brand New ever since Sempiterenal, but waterdowned their lyrical style on this album to be more easily digestible. One of the annoying things I've come across is the whole linkin park comparison. None of the album sounds like linkin park except maybe Throne, but if you go back to There Is A Hell, you'll realize that song is a logical progression of the electronica sound they have been experimenting with since that album. The only more annoying thing than the linkin park comparison is the whole go back to the Count Your Blessing sound. For me that's the bands worst album. It's a meh deathcore album at its best. It's the least lyrical and musical release in their discography, which is not surprising since it was their first album, and the amateur production doesn't help that release. If i want something heavy from this band I'll listen to Suicide Season, whose grindcore influence I love on that release and which was miles ahead of Count Your Blessing in every way. I really do wish i could see these guys live though. Every time they play in NYC, their shows sell out before I get a chance to purchase tickets. Oh well, someday I'll get my chance.