The Reverend

Definitely needs to happen! Let us know how it goes.

They traded in a name you can't google for a name you can't remember! Diggin' the new song though.

Drop some new MASK music while you're at it Michiru!

New emmuree and silence albums soon?? Word!

uploaded these two 君は鋭く (Kimi wa Surudoku) singles here and I kind of fell in love and decided I needed to own them. Sometimes drama-sama's rarez are a bit too hyper/colorful for me but these two tracks are great. Soooooo catchy. I can't play stargazer just once (or four times...) Check them out if you haven't yet.

I won't argue too much with that sentiment. I was just gushing over Materiel of Utopia in the phobia discog thread like two days ago. Is an acute the best of or a single? I feel like they use that word a lot and I can't keep it straight.

We need someone to carry on the djent-kei torch!

I have no love for the vocalist's *duuuuuh* face and his Justin Bieber hoodie.... but of course if they sound great that can all be forgiven. I know it's very common in VK... but in general isn't it kind of weird for a band to have literally no way to sample their music on their website? You'd think that'd be the first bullet point to check off.

Cool report! I saw them a few nights later (6/24) in Seattle.... so I'll respond with some thoughts from that show if nobody minds. I had no time to get excited for the Mono show because it happened very last minute for me. A few friends and I were in town visiting and the day of the show I was on my phone at lunch looking for something fun to do that evening and exclaimed "holy shit, mono is playing tonight!" (Of course they had no idea what I was talking about... I could only convince one to go with me after describing what kind of music they played). The show in Seattle was at Neumos in a pretty cool/young part of town. Seemed like a good place for live music, though a couple of the bars and the balcony were inaccessible because the turnout (while not as low as in Milwaukee apparently) certainly was nowhere near capacity. Pretty much sums up the band right before Mono (I don't have a lot of thoughts on the local opener, they weren't bad but they didn't leave a big impression). It only took about four minutes of that band before we ditched the club to find some margaritas at a nearby bar for about an hour. Luckily the re-entry rules at Neumos were really laid back. As for Mono themselves: I really enjoyed hearing some of the new record(s) live. Their live CD with the orchestra is probably my most listened to Mono album, so I was worried it might feel a little hollow with just the four of them trying to recreate all the noise they make, but I didn't find myself missing the string sections during the show. I didn't enjoy the fact that the two guitarists sat down for almost the entire show. I'm pretty tall (6'4") and the stage was a pretty average height at the club I watched them in... and I still couldn't see much of those two except for the tops of their heads as they stared at the floor/their guitars. The drummer was really the only person on stage making any sort of attempt to connect with the audience. I definitely don't enjoy doing that so their sitting down was a big buzzkill for me. It all sounded really good (wasn't too loud where I saw them... which I was thankful for) but I didn't really leave thinking I would tell anyone "oh you have to see them live!". I'd recommend you go see Mono, but I'd warn you that you won't feel more connected to the band afterwards... you'll just have had the experience of listening to their songs on a scale you can't at home. I chose Ashes in the Snow in the poll because I'm a sucker for that glockenspiel and it was very powerful in person. I thought the set-list was pretty well chosen; I mean I selfishly really wanted them to play Halcyon (Beautiful Days) but I can't be too upset they left an over 10 year old track off the list. I've seen post-rock shows where the band literally didn't say a word, so I was happy one of the members did pick up a mic at the very end of the show and thank everyone for coming in (frankly adorable) inexact English. My friend I dragged along on the Uber ride back to where we were staying: "You could tell me they played 3 songs or 25 and I'd believe either one."

Amazing. Thank you apollo project for being one of the few to give us all the dirty details.

Related(?): It bothers me when bands that don't have drummers (common enough in VK) just don't have drums set up for the performance sections of PVs. The drum kit really anchors things for me, it looks so weird to just not have it there.... like there's no central point around which the rest of the action is taking place. I much prefer them to just have a session drummer whose face they don't show. And on topic: I actually really like the look of PVs that go all-in on showing tons and tons of cables and pedals on the floor. I'm with Zeus... of course the guitars don't need to be plugged in for a video shoot, it just looks cooler.

Nice review... you're probably slightly higher on the mini than I would be overall, but I think you and I agree about which are the good songs and which ones are 'meh'. I don't really keep up with Mejibray criticism but this has got to be a huge knock against them right? They're just too prolific it seems. It's like, if you took all the tracks they released in any given year you could probably make a really kick ass 10 song album out of each list... but they keep releasing what seems like over 20 songs each and every year and it really waters down the final product. They need someone to tell them that not every song they write is worthy of wide release. I feel like I had the same problem with mid-2000s Mucc. Plenty of good tracks, but sooo many throwaway songs that my overall enjoyment of them as a band was diminished.

Envy and Deafheaven on a Friday night (DC)!? Hell yes!

....continues to just pretend D broke up around 2006 or so....

Just picked up my order from the Gallo's webshop at the post office. With a little help from google translate it was a really easy process... more VK bands need to get on the 'sell our shit directly to people online' bandwagon.

Looking forward to the tracklist being revealed so we can see what they covered.

This basically. I can't read the name 'aikaryu' without the riff to 'Susume! Pirates' repeating in my head for ten minutes afterwards.

Thanks Jrockdrama

Just bought a bunch of stuff from Jrockdrama and you should too! The price was right, it got here quickly, and she(?) was a pleasure to deal with. Thanks.

Just an FYI for everybody because I didn't notice at first. The bottom of their shop has an option for international shipping and you can use any credit card (or at least my American one worked). They don't have the ultra rare stuff of course, but still cool for people who lament about how hard it is to get their releases.

Good review! I'm one of those that didn't really love Shuuen; it certainly wasn't bad it just didn't grab me by the balls like oni to kage did. Weird observation since jigsaw mentioned it; I'll pretty much always let Grieva's SE tracks actually play through. "SE" is usually another word for "skip" but I generally like to listen to theirs. ETA: Also diggin' their new photos... 'everyone-touch-their-face' in a slightly different position is a bulletproof VK look.

Red yarn has really been having its moment in the sun the last year or so in VK.