meat

This is great news. I've been listening to M-ology to death and need some new Merry-ness

it has been announced at their 17th anniversary live at Ebisu Liquidroom that MERRY will release their first(!!!) mini-album in spring 2019.
 
More details will be announced at their fanclub-only Christmas live, "VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS ～CORE Premium Night～"...

Well, he's only charging about $15 an hour for mixing or remastering your stuff. Not sure how long it takes, but it'd be cool if someone just sent him a demo to polish up just to say Emiru worked with you  

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As far as I could tell, the technical issues they had were:
terrible feedback on Kyo's mic and Die's guitar during Devote My Life Die's guitar was really out of sync with the others, especially overpowering Kaoru's during Phenomenon someone spotted Toshiya raising his hand to signal he had some problems at one point But despite all the stopping, starting and frustratingly long wait for both the band and the audience, it was obvious the guys really wanted to play the gig. The first half was solidly good music with the band loving every minute of it, head banging and (Kaoru's awkward) dancing throughout. And when they finally came back having solved all the syncing problems, they got rid of the video backdrop and gave their rawest, most intense performance. The whole place was totally rocking.
 
And what a killer setlist! 

As far as I could tell, the technical issues they had were:
terrible feedback on Kyo's mic and Die's guitar during Devote My Life Die's guitar was really out of sync with the others, especially overpowering Kaoru's during Phenomenon someone spotted Toshiya raising his hand to signal he had some problems at one point But despite all the stopping, starting and frustratingly long wait for both the band and the audience, it was obvious the guys really wanted to play the gig. The first half was solidly good music with the band loving every minute of it, head banging and (Kaoru's awkward) dancing throughout. And when they finally came back having solved all the syncing problems, they got rid of the video backdrop and gave their rawest, most intense performance. The whole place was totally rocking.
 
And what a killer setlist! 

The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids.

“Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is.
 


There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor.
 



Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.”
 
Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.”
 


Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise.

Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else.
 



Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei.


Or was it???


Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz.
 


Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.

Today's setlist for those who weren't there:
SE 詩踏み 腐海 Ash 理由 輪郭 Devote My Life 軽蔑と始まり Phenomenon (cut short) THE FATAL BELIEVER (In place of THE BLOSSOMING BEELZEBUB) Sustain the untruth (In place of Ranunculus) The inferno (In place of NINGEN WO KABURU) Values of Madness THE ⅢD EMPIRE Beautiful Dirt   鱗 (In place of KODOU -> The Final -> Repetition of Hatred) 朔-saku- (In place of Revelation of mankind) C (Unplanned extra performance) 羅刹国 SE. Ranunculus piano ver.

I like the new look. It's funky without being too over the top, it's very them

A little report from Warsaw yesterday.
 
After taking a bit of a lax approach in actually getting to the venue instead of just drinking, myself & the other MH representative meat and her husband finally manage to get to the venue about 10-15 short of the show starting. Doing dispo things I naturally que up to the line for drinks inside hall and about halfway through that morass the new intro kicks off and the band gets on stage to a strangely lukewarm reception. Going into a little bit of panic, I manage to convince a fine local man in front of me to get me my two shots and then right away I start shuffling towards the best spots I can find while Utafumi is only about a halfway over. 
 
The first thing me, and more or less everyone I talked to later on ( I must've chatted up to a good 20 people by the end of it ) noticed was the audience was very lame. A lot of the crowd that must've listened to j-rock five to ten years back, and now they've shown up as a contractual obligation to the past with their dumb boyfriend filming the show in tow. It was up until about Uroko that the audience just straight up fucking sucked, and the way this stuff works is that the confusion and lack of enthusiasm is just as infectious as the reverse, and it was only after that first genuine surprise when the actual fans decided to start disregarding the bores around them. The bottom was reached after Fukai when the band fucked off from the stage and staff started running around, and some people even wondered whether it was due to the reaction they received, or lack thereof. Anyway, the band comes back eventually and it was slow, but sure forward momentum after that and during Keibetsu Hajimari there was even an attempt at a moshpit which I joined instantly and thoroughly enjoyed as long as it lasted. The band definitely started winning the audience over as the show went on, and not even surprised because this is the best Dir en grey I've seen live. Kyo is absolutely killing it from beginning to end, like it's a marvel to actually see him in person and from fairly close as well doing all the theatrical stuff he has brought back/and from Sukekiyo where I suppose he was more free to do himself. Blossoming Beelzebub was something else with Kyo doing the same thing he did for the Mode of DSS live where his face is projected on the screen in real time, and he's just sort of drooling while giving the best rendition of the song I've hear so far. On all the ballads and stuff that might've been harder for him to pull off eight, nine years back he performs pretty much flawlessly from the start of the show 'till the end of it. It's mind blowing just how much he has improved and how many faults he's addressed even after seemingly permanent damage. 
If I have to find a negative here, my friend complained about Shinya sounding sloppy during the show in Finland, and even if I became inclined to agree due to self-suggestion or some sort, I'm still going with it. The lack of intensity on his part was made apparent also by the fairly quiet sound of the venue, which was definitely surprising after having been there a few days back and everything sounded great and hit fucking hard.
 
I quite liked the new songs live, even Values of Madness that I don't particularly care for I enjoyed and the band seemed to enjoy playing as well. Keibetsu hajimari and Devote My Life should have had a pit, and shoulders and fists should've hit the idiots standing still and filming in the face; there was this one dude who looked super offended that I featured myself in his video by growling the To Die In part in Devote, like fuck off watch them off of youtube or something instead. 
Ranunculus got the people in my part of the audience hype, which I definitely didn't expect. Really good live tho.
 
After the initial set ends your boi goes for more shots to be able to actually go through the entire fake encore routine that I still maintain is the most awkward thing ever, especially when you're in a country where people are struggling whether to pronounce the word encore either in their native way, the english way or the japanese one. At this point I'm finally getting kind of tipsy so I go along with it, and the band comes back to play The Final, Sustain the Untruth and Rasetsukoku. The first two were awesome with the all the audience participation and this made me enjoy Sustain the untruth for the first time in my life! So that's definitely something... and I mean obviously The Final always goes over well. While I might have wanted to hear Kodou instead, I can't say that would have been as good of a time as singing along to the The Final even if it has so far happened at every Deg show I've been to. 
Rasetsukoku got a good, energetic performance that unfortunately didn't have anything for me to do, lol. I was still clamouring for that pit that just never came, and you might find me doing three shots at once, but there are levels I don't stoop down to and that's swinging my hands up in the air like an asshole. Rasetsukoku has this weird rhythm anyway that doesn't really lend itself to jumping or anything like that, but a circle pit would totally work. 
 
The band leaves and the audience gets loud. They throw some stuff in the crowd and people cheer. I drink some more and then end up chatting to anyone with a pulse while waiting for the band outside (as an ironic nod to the weeaboo culture, just so you know) and wondering whether Kyo ate a giant pizza really fast because the box that went in came out in no time while it was just him there.
Quite a lot of people travelling from other countries, with some even going to multiple shows, and of course some of the Japanese fans were there as well and we broke some cultural boundaries together trying to figure out what transport to take back to town. In the end I stumble upon this group of greek people and off we go for some beers, and one thing leads to another and now I'm here, hungover and writing this while wondering how I'm still alive living this lifestyle. 
 
Great show despite the initial difficulties from the venue and the audience. The band is undeniably in peak form right now, so if you got a chance to see them then I say go and hopefully the audience you get is a little better than mine. I'm too trashed to proofread this but i hope it makes sense for ya guize!!
 
 
 
 

So their tour just started and according to fans' tweets, they've already debuted a new song called "sheeple". Gara also mentioned a live-limited single but i don't know if it'll be sold during this tour or what. I'm pissed but I look forward to seeing it on closetchild for 30 bucks x
 
edit: this is the flyer that was distributed at the live...what a LOOK.

There were tons of random/ funny moments from going to gigs both in Japan and in the UK here. But one of the most memorable for me is from MUCC's UK tour. The tour was organised by Kerrang so most punters were there to see other bands well known in the West, like Bring Me the Horizon, and have never heard of MUCC.
 
MUCC was very well received in London but at their Norwich gig the band was effectively booed all the way through their set, with shouts of "Go home, Japs!" and "Don't know what you're saying! Speak English!". The entire audience (apart from me) stood still through their set and only occasionally nodded along. The band was visibly affected. At the end of their set, Tatsuro smiled and waved in a resigned way and the band just walked off stage.
 
I left soon after and bumped into Yukke by the main exit. He was carrying their equipment out of the venue. I was very shocked at the fact no roadies or any other staff were around. I was so upset with the situation that instead of thanking him for coming all the way to the UK, I got emotional and felt compelled to apologise for the behaviour of my fellow countrymen and kept bowing. Yukke was totally cool though and just kept saying "It's nothing."
 
The professionalism the guys displayed that night will always stay with me.

I used Tenso to transfer a bunch of my Japanese shopping to me in the UK a month ago. Two out of three parcels got held by customs and I was charged heftily for them. 
 
I appealed against their decision and received this letter after about 3 weeks:
 

I don’t think it works every time but in case anyone wants to try and challenge HMRC/  Border Force’s decision, what I did was try to proof that the parcels contained “personal belongings”, which are not liable for customs under HMRC’s regulations. The proforma invoices/ custom invoices and the waybills Tenso attached to my parcels state that they are “personal effects” and I also highlighted the fact that the sender and receiver names are the same (even though one of them has Tenso.com as the sender). I sent all originals of custom declaration forms, proforma invoices, custom charge letters, charge labels and the Form BOR286 for each parcel to Border Force. If you have a photocopy of your flight ticket, that’d be even better. But I don’t in this case as I ordered everything online but I am lucky that they have reversed the charges. 

I went to a renaissance faire for the first time today, and I got covered in rats!

村井研次郎 (Murai Kenjirou) (cali≠gari) solo allbum "UNDERMINED" will be released at 2018/11/07 (11 tracks, 3240yen)
 
[guests]
COALTAR OF THE DEEPERS【NARASAKI（Gt）Kanno（Dr）Koji（Gt）AKIRA（Gt from Plastic Tree）】
NoGoD【Kyrie（Gt）Shinno（Gt）K（Dr）】
cali≠gari【石井秀仁（Vo）桜井青（Gt）】
ELLEGUNS【Panther（Gt）JOE（Dr）】
etc.
 

I knew Kyo’s English had improved when I watched mode of Kisou and he said Fooka instead of Foocha. And it only took 15 years!

Kagrra, never released DVDs for the tours they made to promote three of their albums (雫, Core and 珠) and I really, really would've liked to have watched those concerts. They basically went 6 years without releasing any live footage whatsoever and it sucks nobody ever got to watch those (in the West, at least) and we had to settle for some hard-to-find, fanclub-only digest footage.

In fact, if you like anything after their 2 track demo tape performance as DEATHMASK, you're not a true fan. They sold out with MISSA and became mainstream trash.

Been listening the shit out of the album for the last couples of days, and it just gets better and better. I have no problem with the placement of songs now, and I accept 'Ningen...' and 'Utafumi' now. My only problem would be 'Values of Madness': I still don't like how it is placed after 'Aka'. The rest of it has finally clicked with me.
 
Also got past the production after finding the right EQ and listening device, as Saishu said. I just hope someone rips CD 1 and 2 in good quality, because I can't get enough of 'The Deeper Vileness' remake and it's only on YouTube. Seriously: I'm really happy with what they did to the song. I would love a complete re-recording of 'The Marrow of a Bone'.
 
Going back to 'The Insulated Wolrld'', I honestly think it's a good album with some standout moments (especially the second half), but they could have done better. It still feels rushed and 'simple', though this was something the band was after. Hope we don't have to wait four more years for another album!

Wait wait... know what “Values of Madness” reminds me of?
 
“The Cry Against Me” by Merry. 

赫 is normally pronounced “kaku” instead of “aka” as well. Some Japanese fans have nicknamed it 赤赤 “aka aka” which I think is funny.

I actually left the lyrics wikia because their two or three sysops have some serious power issues. You can see most of it on my talk page there.
So yeah, that's why the DEG wiki came into existence. There, I can be my own sysop, edit how and what I want and don't have to answer to anyone.
Plus, I personally went through all booklets and almost all band scores to correct the lyrics. Some still have mistakes because I don't own the band scores (or there are none), but the bulk of lyrics are correct. Plus I can add whatever other information I want.
 
sry for off-topic uwu