Champ213

Came home from Turisas live tonight, and it was amazing! This is the tracklist as far as I remember it: 1. 10 More Miles 2. Take the Day 3. Holmgard and Beyond 4. The Great Escape 5. Rex Regi Rebellis 6. For your own good 7. Battle Metal 8. No good story ever starts with drinking tea 9. We Ride Together 10. Miklagard Overture Encore: 11. Stand Up And Fight 12. Rasputin So apparently The Great Escape and Rex Regi Rebellis were the 2 songs that kept switching inbetween concerts, while the rest of the setlist is pretty stable. Can't really complain about the choices! I'll write a bit more over in the concert thread later.

That was pretty hilarious, specifically the random pictures they chose for some songs. I'm guessing that some examples were a bit tongue-in-cheek, like the one with the alarm signal... or sourcing the "Für Elise"-part in Malice Mizer's "Baroque" to some random anime theme rather than Ludwig van Beethoven. At least I hope they weren't seriously suggesting that either of them was the original. XD Good call about the N.p.s N.g.s - 神歌 comparison though. It never really occured to me, but hearing it next to each other makes it sound a lot more obvious.

I got my 2nd order from the Rarezhut and all went fine for me. Even my last-minute request to combine shippings worked out well, so thanks for that. The package was hold up in customs this time, but that just seems to be totally random, because the last one went through and there didn't seem to be any obvious difference. Also, let's appreciate the fact that he uses panda stickers to seal the CDs. XD

Quite confident for a vk band, announcing a release 8 months ahead. XD But I for one sure hope that they will still be around by then. *knock on wood*

You can download the full version here, it's free! Loving their google-translated release description: "the Music melodic and modern Heaviness The respect the visual kei Japanese music of the good old days, was a modern twist.The creep approach delicate as silk vocal Sakuya, drumming full of groove sense of Rocka guitar and aggressive and the Iwori.Please try to touch the visual music scene in Japan at the forefront." Please try to touch the visual music scene in Japan at the forefront!

If you mean stuff by Scarlet-insertrandomlongassnumberhere-: their 2 releases are availible on CD Baby!. One of them is even for free! I got both of them, if you want I can share - but it's only 4$, so... Never heard of Gravel before though.

Well.... there's DEEP RAVE, who are clearly jumping on the LUNA SEA train. I guess their current look is still somewhat oldschool-ish, but a band like that could make pretty much any sort of music nowadays. I wouldn't necessarily expect a LUNA SEA worship band behind that look. And there's still the question if and how much the departure of Rumina has changed their sound. I guess we will know soon, they will release a new mini-album next month. (Oddly enough, the new mini-album is self-titled, after their first mini-album having been self-titled as well.... can you get any more confusing? ) And I recently came across this band (Yes, they have a long-ass number in their name). They have no band photo on their homepage, but the music gives me a strong oldschool vk vibe.

I actually think that GAUZES is probably the band that comes closest to a "true" 90s sound. Just listen to a song like ナイフ.... that's like a textbook example of a 90s vk song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJWfy62Emlg Of course even in the 90s there were already different directions in vk, so modern day "oldschool" band will also naturally sound a bit different from each other.

Okay, here's some friendly advice, since you seem to be new around here. First of all, your sig is far too huge. One of that banners is more than enough, so I changed that for you. Secondly, while there's strictly speaking no rule against "role play" you will notice that most people will not take kindly to that. Role play is for groups who are all in on the game, in a public forum people will just think you are a liar and a fraud if you claim to be someone you are not. Thirdly, for changing your username, message a staff member (the users with red and blue names) with your desired new name, and it will be done. That being said, this thread should now be kept to the original topic alone and any further post about things not relating to the topic will be deleted. Personal messages etc. belong in private messages. Thanks.

I made a friend a massive Psycho le Cemu fan years ago. She now has quite the impressive collection of PLC CDs, DVDs and merchandise, including the best bit of band merchandise ever, the ! XD

1: Don`t worry about others, is Visual Kei a genre, or a scene, or something else, to you? Nowadays it's a scene, and it has been so since at least 10 years. There's no way that bands like Versailles and Sug belong to the same musical genre. In the earlier days of vk, the musical style was more homogenous and I based on this there is, I guess, some sort of "vk sound", but basically even a band devoid of any of this "Vk sound" could still be vk. 2: Most of the time can you tell the genre, or if you will like a band based on their look? Most of the time the look of a vk band gives me a very good impression of what kind of music they play. Which is pretty useful when looking for new music. Sadly, the music still may suck though, even if the bands look awesome. XD 3: Do the looks matter to you? If the same band dressed in Jeans and T-shirts with short hair, would you be as interested? I'm not gonna lie, yes, the looks matter to me. Let's just say: I like a good performance. For me visual kei is the opera of rock music, and when I go to the opera, I don't want to see the actors in jeans and dresses either. That doesn't mean that I don't listen to non-vk. Good music will always be good music. As a matter of fact 80% of my listening habit today is non-vk. But the type ov vk that I'm mostly interested in - the dark, gothy, oldschool type - should definetely look the part as well. And they pretty much always do, so that question is very hypothetical for me. Could you imagine a band sounding like Malice Mizer, but dressed in jeans and t-shirt? No? Me neither. 4: Do you search for music by sub-genre, such as Nu-Metal, Alt. Rock, etc? I'm terrible at genres. XD In regards of vk, I rarely search for specific sub-genres. As I said, the look usually gives away their general sound, and then you just have to try them. For music outside vk I may occasionally look for sub-genres, specifically sub-genres of metal. 5: Do you get annoyed when others label your favorite music as genres which you don`t agree with? No, because I'm terrible at genres myself. XD Bonus: If a band starts as Visual Kei, even if they change, are they Visual Kei 4 Lyfe? As I said in some other thread, I'm very generous when it comes to count bands as "vk". I also tend to look at bands and their music as a whole, and not just their current state. So I'm very likely to count a band as "vk" even some time after they have dropped the look, especially since this is usual a gradual thing of toning down the looks over several years.

I would say that EllDorado, specifically in their latter stages had a strong "indie rock" sound, as evidenced by their "Flying Dragon" album. Which sadly, was also their most boring album. *coughcough not at all saying there is a connection coughcough* This is the best example I could find on Youtube, but you get the idea. Of course the vocalist still sounds kinda vk-ish. But I guess it's no surprise that Yuuki went full indie rock afterwards with the very exellent GLAMOROUS HONEY.

Cologne, eh? I haven't listened to any heidi. in quite a while, but I used to like them some time ago, so maybe I'll go....

My main japanese music interest outside of vk doesn't really lie on rock, but rather the folky/jazzy/female singer-songwriter stuff. So I have to scrape the barrel a bit here. XD In no particular order: Anthem Galneryus 夢中夢 Church of Misery 実験台モルモット 女王蜂 Bellfast 101A Mono 8-eit I know that 実験台モルモット is a very fringe choice. On the other hand I didn't include Luna Sea or Buck-Tick, because I already had them on my Top 10 vk list, so that wouldn't make much sense to include them here agin. (I'm also usually very generous when it comes to counting bands as "vk". Otherwise I would have included bands like Glamorous Honey, Phi or Dead End on here.)

Maybe we soon will have band members departing because the rest of the band couldn't stand the fact that his penis was bigger than theirs?

That was a lot better than I expected! "Land of Snow and Sorrow" also happens to be my favourite song from Time I. I always though that its melody would lend itself well to an accoustic song.

I think the money aspect is overrated anyway. It's not like one sold-out live will suddenly make them rich or provide them with some constant livelihood. But if hardly anyone is interested in their music, then why not let them disband? That's the way things work. Bands disband all the time because they realize that no one gives a fuck. May as well be forthright about it and see how many people actually care. It's a blunt method, but I don't see a problem with it. Nobody is forced to support those bands after all.

Eh, it's fair game. If they cannot muster up that little support for their band to begin with, they are clearly going nowhere anyway. It wouldn't actually surprise me that some already had decided to disband anyway, but at least once want to play in front of a semi-full house.

Friendly reminder for everyone to stick to our Forum Rules, specifically Rule #2. If all you have to say about this is "finally" or "it was about time", or something along these lines without any further reasoning/explanation your post will judged as troll post and deleted, as I already did with some posts in here. Thanks~

Well, first of all, and I hate to sound like a broken record because I say this everytime something like this comes up: bands have always disbanded in great numbers. It's not a recent trend. XD I have been listening to jrock for almost 15 years now, and even when I was very new to the fandom, people were already complaining about all the great bands disbanding. And it has been like that ever since. I would even say the biggest surge of disbandments was 2000/2001, and it has been fairly constant since then. Each year there's a few "big names" that go away, and lots of lots of small bands. The perception that unusually many bands disband "lately" is normally subjective, especially when it hits several of your favourite bands. But that's just bad luck. Now, for reasons of disbandments: a lot has been mentioned already, but I think it all depends a lot on how established the band is. A new band that just formed a year ago by a bunch of young dudes that just wanted to have some fun is probably more likely to disband over "small" things than a band that has been around for years already. And why shouldn't they? They're not really making any money at that point, it's more of a hobby, and if your hobby isn't fun anymore, you should stop. A huge number of small new bands pop up every year, and many probably didn't really think it through enough, so they disband once they hit the first obstacle. Some members vanish from the scene, other go on to form different bands, but at least this selection only leaves the more dedicated members, so maybe their next bands will be more stable. Money is an issue of course too for small bands, but if you start a small indies vk band with the expectation of being able to live off your music anytime soon, you should probably just give up right away. XD Bands that have been around for a long time and have decently sized fandom will probably not disband that easily, but if they do I guess it's mostly because after all those years they want to do something new.

LOL, I doubt most japanese bands spend a second thought on us evil overseas fans uploading music. And if they do they are clearly doing it wrong, putting it on shops like Brand X that explicitely ship overseas. Visual kei has always been hard to get and they are clearly not catering to an overseas fandom. And why should they? Even if their stuff is availible on international shops, the costs of shipping and customs, and the generally higher price of CDs in Japan makes them pretty unattractive to buy, so it's only the most dedicated overseas fans that actually buy stuff in the first place.

Their OHP says it's limited to "Indies CD Shops". We can only speculate why they did this, but apparently jrock bands just like to make their stuff, well... less availible at times. Live limited, limited to certain shops alone, limited to their own webshop... It's on Brand X though, which has international shipping and Paypal support, so that's pretty much as good as CD Japan.