doombox

This song. Hahaha. The Engrish spawned probably my favorite lyric parody of all time.

Since I've already brought up being a GazettE fan in a previous post, I'll go into it for this as well... Originally, I loved their attitude, their music was really rough and unpolished, so were their visuals but they had a really devil-may-care trashy punk vibe to them. They were probably only the 3rd, maybe 4th visual band I had ever seen before so there was also the novelty of it the entire thing. I think it was like that for a lot of people, at least in my circles, there were only a handful of bands at the time that you could find current and constantly translated content about online for our little n00blet non-Japanese speaking or reading communities. Their fanbase back then also made it really easy have fun while following the band. As they went from Disorder to Nil, to Stacked Rubbish you could see and hear them growing and becoming a more mature band. They had catchy hooks, their concepts were flawlessly executed (while growing increasingly more generic, but still there was not a single hair our of place on any of them EVER). That's the hype. I've fallen away from them ever since Stacked Rubbish, personally. It seems like they've plataued and the music is pretty stale for me on the recent releases. Visuals too. Almost too polished. But that's just me.

Noisemaker

I've been a fan since VanessA's first year of releasing material and they had a foreign fanbase from the start. I knew the girls running and active in their livejournal community and we were all foreign fans. So I don't know where you live but maybe it's just the circles you run in didn't care about them. I literally just went back and dug up the Another Chaos community, just to be sure, and the member list of about 200 and I'd say 95% of those are non-Japanese fans. And that's just the one little comm that was specific to them, not counting much larger communities that covered vk in general that posted about them.

I think, especially lately, a lot of the new metal acts sound the same. And Babymetal sounds unique. They are young, cute, and spreading heavy metal to an entirely new audience, and that's why the metal community is promoting them because it only helps spread the love of metal to people who would not normally listen to it. I think Su-metal has a nice voice, and has songs where she is beyond typical idol vocals, though there are a lot of songs she's not doing anything special and I will grant you that, if you haven't listened to the entire album then you wouldn't know. I think the styles merge in a way that is refreshing and the metal music behind them is also good and heavy. If it had a typical metal singer over it I think a lot of people would look at this band differently but because it's got little girls singing things like "doki doki morning~" over it they write it off in haste. MEJIBRAY has a decent following from the beginning because VanessA had been somewhat established and a Genki/Tsuzuku already had an army of fangirls, from what I remember.

Oh, well that's good to hear they are carrying on because the last RayC comments sounded so sad, I worried not all of them would even return to music. Thanks!

This video makes taking this song seriously nearly impossible so I had to listen without watching to even register if I like the vocals. Screams: 4/10 Seems really monotone, the highs were barely distinguishable. Lows a little more so, but still not enough to give the song dynamics. Cleans: 2/10 Waaaaay too much autotune to tell if he can sing at all, tbh. And again, not enough dynamics in the autotune to give it much personality. Over all: 3/10

Does anyone know if they are officially disbanding or just going on hiatus? I read that their label closed down and they went on activity pause this month, but the messages they posted sounded like they were calling it quits?

Brutal honesty... I like MEJIBRAY because they remind me of old Dir en grey and Gazette and I feel like their visual concept at least has a clear theme, and not as generic as some other bands. Their music still has a ways to go before I'd recommend them as some life changing band everyone should listen to, but I do think they are getting better with time and seeing them grow keeps me interested as well.

KEEP YOUR HANDs OFF MY GIRL

EAT YOU ALIVE ♥♥♥ I'm also familiar with the ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, but I seriously need to get more familiar with them. Like Moths To Flames - "GNF" Rhythmic Toy World - "十六夜クレーター" GIVE LIFE - "DEAD EYES" The Misfits - "American Psycho" Poison The Well - "Apathy is a Cold Body" Secret 7 Line - "ONE MORE CHANCE" Senses Fail - "Lady In A Blue Dress" Sevendust - "Scapegoat" 2PM - "GIVE ME LOVE" asobius - "waltz" NEGL, I love me some 2PM. JYPE owns my soul. But iTunes was on a punk/post hardcore party night this time and it was pretty glorious, so this mix pleases me.

illion

Bought Attack on Titan (eps 1-13) and 47 Ronin on blu-ray. Haven't seen either before, but Attack on Titan was recommended by everyone I know, and then some. And 47 Ronin because I'm determined to own everything Tadanobu Asano has ever been a part of. And Rick Genest doesn't hurt.

Saki!!! Wow, I have missed his voice. I hope this means he'll join/start an official project soon!

Oh, I bet it does add up, I just still consider vk a much smaller pool than some other genres is all.

I do agree that genre probably would make a big difference as well, which is also why I was curious as to why this "JASRAC" person was going after international vk sites which would be such a considerably smaller group than the Japanese pop and idol uploaders. That's just me, tho...

There are quite a number of articles online that claim otherwise, like this one from BBC News:

ZIGZO

Maybe it's my mistake but I always assumed not that many foreigners were the original uploaders because of the people into pirating, no one wants to actually buy their music. That those communities like visual scandal are only reposting found links, not buying and posting things. I wasn't speaking about this forum, since it's for English speakers mainly? Plus a lot of the people I've seen on other uploading sites like JPS are foreigners living in Japan to buy a lot of these releases, especially live only distro and such.

That would make a lot more sense. One would think the extremely popular idol or anime theme uploads would be the first choice to go after?

waterweed

I'm really curious how much of this is directed at the home (Japanese) uploading community versus the international one? International laws make it really hard to actually do more than have some links taken down from a website and maybe issue a letter of warning hoping to scare them out of it. But if they stopped the Japanese uploaders it'd greatly effect the international community anyway. So if they were going to do anything about it, it'd make sense to go after the problems closer to home. JASRAC seems to have it a little backwards to me with those scare tactic videos...

I love all three!!! But I've always had this soft spot for Werewolves. Being as it's a curse and they're usually just victims in the entire thing. Well, I guess Zombies kind of are too, but Werewolves, to me, have this strange dichotomy of having their humanity and totally losing it over and over again. As, unlike Vampires, they have no control over their transformations. (Maybe I don't view Vampires in that same light because, hell, I'd volunteer to be a vampire. Not because of crappy Twilight or anything, just the concept of eternal life is attractive to me.) So to me, Werewolves are the most tortured of the three and the most fun to write/read about. Also, the Cornetto Trilogy is A+.