carddass

Here's the music video:

Here's the details about the DVD-R that comes with the special edition from Disk Union:
DVDR収録映像→2018/1/14渋谷RUBY ROOMにて開催されたワンマン公演から6曲前後収録(TIME IS FATE、BELIEVE他・・・)。
※資料用映像2カメラを大胆に編集した感動巨編。

+2016年ツアー冒険浪漫ダイジェスト風映像を大胆に収録。

本編20分+オマケ映像10分CRYの超大作。

Yeah, it's too bad about them but considering their obscurity and that they were around for 10 years - I'm pretty glad we got 4 full albums out of them

I actually think they might be on an indefinite hiatus...or as written in Japanese "a pause in activities" . So ex-members they are technically not.

That said, me-al art's last album 'New World' was a killer way to go out.

REDRUM technically kaisan-ed back in 2009 but they do a one-off show every few years, maybe me-al art will do the same someday?

And COCK ROACH was definitely underrated back then and probably could've achieved mainstream success had they shed their mad-monk image and their odd usage of words and concepts. But stripping that away would've taken away what made them great in the first place.

 

COCK ROACH's leader / vocalist Jinpei announced very simply on their official website's BBS that the band would return after having called it a quits in 2005.
He explained that after having composed more acoustically with mugen minus, the electric folk group he started in 2006, that he wanted to get back to a band sound. Here's the full message:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

昨日ラジオ収録でcock roachの活動再開を発言しました。

この掲示板に来てくれている人がまだいてくださる事に感謝です。ここに来てくれている人だけでも良いので新しい作品ができたら是非聴いてみてください。

解散して13年？くらい経ちました。私もメンバーも随分と歳をとりました。私は13年間音楽とは関係の無い仕事をしてきました。今でも音楽を「仕事」にするつもりはありません。
しかし様々な形で音楽作品をつくってきました。
日々、労働や生活に身を置く中で強く感じた事や感動した事を唄にしてきました。
その時に、やりたい時に、創りたい作品を自由につくる事で音楽だけは色褪せる事無く、宝玉の様な清さでいつも真ん中にありました。どんなに辛い事があっても音楽活動が自分を支えてくれました。

cock roachを再始動させる理由はシンプルに2つあります。
ひとつはcock roachを少しでもファンでいてくださる方達に逢いたくなった事。
もうひとつはいい作品がいいメンバーとつくれているので完成させたいと思った事。

無限マイナスも大好きですが、13年間でしたためた曲をアコースティックでは無く、もう一度ぶ厚いバンドサウンドで作品化したくなりました。無限マイナスファンの皆様本当に申し訳ありません。

このふたつの理由以外にcock roachは何も望みません。
以前にもこの掲示板で書かせてもらった通り、私は靴を舐めてでも、マヨネーズを吸いつづけてでも音楽だけは続けます。
随時こちらには情報を載せたり、ホームページをリニューアルしたり、リリース情報やライブ情報を載せてもらいます。アルバムリリースは来年の春予定です。遅れてもアルバムは必ず発表します。

全国300人のcock roachファンの皆様。13年振りです。
殺して捨てたはずの蜚蠊がゴミ箱を這い登り、ゴミ箱の上より再生します。
蜚蠊は簡単には死なない様です。
では、お逢いできる日を楽しみにしています。---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

COCK ROACH released several popular demo tapes leading up to their 2001 debut album '虫の夢死と無死の虫'. They released a 2nd album, took a hiatus, and then reformed a year later with a 2nd guitarist making the band a 5-piece. They played alongside bands such as Kulu Kulu, The Back Horn and REDRUM and the members of COCK ROACH sometimes still appear in session gigs alongside those contemporaries.

The band broke up in 2005 barely a year after their return when their first guitarist Tetsurou decided to leave the band which he had been apart of with the other 3 founding members since 1996 when they were just in high school.

Jinpei started mugen minus in 2006. Yuya joined REDRUM briefly in 2006. And Both Jinpei and Yuya formed 'Hakase to Korogi' and released one album 'Monochrome Butterfly' which were a spiritual successor to the COCK ROACH sound.

The new lineup COCK ROACH consists of original members Jinpie and Yuya alongside Hirokatsu and Naoki who were part of me-al art. The latter band were the only band signed to Jinpei's label Kuromushi Geijutsu and me-al art disbanded in 2015.  It is unknown why the original guitarists and drummer from COCK ROACH are not part of the reunion.

Vocals / Guitar : Jinpei Endo 遠藤 仁平
Bass: Yuya Honda 本田 祐也
Guitar: Ebisawa Hirokatsu 海老沢宏克
Drums: Honda Naoki 本多直樹

Towards the end of the message Jinpei teases that they will release a new album in Spring 2019 which would be their 4th full length album.

http://cockroach.jp/

Some sample tracks from the band:
 

On 8/7/2018 at 11:17 PM, tetsu_sama69 said:

wow this went wayyyy off topic. y'all got some serious issues you need to sort out...

touché, this was definitely more on-topic.

23 hours ago, tetsu_sama69 said:

announces show at tokyo dome for the holidays
throws around record label issues and how they dislike songs, solo projects, members, etc

I mean really, if you don't like something just move on. You can just look at news topics and I get people are allowed be upset because artist choices and whatnot but really. Don't like it, just walk by. I've been a long time fan of the group and they're not perfect, no band is honestly. They've done a lot of things I don't like but it doesn't derail me from enjoying aspects of the group.

It's just a show at tokyo dome. That's all. If it's a come back then it's a come back.

Like it, stay for info.

Dislike it, move on.

 

That's all I'll say about it.

But seriously, I've been a long time fan since Blurry Eyes appeared in front of DNA and I didn't realize I had to speak only positively about them! Okay, here goes, Tierra is a desert island disc for me - I hope they play White Feathers at the concert!
What I do find fascinating and sorely lacking on forums is really in-depth conversation that goes beyond one-liner comments. The motivations of the band and the individual members are more interesting (whether good or bad) to me now and a simple "L'arc is back!" thread would leave some casual or uninformed fans the impression they are returning. I believed that at first until I read it was just concerts. I simple explained how they might not be back in the way L'arc fans really are hoping for.



 

Overall, I think it's safe to say that Awake was the last time they were a band in the true l'arc sense that most of associate as being the band we love. Smile was them learning to work together again, Awake was them actually being a working band together,  and Kiss was just the honeymoon period from Awake. I can't even listen to Butterfly and don't even think of it is a real album. It's really just a collection of random singles that don't feel like they work together hence the 4 year recording time for that album. The band up to that point were very concise in the studio leading up to each album. Remember the Ark-Ray singles of 98/99 that felt cohesive but still each song had a distinctive sound of their own?

If you look at their touring schedule post the world tour of 2012, you will just see short and calculated concerts to celebrate the 20th or 25th or whatever. 
https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/larcenciel-43d62367.html
They can easily sell out Tokyo Dome easily and I'm sure the labels and management companies for each member are the ones pushing the idea forth more than the members themselves. Those yearly two day back-to-back concerts literally backroll each member's solo career, or in the case of tetsuya and ken, allow them to relatively do nothing in the studio compared to what they used to do in the mid to late 90s.

So while I want the band to be the band that can work together and produce consistent work like they did early on 1993-2000, those days are long gone and these upcoming concerts are probably just a cashgrab or conscious effort to keep the l'ard brand alive before another long hibernation as they've been doing for years. I actually quite enjoyed Wing Flaps and thought it was great in a 'True' sense but that too was probably some other behind the scenes management thing which we'll find out years later "My management spoke with their management and we decided to meet in the studio to see if we could work things out...." type motivating factor behind the single and the other recent ones.

23 minutes ago, r... said:

So they finally squashed that beef about the money split with DC/MAVERICK? Cool, though I feel the impending end is coming very soon. hyde and ken still want to go on, god knows why, but tetsuya always seems SO bored with the band. yuki probably doesn't mind if the band disbands either.

While the money split might be the real reason, I took public Japanese way of saying that the members can't work with each other anymore. Are there any interviews from hyde and ken where they state they want L'arc to go on? I actually always thought the opposite, that Hyde would rather go solo/Vamps and ken would rather do nothing. Yukihiro probably has it best of all of them as he doesn't need any band for the Depeche Mode like music he makes. He's equally sufficient being a part of a band or a mad scientist in the computer/studio.

Based on tetsuya's autobiography, tetsugaku (https://mei-24.livejournal.com/14719.html), - he always had to deal with the difficult parts of being the band leader. He was the one who kept the band together and kept pushing it forward. Regarding Sakura's departure / being kick out of the band. You can very clearly deduce that Hyde and ken were against the idea of so quickly moving forward with the Reincarnation live and held a grudge against tetsu at the time. Ken would later team up with Sakura in SOAP, so there definitely was no ill-will there.

Some quotes from the translations. Tetsuya's words in bold:
===================================================================================================
I want to add that I am also proud that I have been able to make my band move further as a leader. As for the results, of course it’s not all due to me, but I believe that I have been able to choose the right path. Because I am sure that each time I’m doing the best choice. For example, when sakura quitted, there were many ideas, as you may expect. The same happened when we did the Reincarnation live at Tokyo Dome. There were several opinions, so, in the end, if I had chosen a different path, how it would be today?


-At the time of your return with “L’Arc-en-Ciel 1997 Reincarnation” live, you were convinced that “if it’s not Tokyo Dome, it doesn’t have any meaning”, so you didn’t give in.

The manager we had at that time was against the idea. He said it was unreasonable, but as a result we sold out all the tickets in 4 minutes, the fastest selling in history. To tell the truth after sakura left, to my shock I was accused of having kicked sakura without mercy. In the end, even members thought that.
===================================================================================================

Following that incident there is bound to be friction and this led to that period of l'arc's history right after that whole burn-out inducing rollercoaster of heart-ark-ray-real that led into a hiatus.  You can surmise that Tetsu and Hyde started doing solo activities after that tme to find their own ways and that turned into Hyde wanting to leave the band outright during or after Roentgen's release.

===================================================================================================
- You said you’ve thought of quitting L’Arc-en-Ciel several times. But your band had a big crisis, too. Would you like to tell us the details?

It was in 2002 maybe. hyde’s manager came to my office and handed me an envelope, saying that he had received it directly from hyde. Inside there were the CDs I had lent him and a letter. In that letter he apologized for having kept those CDs for more than 10 years, and announced he wanted to quit the band.

-Honestly, what did you think about it at that moment?

I thought that once hyde decided it, nothing could be done. He wrote me a letter, so he had surely spent a lot of time reflecting upon this thing. Well…more than “nothing could be done”, I thought that, despite every effort to stop him, he wouldn’t change his mind. "
===================================================================================================

 

On 9/10/2017 at 2:24 PM, Laurence02 said:

I have been looking for the score to "Kurenai - Original Japanese Version" (by X, later-on X Japan) for a while.

It was included in the same magazine (Rockin'f 1988.6) as the flexi sheet itself.

Someone uploaded it to xboards, but the link is now dead.

Wow. Didn't even realize Xboards went down. It was such a classic place for all things X - and it's strange it had a long death as X was starting back up again.

And here's the tab you're looking for:
https://mega.nz/#!pNYi1SZR!7FeV02dGXStCyk8QLRgAYgUjKVncHYMeOWwQAfUPzQY

Hopefully the Hyde collab will just be exclusive for the anime and the album version will have Toshi.
If not, I'm afraid the next X Japan album's going to look like a typical rap album where every track has someone as a guest and you barely hear just the artist themselves:

1. Last Song feat. Will.i.am
2. Kurenai (English Version) feat. spoken word by David Lynch
3. Kiss the Sky feat. Way too many audience members who wasted too many minutes of their lives while the band took a break on stage
4. I.V. feat hide and Taiji during the solo and also the sound of a can of Yoshikirin being opened right on top of them in the mix, because oi$hii !
5. Rock Star feat. Marilyn Manson who tries to cover hide's Drain gremlin voice
6. Beneath The Skin feat. S.K.I.N.
7. Red Swan feat. Hyde
8. Angel feat. a duet with a Violet UK starlet that was sold a dream of fame and glory but who now realizes she spent too many years on the project
9. La Venus feat. Toshi but not Pata, Heath, and Sugizo
10. Art of Life (Last Refrain) feat. Oprah reading some inspirational passage written by Yoshiki about overcoming hardships in life and somehow struggling on

Limited Edition 1st Press Bonus Disc:
Yoshiki featuring Lady's X
1. Without You
2. Born to be Free
3. Scarlet Love Song
4. Jade

5. Hero

You really have to wonder, after the early 10's where he was doing solo / Kuroyume / Sads all at the same time, and the subsequent fallout of the kuroyume brand/licensing, that none of his decisions are being made on artistic merits anymore. He pretty much whored out the kuroyume name and, effectively, it went bankrupt from bad deals or promises he couldn't deliver.

Do you think kiyoharu / his management are getting as lucrative advances and deals like he did in the 00s where he was cranking out solo albums once or twice a year and countless A-B-C type singles (thanks Avex!) ? He doesn't have the marketability anymore...he released the last single through live shows and has consistently always tried to pump up live ticket sales by offering live-only CD releases. That's more money directly to him.

And as much as I love his solo rhythmless work, it almost feels like he couldn't, or didn't want to pay a full band to back him up in his solo act. The rhythmless setup allows him to be a lean himself + 2 other people. And  when he does full band solo shows, gone are the 30-40 song setlists which in the past was quite an amazing feat. Long setlists cost rehearsal time or money and instead he's doing more normal 20-something song setlists. That Rhythmless residency from last year or the year before usually means an artist wants to earn with consistent gigs without having to travel and tour like crazy. And he shut down his official website last year...I mean...who shuts down a website with over 15 years of history/brand recognition for a website that isn't even maintained and updated!?! https://www.kiyoharu.tokyo/pre/

So this Sads hiatus, mere months after starting up again, doesn't surprise me...sounds like another head-scratcher in the long line questionable moves.

Sorry guys, there's gonna be some delays. On the brightside, I think we've got last minute additions to some backing choruses.
 

Yah for new Sheja guitarwork!

And their twitter acknowledges the misspelling. Not sure if it means it was already sent to pressed or caught in time.

But it really is quite laughable how sloppy bands can be. You could give them a pass in the 90s because...I guess they couldn't be arsed to have a proper Japanese/English dictionary when using English buzzwords....and in the 00s it was a little questionable considering you could google any word in most languages. But nowadays with google translate...there's really no excuse.
 

Same here, I was going to post about it weeks ago but thought it wouldn't matter much since knowing about those live-only munimuni releases are more torture to the fans than delight.

And I've kept count but there might be 10-20 new songs at this point and it feels like they've been the most productive in the last year than in the past.

munimuni released this single last month at live shows and just announced today that it would be on sale at Disk Union on August 15th. in both a regular version and special edition with a DVD. The single contains 3 remixes and single version of  the new track 'Velvet Miwaku Tonight' from their forthcoming new album 'Diary of Mr. Moonlight'. Diary has been teased since it was mentioned in the liner notes of 'The Doguu Album' and has been hinted at in flyers, on the website and newsletters as coming out in 2018.

The track listing for Velvet Miwaku Tonight:

1. boys -feat.toy=ki- remix by zull+r.sugihara

2. VELVET魅惑TONIGHT(超電導velvet single version)

3. THE DOGUU SONG-20018- remix by CANOU(deads)

4. MY LUCIFER -Red Room Remix- remix by 西邑卓哲(FOXPILL CULT)

The DVD contains 6 songs from their 2018/1/14 Shibuya RUBY ROOM live. Two confirmed tracks are the yet unreleased 'Time is Fate' and Believe from Magaru Sekai.

Order the single at Disk Union: http://diskunion.net/jp/ct/list/0/718843
More from the official website: http://munimuni.ciao.jp/desco.htm

And in the newsletter announcing the new single, Kanon also shared lyrics to one of the new songs the band has been performing live recently. It name drops the seminal VK act Zi:Kill's early albums in the first verse:
 

[20019 (NEO SONG 2018)]

窓の外に半分人間。

アンダーザムーンライト・・・。

真世界 クローズダンシング

REAL OF THE WORLD

イカれたファッション

華麗なるファッション

マジファッション

ネガ/ポジ

ネガ/ポジ

ネガ/ポジ

頭は白菜

ナイトフィーバー最高！

乱れたファッション

離す小瓶、爪の跡にも・・・。

薔薇サイン。

一切合財、びよよん倶楽部に投資・・・。

Vanity Love,Vanity Rose...†

This is a far cry from when he cosplayed as David Sylvian and released an album with some depth, longevity and timelessness like he did with Roentgen. I can listen to that album today and somehow it doesn't feel dated. I can't say the same about much of his recent output with Vamps and now this track.

With Who's gonna save us, it sounds very much like pop music these days where the track was shopped around by a producer first before landing a home. If you removed Hyde from the mix, would you listen/appreciate the music the same way?

The Black Comet Club Band has released their 3rd album 'The Wild Bunch' digitally on May 26th preceding their tour of the same name.

『THE WILD BUNCH』

2018.5.26 ダウンロード先行配信

＜収録曲＞
全曲：作詞/作曲　高野 哲　編曲：THE BLACK COMET CLUB BAND
M1 THE WILD BUNCH
M2 Revolver
M3 Deracine
M4 Poker Face
M5 John & Jane Doe
M6 John Doe
M7 Jane Doe
M8 Amapola
M9 誘惑 (yuuwaku)
M10 Yabadabadoo
M11 Perfect Strangers
M12 Que Sera,Sera

TBCCB is a band formed by Tetsu Takano (ex Malice Mizer, ex Mega8Ball Zigzo, nil, The JuneJulyAugust) that merges together members of both nil and JJA.

The album is advertised as being "Subscription only" but can be purchased through various online music retailers listed on the official page:
http://www.wildbunch.site/

Furthermore, while the website and most of the online retailers list the album as being 5 tracks only, Google Play actually has the full 12 track album for purchase and download. Perhaps it is a mistake and the intention is for only 5 tracks to be released as a digital teaser with the full 12 track album to be released at a later date on CD? If so, snap up the album in case they revert it back to only 5 tracks like the other retailers~
https://play.google.com/store/music/album/THE_BLACK_COMET_CLUB_BAND_THE_WILD_BUNCH?id=Bswv7rc4vf4ucuxjidaxyrn3dku

At least they're using soundboard audio. While I appreciate good video quality (I'm a video editor) and it irks me to see how sloppy some indie bands/labels edit or produce their videos like that blatant misspelling of devidskullnorecords.com, having good soundboard audio will save even the poorest quality video production.

And I know once I buy a DVD / bluray, I just end up watching it once or twice through, maybe playing it in the background after that and mostly I listen to the ripped audio again and again. So I'm looking forward to this one~

 

Is that Kanon Matenrou from munimuni standing in the middle?
If so, I just got excited about this release!

Considering they teased it in the booklet of the Doguu Album, I hope they're serious about the nwe album and it will come out in a timely fashion.
I was under the impression that the current lineup had re-recorded the Doguu Album but when I finally looked through the booklet, I saw it was recorded with the band circa 2011-2013.

That means the current lineup, which has been pretty stable these past years, has been performing more than an albums worth of new songs and are hopefully ready to commit them to 'tape'. If the Doguu Album sold well enough maybe it gave them enough money for studio time to record a "A Diary of Mr. Moonlight".
 

I'm not sure if I recall there being a DVD in a CD shape. Perhaps it was the re-release of Zigzo (Got S and dis-Star -Best of ZIGZO-) which included the PV VHS on DVD for the first time.

Here's most of the official live releases

DVD
-The Last Scene (2002)
-The 2nd Scene (2013) 2012-03-17 live with an extra DVD including their warm up gig on 2011-1-20 at Shibuya O-West
-Beyond the Moment (2013 or 2014) featuring a concert from 202

VHS (both never  released on DVD)
-The First Scene 2000
-Wonderful Days - 2001-12-27 Shibuya AX (Fanclub only)

Lives broadcast on WOWOW or some other TV channel:
-1st Scene ZIGZO (WOWOW SPECIAL 1999.07.01) extended version of what was officially release on VHS
-1999-09-23 SAPPORO STARTING (The First Scene)
-Zigzo (2001-05-26 ZIGZO NIGHT) During the performance of 'my problems' , there is an interlude with Tetsu singing a few lines of lyrics that he would reuse a few years later for nil's Neon from Excalibur.

For audio bootlegs, they released every show  from their 2012 tour and the first few 2013 shows on their official website. That website is defunct now.

Aas Tetsu is the main songwriter for Zigzo, and all of his other bands, he really calls the shots whether or not Zigzo will record.
While the band is celebrating 20 years, they were almost on hiatus for half that time (early 2002 to summer 2011) since Tetsu wanted to restart nil after being affected by the September 11th attacks in NY. He wrote Sayonara Davinci that same day if I remember the blog entry correctly. I suppose he felt he couldn't release a song like that as the major label band Zigzo which was starting to use producers toward their last singles, i.e. Masahide Sakuma on Chelsea.

So yeah, maybe Zigzo / Tetsu haven't announced anything yet and will repeat the productivity of 2011 where he released an album from each of his 4 bands almost back to back in a few month time period.

You can still get this Zigzo DVD online. You'd have to use a buying service or know  someone over there:
https://shopping.deli-a.jp/products/item_Info.php?itemID=5340#c


The other dvds can be found on Yahoo auction Japan as well:
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search/search?auccat=&p=zigzo+dvd&tab_ex=commerce&ei=UTF-8&fr=

I believe the Last Scene DVD was re-released and sold outside of Zigzo's official page for many years which is why there are so many available on YJA. The 2nd scene dvd is probably rarer now since they only released it once though their webshop back in 2012 or 13 and that is now defunct.

22 hours ago, TrentReznor said:

So they are getting ready to celebrate their 20th anniversary (shouldnt it be in 2019 not 2018?). 3 two man shows with an unkown band and few other dates for end of the year (they like to prepare the stuff with a lot of time in advance )

 

 

They technically formed in summer 1998 and just worked at songs and jammed in studio for a good 6-12 months leading up to their first official live in April 99.
http://www.up-down.com/100zigzo/z_bio.html


It was the main reason why right after Monster Music was released, they already had a bunch of new singles ready to go. Monster Music was already in the bag by the time they officially debuted in summer 99 at Shockwave Illusion alongside all of those other Vkei acts.
Zigzo did perform a quick live before their first April show as 'Malice~en~Sex', a play-on of the respective bands from Tetsu, Ryo/Den and Sakura, the setlist is unkown to the internets but most likely was Zigzo songs under that secretive name.

And knowing how methodical, and perhaps busy, Tetsu is with all his bands...the fact that they didn't announce any new Zigzo album / single alongside the anniversary gigs makes me feel like there won't be any studio release. Tetsu's been doing well with The Black Comet Club Band these days and it's been his main focus.

There's also this Guernica Poetry Reading video:
 

Wow. that's interesting that he's going back to his visual kei moniker for this show.
If only he had stuck with that Ex-ans revival concert that he was apart of at first but then suddenly wasn't. We might've gotten an Ex-ans album with some more of the original lineup.

On 11/25/2017 at 2:25 AM, Kiyoharu is God said:

There's a new SADS album being released next year. And another solo album which won't be a rhythmless release like this upcoming album. So if you're not into the rhythmless stuff you could look forward to that.

 

I don't think he's going to do anything in the tone of KUROYUME's final releases/SADS early releases ever again. I don't know if he can sing like that anymore anyway. I was listening to SAD BLOOD ROCK'N ROLL recently and it's crazy how much different his voice sounds now compared to then... Mr. YA it's like a whole different person singing.

Agreed. His vibrato / screamo voice he had the first two or three years in SADS is nowhere to be heard now. Whether it's from stylistic changes or an inability to do so anymore, who knows. I've always speculated that what I imagine are a pack-of-day cigarette habit over 20-30 years probably doesn't help musician stay in their prime for long.
 

Compare that to someone like Ryuichi Kawamura of Luna Sea who after a certain point in his career started being healthier and taking his voice and singing seriously. He's able to do those marathon 70-1100 song concerts and did some mic-less ones and his voice still sounds pretty damn good. It's a shame that his solo work leaves much to be desired.

On 11/24/2017 at 3:56 PM, Case said:

Anyone remembers Ryuichi's terrible-beyond-belief solo album from 1997 called 'Love', with song titles like...: 'I love you', 'suki', 'Love song', 'Love' and 'Love is...'? Let's just hope this one will be better than that.

Yes, but he was going for that mom-rock market. Luna Sea will never be mom rock!
But hearing some of that solo album work, and subsequent work in the years that followed, makes you wonder how the guy who could scream his brains out searching for reason would someone be so syrupy with the stuff he does outside LS.