carddass

He worked 90 hours for what?!? Sure, La Venus is a new recording but Without You was probably in the can for quite a while now. The rest are just the same-old same-old. I've thrown out these numbers before but here's X Japan's output through what I've grouped as their major recording / releasing moments: 1987-1991: 25-30 songs: Vanishing Vision, Blue Blood, Jealousy, Art of Life (The last one was written / recorded in 90 and 91 but released later of course) 1992 -1997: 11 songs or so: Dahlia + The Last Song 1998-2017: 10 songs or so. I've included their hiatus years since Yoshiki recycled a few Violet UK songs for X Japan Depending on how you look at it, releases and songs are getting less and less as more time goes on. If and when this new album comes out, that's it. X Japan as we know it will just be a live act milking the fan's wallet's dry. And if you really want to look at it, their most productive period was when X was a band with everyone contributing (87-91). Basically as soon Taiji got kicked out, they became X Japan and Yoshiki became a mega diva, the band as a whole stopped functioning properly as a recording artist.

Despite all the hype and delays, I'm actually believing this will be the year of the doguu! They have enough songs for a full album even. I just tried purchasing the live, it's available for 1 week from today, and it seems they implemented a region block on credit cards outside of Japan so I'm unable to purchase and watch it. I've purchased from them long ago with no problem so this is a major bummer. Is anyone able to get through the pay-wall and watch this live and can rip it? Also, Here's a promotional video and gift on nico's site: http://ch.nicovideo.jp/article/ar1178397 http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/1485261903

munimuni will be performing live tomorrow 1/24/2017 20:00/12pm Japan time and it will be broadcasted over the web via niconico. http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv287889561 ・2017/1/24(tue) MUNIMUNI　ニコニコ生放送 http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv287889561 ※FOOL'S MATE channelに初出演します。 当日はヴォーカル＆ギターの加納摩天楼とドラムスSHINTAROの2人が出演（KLEとTOMOの出演はございません）。 2人だと寂しいのでゲストとして、FOXPILL CULTからShinpei Morishigeと、dummy-xDからアンクーを迎えてのスペシャルなトークを繰り広げる予定です。 番組の前半は誰でも視聴できますが、 後半はFOOL'S MATE channel会員のみが視聴可能となります(月額税込324円)。 放送日時：1月24日(火) 20時～21時 https://twitter.com/foolsmate_web http://ch.nicovideo.jp/fools-mate You have to purchase a ticket in order to watch it. It only costs 324 yen and they take foreign credit cards last time I ordered a show from them. Apparently it's not the full band as the guitarist and bassist will not be there and support members will perform. Sometimes the lives are available for 1 week after the show and then deleted forever. I hope they do make it available for longer because I won't be to catch it live tomorrow because I'll be at work!

Exactly, I don't quit get their strategy. The live DVD was briefly mentioned in their e-mail newsletter the day before and it hardly has any presence on the website. It's like he / they are trying not to promote their own work! And only selling it at lives really limits the distribution. Maybe they're trying to drive ticket sales? Now I have to start lurking on Yahoo Japan auctions which I haven't done in forever. And forget the Doguu album, they should just release a proper 10 or 12 track album now!

Munimuni just released a new DVD for purchase at live gigs only titled 「A」のススメ-] - A no sususme (or R -#4) which features 11 songs from the concert of the same name performed on 2016-05-19. It contains 11 songs so it's more than half of the setlist: 1. B-BOY 2.HAYABIKI ---サツアイ*--- 3.A KILLS A 4.ニオイぷんぷん 5.THE ANIME SONG 6.KOGEN 7.揺れる影絵 8.THE SHADOW 2 9.グロテスク ---M SEA --- 10.BOYS 11.& 4 12.DOGUU 13.My Lucifer 14.Neo Song 15.BIG MONEY 16.死者列車 EN 1.kill me kill me kill me 2He The release is actually better advertised on Sintalo's blog: https://twitter.com/Shintaro_iod

Very cool. Is this album being sold through normal vendors (amazon, cdjapan) or is getting it at the live the only way to get it? And do you have any initial impressions of the album?

Yea, the video rocks (the overall look, production value, editing) considering it's probably 'low-budget' and paid for out of their own pockets. Even some of the majors who are backed with money come up with boring videos (I'm looking at you Luna Sea!) when that really shouldn't happen. I think Madame Edwarda's facebook or twitter post even teased that they would be performing a new song at one of their upcoming lives. I'm sure we'll here it 10-15 if they ever record again! Don't forget to check out the Zeus Machina video, it's not as gothic but it's the sonic sister to Madame Edwarda. It's also the same lineup plus original Zeus member Yukino (ex Ex-ans).

That first song in the teaser sounds great. It's very Bauhaus and that drumline sounds very close to Bela Lugosi. Although I felt the same way after hearing Shuuji's vocals - I'm not sure he matches the feel / look of what Ex-ans used to be. Maybe expecting them to be something they used to be 25-30 years ago is the wrong way to look at it though? Ray / Koji Suzuki on the other hand is still a great vocalist and we can only imagine what could've been. I can't stand his rockabilly work but whenever he does a tribute to hide, he sounds amazing. At one of hide's birthday live celebrations from a few years back Koji sounded dead-on like hide and he could almost take over as vocalist. Last year he posted the video below. Also he did a one-night only Deep reunion live so he's not against waxing nostalgic so he must've really not have wanted to relive his Ex-ans days by withdrawing when he did.

A new song 'New Order Love Song' was just announced via lyrics published in their mailing list that we might get to hear in a couple of years! And if you couldn't get enough of that blatant reference, there's also a Bauhaus one mixed in there too: ◎みんなで歌おう！ [ニューオーダーラブソング](加納による新しい曲) 今はムーンライト。 ジキル＆ハイド、「魔方陣」無に間に・・・。 深々とした気配。 宇宙のレイアウト。 明暗、何れは・・・、 愛しTELL----なんてYEAH！！！ やがてニューオーダーラブソング。 思い出を湯船に。 聡明なる真相。 青白い肉のサイン。 恐らく、天使降臨。 快楽の坩堝に。 罪業、その妄想。禁断。 仮面と靴の音。 Who killed Mr. Moonlight? I miss you. Behind the mask. I get bored, I do get bored. You are mine. You are mine.

The new album was announced on Morrie's twitter. https://twitter.com/devilsleep and the official website (http://www.creature-creature.com/). 'Death is a Flower' 2016-12-28 at lives 2017-02-15 in stores

I agree, I like Ray much better. Too bad he went rockabilly a long time ago. Shuuji is great as a vocalist in caligari and goatbed...it just feels odd here now. In any case, there's only one original so it's to be expected that the sound will be different.

A QR code was posted on their Facebook or Instagram the other day. Following it led to a URL containing 'Isochronous' which is labeled as Rough in the file name. So grab it before it gets pulled! http://ex-ans.com/exex/ex.shtml http://ex-ans.com/exex/isochronous_Rough.mp3

From someone I used to know who worked in the field, the members of l'arc got burnt out on each other by the time Real came out. It's why they all started doing solo work. Eventually they got back together and no matter how many times and how long they take a break, they know whenever they get back together they can sell out huge stadiums. And that is the reason why they're together. And it helps that they're all actually hard working dudes that are able to juggle solo and collaborative works unlike the band (man) in question on this forum! X during 1987 and 1988 were at their peak performance. Full of energy and what not. As much as I like to shit on what the band has become thanks to Yoshiki, if you take a step back and look at the projectory of artists, this isn't really out of the ordinary. They were 20-23 year old kids then with energy levels and drives to want to realise their dreams. 'Starving artists', so to speak. There's most likely a tension between just doing it for the fun of it with nothing to loose and also doing it to survive ("We have to succeed because it's the only thing we can do now!"). This tension creates a creative output that many artists experience early on in their career. If you flash forward 25-30 years later you could say most artists fall into one these categories: -They disappear -Replay the hits (Living off past successes) -Keep growing and releasing works of art that might or might not be as influential as their original hit works So yeah, I'm sure this is going to be a laughable concept to 90% of the forum here due to what I imagine is a demographic of younger people who can't look back too far but... If you're above a certain age and can look back at your past selves from 10-15-20-25 years ago, were you doing more or less of what you wanted to do? Now, just because an artist created something awesome once, or for a few years, doesn't make them able to reproduce those same success years later. It's downright hard. Even when artist produce consistent work later on, you get the majority of the fans saying "Well, it's okay but it's not as good as the _________ album" And besides, for Yoshiki, moving to LA ruined him and his actual ability to release work. He started living in the hype world which I think LA / Hollywood is known for. The combination of age and environment has produced an unaccountable creative process that leads to 20 years of no substantial releases. Who spends 10 years of their life on a project (Violet UK) and has nothing to show for it? Pure vanity. You feel the anguish from the engineer Dokk about his years working with Yoshiki from that X Japan Podcast. Anywho, enough of the literal commentary. Let's get back to poking fun.

Unfortunately he was senpai-ed into the band. You can't go against your elders, ya know? And besides, it's a sweet gig for him. He barely has any band commitments, he plays a big concert once a year and maybe records for like a week and then he can go back to his solo and Luna Sea. Win-win!

Band leader Hiroshi Sasabuchi started CQ from the ashes of Tokyo Shoegazer after that band's singer left, possibly to go back to her main gig as vocalist / band leader of Presence of Soul. Tokyo Shoegazer's guitarist Kiyomi Watanabe and Yoshitaka Sugahara (also in Presence of Soul) came along for the ride to CQ. Jun Shibuya ex vocalist of the great indie shoegaze band honeydip (and later tron) joined as vocalist of CQ after providing guest vocals for Tokyo Shoegazer on a compilation album after their first vocalist left before turning into CQ. CQ recorded an album 'What a Wonderful World' in 2014 but only released 300 copies as CD-R's at live shows and very briefly on the vinyl junkie website. They then released the EP 'What a Cruel World' later that year which promptly sold out due to their being only 300 copies again. At the end of 2014, the first bassist Ooba Wako left the band. (https://www.monochrome-heaven.com/topic/32413-cq-ba大場和香ooba-wako-will-depart-new-lp-what-a-wonderful-worlds-end-release/) In 2015 'What a Wonderful World' was released again as 'What a Wonderful World's End' with 3 new songs which was properly released as a CD/vinyl combo with a larger press run and sold directly from the vinyl junkie website. 'What a Cruel World's End' was released at the same time featuring live versions of the same songs on the EP from the previous year. Later in 2015 they released one more EP 'From Dusk til Dawn' EP that was only sold at their live shows. In early 2016 they announced that all of the available albums would not be repressed or sold again at vinyl junkie or at their live shows once they sold out. In summer of 2016 they released a collaborative single with some Japanese comedian singer-guy. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01KuKC8qPjQ) With no formal mention at all, original bassist Ooba Wako is listed as being a band member on the official website, vinyl junkie page and also her own twitter: https://twitter.com/wakowass Their official website used to be somewhat informative but the refresh for the 2nd album stripped away all mention of the old releases as per the norm of bands wanting to erase their past for no good reason. A few other live clips that the band officially uploaded to youtube were subsequently removed too. http://www.cq-band-jp.com/ Instead the vinyl junkie website has more information about the band: http://vinyl-junkie.com/label/cq/?special=Discography Here's an article in English from last year: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/04/03/music/cq-will-take-worlds-end/#.V-wqWZN95mA

First off, great breakdown about this period and in trying to share facts and not just vapid fan-girling analysis that most visual kei bands get. Now I'm going back to listento Feminism with a fresh set of ears. I honestly thought the album had little to no Shin involvement since the sound was far removed from the first few albums. Although the bridging album Cruel does make it possible to see how they went from mayoeru yuritachi to feminism, the latter album just felt very bubble-gummy pop compared to what came before it. I had thought it was more the label pushing the band to go more mainstream that really drove the sound in feminism and then fake star before kiyoharu and/or hitoki started doing what they wanted with the harder sounding Drug Treatment and Corkscrew. Shin to me was really the heart of the sound of those first few albums before they went major and I never heard of people suggesting he had no part in it or that he was just a bit player and that sounds downright silly. Anyone who listens to those Pre-kuroyume bands Garnet and Sus4 will hear that, while there are some similarities, the sound was flat and nothing exceptional compared to what was immediately present in those early kuroyume releases. The difference being Shin was playing alongside kiyoharu and hitoki. Ishi hakujaku always felt like it should have belonged on mayoeru yuritachi as it appeared on. Although the one downtempo piece yuri no hanataba does sit nicely in the center of that album and ishi hakujaku might have taken away that emphasis if it was somehow squeezed onto there. The recorded version on Cruel is good too but somehow slightly neutered compared to the more morose quality it had on the RoC live VHS. I just noticed Shin released some demos / early recordigns from his Vinyl years and I need to give those a spin. https://soundcloud.com/magnum_opus_p_d And I guess this is the best place to ask but does anyone have any kuroyume bootlegs from 91-95 they'd be willing to share? kuroyumescans and morgianasama@livejournal are great resources but my understanding of Japanese only allows me to understand text on a superficial level. As such, I haven't had much luck understanding Shin's facebook / twitter without having to run it through google translate which can lead to more confusion that clarification sometimes.

I do agree that these albums are epic and I love them to death but I do think there were plenty of other Japanese bands before them that paved the way for kuroyume to become who they were when they started. Auto-mod was always the kuroyume of the 80s. The wobbly falsetto with dark catchy tracks. Kuroyume simply added a colder guitar sound and heavier drums. And in general the posi-punk scene of the mid 80s surely influenced those guys. Of course it goes without saying those British bands like cure, the mission, sisters of Mercy, fields of nephilim all bore ear worms into their heads. Some more required japanese posi-punk - jrock listening for all of you early fans: G-schmitt Kokushoku elegy Late era- the execute Dance federation (the execute's post incarnation) https://13gravesociety.bandcamp.com/album/1990-live-and-demo That last band was never popular and is virtually unknown on the internet. They never released anything official but the demos sound like really early kuroyume and surely kiyo, hito, and shin saw these guys live.

I had never heard the rumors about their differences but always assumed shin left abruptly considering he shot some press photos for yasashi higeki and was in an ad before leaving on the eve of feminism's release. I really need to go back and listen to that album to imagine what was intended to be more shin influenced songs. And I was surprised by shin's non appearance at those kuroyume revival gigs but in light of the money issues and possible animosity regarding credits it makes complete sense that he wasn't there.

Tetsu explains his reason for leaving Malice Mizer, having his old version of himself be easily found on the net and other musings about the visual kei era: http://rollingstonejapan.com/articles/detail/26623/1/1/1 Also, annoyingly the 360 video for Happy End is hidden from Youtube searches and is buried on their website:

Just some observations on my part regarding kuroyume when they returned in the late 00's. They released a heck of alot of A-B-C type releases, most likely because of AVEX's business model, and I always felt like an artist like kiyoharu wouldn't actively do something like that unless he had to. I always think of Avex as like dealing with the devil, you get the label support and advertising push (sometimes) but I'm sure artistically you're trading off something. In kuroyume's case, it led to an excessive release cycle of singles / albums / dvds. that perhaps didn't sell well or rather, in the end, didn't leave kuroyume / kiyoharu with a profit when everything was said and done. Hence SADS and his solo project going on at the same time. I mean, this is the same guy who quit / stopped SADS despite the band having like 10-20 new songs written during the 13 tour just to go solo. He pretty much rolled from kuroyume to sads and sads to solo with hardly any break. Instead we were all getting kuroyume / sads music left-and-right like it was Christmas again. Maybe it wasn't so much that he was trying to treat the fans with kuroyume and SADS again but rather some big fat cash advance that caused them to reform. If I want to be optimistic about all this, if someone buys the rights to all things kuroyume, maybe we'll get some old early 90's concerts on DVDs. I would surely shell out my hard earned cash for those!

I really like Wing's flap but this song is just meh. By all accounts I should like this mash-up. I love Resident Evil / Bio Hazard, like all things L'arc before Kiss and I'm getting into VR development but this song just doesn't seem appropriate for the mood of the project. And not to mention it was probably a shit-ton of development time spent by the capcom people to make this 4 minute VR video. Or rather, how many people from the RE7 development team got pulled aside to work on this thereby distracting from what I hope will be another great game in the RE franchise?

Nice, I'm always looking forward to any albums from Tetsu Takano, the hardest working ex Malice Mizer member that noone seems to remember! He's pretty much released an album every year since 1999. In fact he released 4 albums from 4 different bands in 2014.

Maybe I'm in the minority but 'Time Goes On' was my favorite track off Smile and seeing Tetsu reclaim his song is great. Tetsu brought the sappy over-the-top poppy qualities to L'arc and it makes you wonder which songs should be his solo work and which should be L'arc songs. I still imagine 15 1/2 being performed by L'arc and sung by Hyde. On the other hand, Link, I almost can't imagine being a Tetsu solo song. Time Goes On as recorded by L'arc always felt like an exception off Smile and it probably was a leftover from Tetsu's first solo album. Now we get to hear what the original demo version probably sounded like.

Most likely. Although, when L'arc en ciel released their albums on mora as 24bit 96khz, the remasters weren't completed blown out. It's hit or miss. The dynamic range of their earlier albums got worse but for later albums (Ark-Ray onwards) it was actually slightly better than their CD counterparts. If Yo$hiki actually cared about the fans like he pretends to do all the time, he would release a second disc with the demos from the Jealousy sessions. Most of them were released by Taiji on iX Rose and Blood and the Art of Life Demos are floating around out there. I'm still unsure if the Art of LIfe demo with Taiji on bass ever leaked or not. So a nicely 'remastered' version of that would be worthy of another milking of the fan's wallets.

This video, like all of them since their reunion, looks boring as heck. Gone are simple but visually stunning concept videos like Mother, True Blue, I for you, gravity. I mean for Mother they flew to Ireland (or was it Scotland?) to shoot the PV. This new video looks like they got together one afternoon and mimed the song a few times.