Karma’s Hat

still crying by the way 

There were no surprises for me after hearing the previews, and adding to the feeling of predictability the same problems they've had for a while now still persist. To start off with the negative: the covers they've had for this and the DVD's have been corny & awful, and it's symptomatic of the string of poor stylistic decisions that plague 'lot of the stuff they do now. When I heard that electronic effect in the beginning of Fukai I had a hard time believing this is a band with +20 years of experience with all the professionals of the business at their disposal that I'm listening to: because it's fucking stupid and adds absolutely nothing but terrible awkwardness, like a bird flying over a scenery only to hit the glass wall of a skyscraper and fall to its death with a quiet thump. It's, much like the covers, a lot of aesthetic pomp on the surface level that when you scratch it, it only reveals more surface or just sieves through your hands and shatters to pieces entirely. 

With that I suppose the best thing about this is that they didn't do anything drastic. These sound like they were trying to create that spontaneous and chaotic live, one-shot feeling with a super loud studio production backing it, and I still kind of appreciate the idea and I would have loved to hear a version like this of IIID EMPIRE... just not this one. This is one of those times when I love what Kyo is doing in theory, but not in practice, and had they done a few things different I'd fuck with it; and apropos of which I think Fukai works quite well and it almost sounds like it could've fit on Arche, and this largely comes down to the choice of sounds they decide to take. Spank and sperg or spark and spark makes a difference, as does adding electronic flourishes and noodling mini-solos betwixt an old song of theirs. Will it replace the old version? No, but I'll play them side-by-side if I'm in the mood for it.

It does also feel like the days of remakes like Tsumi to Kisei are over, and they'll settle for an updated sound that's either more live adaptable or they feel like putting out a studio version of the live track. Either way I don't care what they do, since the only way it'll impact my life is if they do their live sets dirty like with insisting on playing the awful new Obscure instead of the old one. 

Kana means chicken in Finnish. Just so you know

I refuse to believe this and the Lollapalooza booking from back in the day were anything more than industry favours to Yoshiki's burgeoning western conquest

that's still totally happening by the way

They're finding ways to look worse and worse each passing release. I wouldn't have ever imagined seeing Yuuki wearing fucking Vans in a shoot 

rip lycaon

3 hours ago, emmny said:

koichi and tzk were the only talented members anyway...also why lynch. destroyed deathgaze #TalentWon

Huge fan, but I’m absolutely fine if Mejibray reincarnates with just those two

Would like to see the cute vocalist still around after this

hoping that Mei saves himself too, and possibly goes into a project with more singing 'cause I really like his voice. anything other than trash like memento mori is ok tho

8 minutes ago, Tokage said:

Hope some of the members will stay active and form new bands with a similar style, though. I don't want that 'early '00s VK revival'-wave to die, altho it kinda feels like it's dying out already. 

I'd go as far as to say that it's dead and this was the final nail in the coffin. Most bands died and some made it "big," only to change styles right after. Only D-tier bands like fucking Virge and Damy are left

Setlist?

†

I remember when I liked this band for like, two minutes. Jesus Phobia single/mini (?) and that mini with Popcorn Monster were quite fine, and the rest not so much.

I don't know what to do with my life anymore. Tzk is my refuge from the world

please come back

Ruki's ripping off vetements now for the new merch lol

Not surprised. Afaik ( don't quote me on this ) Jin's vocals are polarising even outside of this forum and they have a style that is just a tad too hard and dark to not be in vogue. I remember late Nega sales being brutal and Black Swan is kind of like an extension, or a natural development of that sound.

The real reason I believe is that they lost all their fans after Rena cut his hair

Yeah Tzk is obviously having vocal problems. I just today saw that the live dvd was out and it is, from what I could tell from the bits I listened to in the morning, easily their worst and their latest before that was the lamest thus far so. That 15 song set is like, what. Maybe the shortest full price vk dvd ever?

They're not even gone yet and I already miss them. The announcement of the hiatus was so sudden and the cloud of mystery surrounding isn't helping any; there's probably more info somewhere now like on the blogs of the members but I don't have access/couldn't read it anyway. I wonder if tsuzuku is doing fine and whether he'll even stick around in the scene afterwards. ( if anyone has any info to relay then please do so )

Really took the wind out of my sails this one, like I holistically lost interest in vk with my boiz going away... well it's more the straw that broke the camel's back but nonetheless. 

Either Warsaw, Prague or both. Hope they put out the ticket prices sooner than later

gaijin death note goes out in ignoring the shallow Dostoyevskian spirit of the original with an emphasis in American television melodrama that has now just about ruined the sensibilities of an entire generation. I don't hold the original in much esteem, but I watched it with a person who does and talking about this film and the source material did make it an interesting watch in just how many small details were changed for very questionable ends that sometimes give a very contradictory reading of the psychology of the film when you get down to it.

Contrary to above I absolutely loathe Adam Wingard, who I think is both an imbecile and an arsehole who makes films of such pitch black fatalism that even I can't take them. I had to dig up the notes I did on his blair witch remake 

"In Blair Witch 2K16 A great evil lurks in the woods that adheres to no rules, logic or sense, other than all the 2010's horror tropes of course. Forest spiritz seemingly able to alter the principles of time and space itself; trees wend at will and time literally ceases to function as normal! And yet it's satisfied to merely bully our heroes for a good hour until it unemphatically finishes them off. Nod to the Blair Witch mythos or the writers taking artistic liberties? Who cares when it's anathema to tension and suspense in its sheer stupidity. It's morose in the same cynical way Wingard's VHS series is; after the gag reel is done the rollercoaster inevitably crashes, and there's no hope for anyone. 

Stylistically the naturalism of the original is discarded in favour of the caricature of 2010's horror filmmaking; tightly edited together found footage from multiple cameras averaging about five cuts per ten seconds. The haunted forest trekking crew must have known a professional team was going to edit their death footage into a slick 89 minute feature, because they all conjure their best American stage acting impressions for cameras ( and a drone, that ceases to work once the mad forest spirits tinker with the reception of the signal. What can't this great evil do!? ). 

If the long scene inside the tent set the tone to the original, here it's the characters walking into the woods with the editor blowing his wad over the keyboard in preparation for the next loud noise to come. Trash."

XXX's album is trash. His affinity for retrograde musical forms was always there and he just them loose for 20 minutes of singer song writer tripe that's not even particularly charming in how vapid and seemingly honest ( or deluded, although this does give the album an interesting dimension to it ) it is when it's just... so fucking stupid. Wouldn't be the first time I've done a 180 regarding a new rap album, but I think I'm just going to stop listening to music entirely if I hit my head on something and start thinking that this is good stuff. Lil Peep's album is one that is also preoccupied with the vulnerability of it's author, but it does this without taking a step backwards in form and with a far more introspective character, so I'm just going back to that.

Now listening to uzi's album. 

15 minutes ago, Gaz said:

naaaais. i like them even more nao

Thoughts? 

i'm on the side of global warming and nuclear holocaust if that is what the public voted for

Signing off from the Dezert war wagon. 

Conceptually they've changed from the Japanese middle school suburban child murders of the 2003 vk vein into clean-cut jumpdafuckup catalogue boys. DEZERT of the early minis and the first album is filthy, as much looking as sounding. And while DEZERT has struck and missed plenty of times since they started, their most unhinged moments still stand on their own, not even close to being in the same ballpark as their very unfortunate previous and no doubt future renditions Happy Song 

Gets right into my core