Karma’s Hat

I think they peaked at 420 for sure. Before the singles run that came after it they were quite an adventurous band all things considered. Emotional Karma is a hodgepodge of different styles from Dir en grey larping to straight SADS to what they eventually ended up sounding like later. They had a few dramatic ballads that clocked in north of 6 minutes, two minutes blurbs of SADS made formless and heavier and in general the stylistic makeup of this band is really the sum of the parts of the members interests. MiA's hard-on for shredding contained in very concise nu vk packages with the least predictable vocalist since like prime kyo of 2002. People who've been calling them generic have been blatantly wrong; they might've been generic for the their own form by end of their run, but not once were they a dime-a-dozen vk band. 

Honestly nothing brings the cringe quite like seeing people comment on underground metal culture without having any actual insight about it. Every time I see any one of the usual cliches being regurgitated I don't even have to read half-way through a sentence to determine that the person's familiarity with the genre consists of giggling to an Immortal video and a whole bunch of hearsay. 

9 hours ago, emmny said:

2017 has been a shitshow for vk, indie rock and even metal

but hiphop has never been on fire like this....radio hiphop is KILLING IT

Been like this for me since 2015. It's the only thing I have genuine enthusiasm for ( well vk holds me hostage, but it's like sticking around with a wife who has stage IV brain cancer while you're still hoping that she'll pull a miracle and make it through as you're mopping up the chemo hair from the floor and the hospital orderlies are laughing at your tears ) 

Absolutely no idea what my 2017 list would consist right now

That's almost what I would have written about DIMLIM. It's a fucking mess and some of the production choices are ridiculous, but that's what makes it awesome. Like throwing a plate of spaghetti on the wall. The clean vox on the chorus I think could be a tad bit more adventurous tho. 

They have been good to me lately. The premier band from their label at this point.

Just now, hiroki said:

 

The official announcement says that their hiatus will begin at the end of 2017, and it hasn't been decided when they will restart activities. There may be another announcement I'm not aware of though.

I believe you are correct, since apparently they still do have lives scheduled and according to a random translation I saw one of them said something to the effect of "please support us while we are still going." 

People on tumblr are wont to disregard citation needed.

So apparently from what I gathered this was very sudden and so far the hiatus is only till the end of 2017, and then they'll figure out whether they will continue or not? 

I tried looking sum on tumblr, but unfortunately the individual member posts were only translated in Spanish. 

Another day, another Kiryu DVD. 

One day it would be nice to see one of these

I've thought about this a lot and I think I've come up with a solution

We need to ban americans, scandinavians and anyone who's been into vk for less than a decade from the scene.

SOMEONE START SCOURING THE INTERNET FOR RUMOURS AND POST THEM HERE I NEED TO KNOW MOOOOOREEEEEE

There was a bunch of things about Meto's injury, so surely the Japanese fangirls are already hard at work on tanuki and where-ever else.  

Surprised just because I can't imagine them being in other projects at this point, aside from MiA. 

I don't mean to say that I felt like this was coming or anything, but I was listening to the newest song just yesterday and thinking that it has been awfully quiet on the Mejibray front lately. *puts on tinfoil hat* also it's quite sudden from them to go a dozen releases a year to a hiatus MAYBE SOMETHING HAPPENED

 There's also plenty of recent examples of bands going to hiatus and coming back, especially as of late. 

DADAROMA is, by all accounts available to me, one of the handful of bands from the new crop that have skyrocketed in stature and popularity to the levels previously held by the mid 2000’s indie stalwarts, crashing the party with probably the best case of intuitive visual kei marketing since conditional disbandment by first releasing Oboreru Sakana on Youtube for all gaijins to easily enjoy. Immediate hit in the west relatively speaking, due to its accessibility both in sound and availability, they’ve been on a continual upward surge since. And now two DADAism’s later, the third in the series has just dropped coinciding with the third year into their run.

Having now amassed a decent amount of bulk into their discography one can finally make some observations what DADAROMA is, and what they are about. What to note specifically, is that the overall image of their sound is uniquely scattered, and yet aesthetically consistent. Ever since their debut a polarity has been attributed to them; a struggle between the metalcore influence against their wacky, almost The GazettE-esque light-heartedness and a tendency to stick to more traditional nu-metal visual kei riffs and vocal stylings. At this point, three years on from their debut, it can probably be said that this is a false observation. Out of a discography of 47 or so songs, only about 4 or 5 put on their striped deathcore socks, while the rest tread the line of either appropriating the odd stylistic trick from the style or settle comfortably into the visual kei ballad/mid-tempo song territory. What does remain consistent however is their imagery of clowns, sex, clichéd visual kei political commentary and a very loud production that’s as slick as it gets. Looking at the entirety of their output from the past three years one notices that they’ve always been kind of the same; looking, sounding and acting pretty much like they’ve always done and whatever had been mistakenly attributed as a stylistic shift was merely a case of someone being unfamiliar with them. The palette of DADAROMA just happens to be very broad, and they happen to divulge in all the different aspects of it cyclically.

What I do think is true however, is that they do some things better than others, and DADAISM 3 is a prime example of it. In the third release of their EP series we see a band distilling all their worst traits into 20-minute slog that’s everything I hope this band will not be about in the future.

In their prime DADAROMA uses the interplay of their ability to use metalcore and traditional visual kei’s melodramatic potency to a great effect. In their first PV tracks Oboreru Sakana and Ame no Waltz they bang out a Suicide Silence 101 knock-off and whispery vk vocals at exactly the right times, and climax like the sinking titanic with a lazy vk fade out for the centuries. If perfect 2010’s visual kei was engineered in a laboratory, it’d sound like these two songs did. Fucking tremendous.

While for some of the subsequent PV’s they’d showcase their knack for doing other things, I believe that even if they didn’t continue chugging like before, at least they always stayed fun and sexy. When in form, Yoshiatsu gives a degree of gravity to everything he is on and there is no denying what a technically able band there’s behind him; so even when appropriating INSIDE BEAST or being really tacky with Nightmare Before Christmas Tim Burtony jingles, they’re awesome. With DADAISM 3 being something which they haven’t been before: boring.

Oddly enough starting out with a high note, DADAROMA’s PV cut this time is MASTURBATION that horrified a segment of the people on this board, and here I’ll make a case for it: MASTURBATION is interesting, loud and very obnoxious. One valuable life lesson I’ve learned from a childhood of watching pro-wrestling is that any reaction is better than no reaction. There’s an inherent value to the over the topness, and especially when it’s quite fitting for a band that’s always been kind of carney, and most importantly sincerely self-aware. Could I do without another mid-period Marilyn Manson dance live song? Yes, but I don’t hate it either and I kind of appreciate it for what it is. Despite everything it still bangs hard and remains true to the band’s spirit.

Things halt to a standstill right afterwards however, when DADAROMA apparently decides to churn out a EP’s worth of mid-tempo ballads and nu-nu-visual kei bangers, channelling pop Lynch and the worm-eaten corpse of that version of Girugamesh nobody liked. I’m making it sound worse than it is, but for a band that’s been so consistent a lull like this is both alarming and a curious choice. Before in songs like Yume Tarareba and Zouka what worked in their favour is both their colourful concept and the contrast in the sound of all their elements. Things that were generic were made cool by their skill and unique character. When a band like this then slows down and makes a collection of energetic live songs and heartfelt bittersweet ballads, I become disaffected when they fall short of the grand theatre of what they could be. Romance Gray is immediately forgettable compared to other songs structured the same way with the sampled rainfall and everything; Itoshi teru doesn’t hold a candle to the songs they’ve made before in a similar style either, and in fact every other song on here can as well be categorised into “they’ve done it before, and they’ve done it better.” Sincerely it is the first time this band has done something twice, and now it’s an EP full of very matter of fact diddies that lack the edge of their prior material, aside from the PV cut that’s a Risley Circus B-side with crass lyrics as its saving grace.

When this band takes its foot off the pedal, they can start sounding very generic and tired. This can be circumvented by doing things different. Working with your unique concept, not ripping off Lynch and utilising the tools at your disposal in ways that hasn't been done in the scene before. DADAISM 3 is a paint by the numbers EP from a very professional band no matter how you look at it; it doesn’t hit even close to as hard as 1 or have the diversity of 2. If they’ll settle on treading the same ground like a DOGMA Gazette junior, then they’ll absolutely have to bring back the deathcore for some desperately needed flavour, or otherwise we are due for redux of NOW and GO era Girugamesh. If the history of this band is anything to go by then they'll rebound shortly, but there's always that doubt...

Ordered twice way back in the day and received the first item perfectly on time, but the second one took a while and I even sent an email inquiring where it was before it subsequently arrived. 

x2 Can't say I really endorse them with the prices and all.

Ennuste noussu oikein keväiseen +17! Oon asettanu Gloriakaljan ostorajaksi 2, joten jään vielä roballe seisoskelemaan ja juomaan viinaa vaikka seuralaiset menis edeltä sisälle. Toivottavasti kaikki ohjelma olis mahdollisimman aikaisin, että kun menee sisään niin sois vaan pelkkää musaa.

All that stuff linked above is not an option if you hate it like I do, lol.

Visual kei might as well have originated from two drunk Greeks twiddling around with a lyra after making love to other one's niece. I don't give a fuck. Visual kei is to a large extent my essence and being, but I would rather burn in hell for all eternity than listen to 30 seconds worth of any nu glam/sleaze cockrock, or even all their Kissy forefathers for that matter. I'd rather play 2010's The GazettE covers for a millennia in purgatory than subject myself to any of the bands linked above for a single solitary second. The guys from Bataar and Seremedy may not share my opinion to the same extent, but it's a likely scenario that they'd rather sound like VEXENT/Killaneth/GenericnuVK than OldlyCrew. Most likely these dudes grew up with mid 2000's nu metal kei as well, so whatever the gentleman from X Japan were listening to back in the day has no bearing on their lives. They're white and they want to play Vortex and Remember the urge, and that's kind of it. Wearing a Poison cumrag on your receding hairline is no less hack than rocking a 15$ emo fringe, so if they're dead set on jacking an aesthetic wholesale, then both of these options are just as socio-culturally irrelevant as the other. The concept is not the biggest factor holding them back from being up to the Japanese standard though: it's the execution. 

The problem here is that they're really bad and can't even do the little that they do without being embarrassingly bad, so they're forever doomed to play handout gigs at battle of the bands held in youth community centers; begging for Japanese tours from a drug-addled, rapidly aging Kenzi whom Yohio presumably blew to get his start there; or just kneel and pray for the rapid advancement of future technologies that will allow scientist to resurrect the other guy from ADAMS so they can warm up for them at their subsequent tours in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics; remaining forever unsigned, forever stuck in shitty local band limbo.

I try to follow these bands to the best of my ability not only out of morbid curiosity, but because if I could find 4-5 able vk fans then I'd start a weeaboo kei band myself. So while I'm sympathetic, I'm also twice as angered by their poor music, their poor taste and seemingly narrow frame of reference in visual kei, based on what I've heard and seen from ~sources~. 

I believe not many people have watched the original carting out the corpse of weeaboo kei video, so here's some cliffs (as far as I can remember them):

Back in the day there used to be a dozen vk bands in Scandinavia, now there's practically none and the ones that exist are woefully inactive. Finland used to have quite a few, although ranks of the members were very incestuous. If you can believe it, they were actually even worse than the Swedish bands and the two most long-standing ones even tried rebooting before fading into complete irrelevance. The one that I last recall having a proper concert, called "FAEK", has not updated their Facebook since Autumn of 2016. One curious aspect of the scene was also that a lot of the participants didn't really seem to be active visual kei fans, and yet despite that they used JAME to promote themselves and performed largely at cons and warming up for Satsuki/Plunklock tier bands that happened to be touring and performing at a venue called Gloria that receives some strange government money to minimise the L's the organisers take booking these shitty bands. The most longstanding band of the "scene" called "Karmia" appears to have dropped any pretensions towards vk and has settled for being a shitty local rock band. Here are the results: ( fyi the youtube superstar's former troupe that stole their name from Uverworld have also seemingly left vk behind in favor of a more western approach. Unsurprisingly their social media stature plummeted as dropping the Japanese rock shtick just unveils what they really are: one in the rank of millions of shitty local rock bands )

DIE/MAY is now the only one left and while shitcanning Seike will definitely help, they'll eventually do the routine of downshifting until turning to radio silence and then the eventual disbandment post on facebook, if they'll even bother. Aside from Tuomas and Heikki they also have afaik have one or two guys from the best Finnish vk band in HISTORY that larped TOXIC/DIVISION period The Gazette called "Desier," whom while very bad, managed to sound like an actual visual kei band on a shoestring budget and minimal ability. Conceptually they had a good thing going though. How DIE/MAY performs in their current iteration I will find out this weekend, unless I prefer trying to get cancer outside instead. Any Bataar fans sharing the hashtag can come say hi!

edit: This post is already a mess so it won't hurt any that I'll add something that I just thought: conceptual coherency is a problem. When I got to thinking about the last.fm's of these guys that I've seen, or the fates of Overworld and Karmia, I'm not surprised that people seemingly can't make heads or tails of what they exactly sound like. DESIER used to sound like The Gazette because afaik the composer was a huge fan, but then bands like Jenlayn and Karmia straddled a strange territory of sounding like just shitty rock music, in all its terminological ambiguity. It's not entirely farfetched that the amount of band members in the entire history of the scandinavian scene who are as vk savvy as the average member on this board, is as low as 3 or less. I actually briefly trolled a Crestillion live stream two weeks back asking what their favorite Madeth Gray'll tape was and whether they prefer Key Party or Matina. Not replying to me was a perfectly understandable response, but I have no doubt that they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about either. Visual kei in the west is being represented by Yohio ( who's old last.fm you can easily find ), and guys who literally only know Filth in the Beauty and The Final. That's tragic. 

The problem is that these dudes are completely inept and even singing in Swahili wouldn't give them the kind of vocal melody that's up to the standard of the most dime-a-dozen vk bands in Japan ( anyone who claims otherwise probably only listens to two new bands an year and just hates them on principle to look cool to nobody. ) Seike is another who, in addition being woefully unskilled, just never managed to break out of the humming a simple singy songy melody in his parents basement mode. 

There's been only one discernible talent in this entire farce and that's Yohio. Disreign can pass off as a legitimate band so god bless them. 

Some Finnish bands I'm surprised I had not posted before. 

Looool I suppose this could be a topic. Giving them this much attention will only encourage them though, but it won't build much of a pension fund flopping for a decade or two. I win, they lose.

I usually like to get angry about stupid shit, but these I'm not even going to give the courtesy of clicking. Fuck this guy, his shitty flop band and everyone who likes them.

the first riff on the first song of the new single sounds like a slightly modified version of one on kuchiki no tou. I can't be arsed to look what song it was can anyone less lazy confirm my suspicions pls

edit: now I'm less certain about this. maybe it is that all these cruddy numetal riffs sound all the fucking same. Doesn't make it less cool tho

joha siellä soittaa joku vitun mie/day ja kaikki biisit tulee salee youtubesta lol

Näyttäs olevan tuloillaan suomen keskikesä, eli +10 ja puolipilvistä. Tarkotus olis pistää mukkumeikit ja dokata puistossa kunnes en pääse enää glorialle sisään ja säästän 5 euroa

Not exactly let down by the release, because I was already prepared for the worst after the samples came out.  

My attitude is rather lenient towards them anyway; like whatever they release I'm fairly confident it'll go in cycles with them and a similar and a different song is eventually going to come up. Although I think it can be said that they've been phasing out the deathcore since like the second single in favor of that nu metally/"industrial" angryman sound. This is unfortunate and it does make me wonder whether it's an conscious effort to be more palatable to a larger crowd. It's not like these dudes could have possibly grown out of deathcore in the span of like 6 months. That core cameo on Zouka is one of their best moments, so I hope it'll at least keep making sporadic appearances if we can't get nomo ame no waruzus

I like the Masturbation song, and sort of lukewarm on everything else. They never jump out or really gain an intensity that's impossible to ignore. Tired is how I'd describe it. 

FUCK that new shit goes hard. 2017 and numetal is kosher again

I listened to humble and went like "eek." I'm going to try it when I get home, but there is this really off putting smug fedora rap vibe in Kendrick and that might just be something that I get from the fans rather than the artist. I'm a humble ninja who enjoys his Migos and 2 chainz