Karma’s Hat

Worked out every day of the week so far time to squander the results by going on a four day bender

Is it bad that I thought that sounded alrite? :V >That feeling when your most accomplished member is the guy who carried Minhpa's luggage

This is the greatest thing I've ever seen

I can't be the only person who cringes his balls off when he wails wataSHIIIVA like a dolt. It's totally a minor gripe and generally totally harmless since I can't understand the lyrics for the most part to find anything wrong with the intricacies of the language. The fact that this does sound like generic new vk is a GIANT step for western visual kei that shouldn't be ignored like it's nothing. I think Yohio is special that this shouldn't be taken a cataclysmic shift in the trend, because I think he is both smarter and more talented than the rest of the scene combined. That aside however, that a western visual kei band put out something this polished, professional and faithful to the fundamental rules of the genre is in my opinion, immense. He struts like a vk frontman should, fucking shrieks and warbles in that syrupy vk melodrama with such confidence that has never before been seen with any of these gaijin bands. I think he is repugnant, but fuck if I don't respect him a whole lot for living the true weeb dream and not flopping completely while doing it.

You know the video was worse than that. It's actually about the scandinavian visual kei scene and how that's ded with only two bands left while the rest have either gotten real jawbs or buggered off to Japan. He says that the heyday of weeb-kei when the Finnish and Swedish bands were in full force ( like all six of them. none of which most likely got money for their shows - in finland they didn't - or was signed to a label until Yohio helped his flop mates out ) felt like HAVING TAKEN PART IN THE HEAVY METAL SCENE IN THE 80's.

Why are you guys like that, as if they're put on the stake unjustly by default, when he hasn't released anything even remotely decent before DISREIGN? This fucking spot was uploaded like five minutes ago and I've seen nothing but praise. This and the last DISREIGN single are obviously on a whole another level of craftsmanship compared to anything that the weeaboos have ever put out. Yohio's Japanese is awkward, but he's a savage vk vocalist at this point and that's that. The compositions are almost, dare I say, ambitious on visual kei standards with their piano's and all nonsense and the chorus crushes most of the Japanese bands that do this style. I'm undisputably the most vocal person in my hatred of western visual kei, but I'm not taking no L's for this one. This whole scene was complete garbage right up until Karehasu, and now from the looks of things this band is just going to keep getting better, so good for them.

The films I've watched in the past two days Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows God, Sirk is just brutal. While the racial themes in Imitation of Life are a little ludicrous on the out the outset the way they've presented in the narrative, Sirk still by-passes all logic by sheer force of his directorial direction for it to come together with the films overall theme at the end in an absolutely stunning shot of the procession. The exploration of the characters lives and careers is quite interesting in retrospect, because the film does throw a curveball in the first half by dabbling in questions artistic integrity, only for Sirk to prove the smash the whole issue by the end when everything is tied together in its thematic whole. I did shed a tear during the motel scene 2 lel All That Heaven doesn't savagely maul you in a similar fashion, but its irony is not much less biting. I lol'd at the fucking television set because it's such a blunt, yet profound metaphor for all the fatal boredom of bourgeoisie society horseshit. This film is astoundly beautiful in its use of color, and I wouldn't mind being Rock Hudson without the aids either Fritz Lang's M If Metropolis was his nazi film, then this is the one where he's a stuffy conservative. I just find it impossible to like him or find these two films intellectually stimulating, when the first one is balls deep in fascist collaborationist twaddle and in the second he is jerking off to proper procedure of da law. The latter in itself isn't so bad ( I mean, I like something like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance that's beautiful in its American naivete ), but it's the undeniable contempt for the masses that is expressed in both these films that disgusts me. I would probably like M more had I not seen Metropolis, because it's not so bad if you consider the movie outside the rest of the director's ouvre. The lynching mentality is acutely presented, and indeed crying out for the law in Germany of 1931 is probably radical than I give it credit. Wonderfully shot thou', and the narrative structure is quite ambitious. He gives the pigs and their raids quite the lashing as well. I don't dislike this film in the least, I just wouldn't name it as something that I'm particularly gung-ho for. Murnau's Song of Two Humans I HAD A HARD TIME FORGETTING THAT HE JUST TRIED TO COMMIT MURDER. YOU CAN'T JUST BRUSH THAT OFF. A tad black and white with the whole pure natural blond peasant woman being juxtaposed against the city's moral corruption embodied by the ciggy smelling slag with messy black hair. It is up to the MAN to choose his destiny- I mean which one he's going to fuck. I know the attempt at MURDER wasn't supposed to be taken literally instead of a symbolic gesture, and the midsection really is beautiful with marvelous chemistry of body language by both its leads. I for one think the scenes in the city were just as long as they should have been, because I came out of it as exhausted but sentimental as the characters themselves. Janet Gaynor is a dove, incredible to look at. Faustrecht der Freiheit by Fassbinder I completely marked out when the drunks lying on the streets in Helsinki were mentioned. Young working class gay man gets picked apart to the bone by snotty bourgeoisie homosexuals. That's more or less the plot of every film I'd make. Tarkovski's Mirror Felt bad for not being into it. I think Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker are magnificent films, some of my all time favorites actually. What this does have in common with them is that it is unrivaled and beyond sublime in its cinematography. The concept and the narrative structure is neat- that's just it for me. I thought it was a great watch, if only always out of my reach to feel it. Every other film of his, even Ivan's Childhood which is not so great, has haunted me for weeks afterwards. Now my foremost thought of it is if I was the only one who thought Margarita Terekhova was really hamming it up at the end? The way she fucking spasm'd and tried to do eleven facial expressions all at once with the subtly of silent film actor was really off putting. I understand why it was green lighted - it was a complex shot no doubt- however I have to question the decision a little bit.

@emmny Consider despa clone wad blown all over the keyboard by that fucking Berlin. I lost it at the fucking keys. Early Kagerou is obviously an essential inclusion, not only for their part in the whole travesty but because the first album is just amazing. It must have been my most played album in the summer of 2014 @itsukoiiThe name of that band R made me so angry I got PTSD from memories of having searched those bands with stupid unsearchable names- speaking of which, does anyone remember a band called celsius? Their was just the symbol and finding them on youtube and on the web an impossibility. In fact I tried to search them for this topic in vain early on.

Crush me

I saw some r-shite being linked. Nihil Party is the best vk title ever conceived I'd say the future of heavier vk ( as in, in the early 20's ) is as of now is up in the air. Metalcore is far past its peak in America and so far nothing has come along to replace it, but in vk on the other hand we are seeing bands just now coming along that can almost rival their western counterparts. I can't even tell you how happy I was to hear Dadaroma ripping off suicide silence even though it's almost been a decade when that stuff came out! I think that the larger stylistic shift that will happen to vk will most definitely first happen in the west, like with nu metal giving way to metalcore right before the mid 2000's. The problem right now though is that guitar music as a pop culture phenomenon is in its death throes, relatively speaking. I'll eventually feel nostalgic about the 10's visual kei no doubt about it; I love all visual kei almost equally: old, new, green, purple etc. I just make topics where I call certain bands and styles terrible simply for my own amusement. I'm so glad you separate those bands into regions because I feel like that holds the answers to a lot of questions that may arise about the stylistic evolution in vk. Regions and labels hold massive sway in all other genres as well, but unfortunately since I'm terrible with languages I'll never even bother trying to learn Japanese to satisfy my curiosity about visual kei's inner workings. Good thing I got unfounded speculation to always keep myself busy.

I fucking LOVED this song when it came out, and found it quite the disappointment that it wasn't a style they pursued any further. That's only one of the numerous let downs I faced by bands who did only one or two songs like this, for them only take their foot off the nu-metal-pedal for the rest of their careers . @doomboxI saw them in Finland and there were like six people from MH at that show too! Quite the event @KaleidoscopeEarly vidoll is some of the best shit that came after the implosion of the old labels. Their run until the first LP is legendary, and that encompasses quite a bit of material, which you can conveniently find on one of their numerous compilation albums like proposal and bijinkei. Should you not find these links working on the forum, I'll upload them for you in a heartbeat. From their 2002 mini. There were two that came out that year and if you combine them, it's like an album. While I don't think they were influential in any particular way, they certainly bridged a lot of the turn of the millenia and 00's visual kei characteristics. The riff that starts at 0.17 sounds like a modern Madeth Gray'll out take it's absolutely incredible.

Dude the fucking... Why are you doing this to me

If this band doesn't get fucking huge in this day and age, then I don't know who could.

@lichtlune AH I FORGOT EARLY SCREW. What solidified them as real nu metal majesty however was one of their first singles that had this diddy. Although a very limited vocalist even at his best, he briefly shines here and manages to channel the adolescent boy in me at 1.33- like only few others can. That section is followed by a fabulous vk solo also

I had a brief falling out with Bolt Thrower for some inexplicable reason a few years back. Since that passed though, they've solidified themselves as one of my all time sleeper favorites. For whatever reason I've found it impossible to get tired of the first four albums and especially War Master has grown on me as of late. iirc their peel sessions album is also good, but peel sessions pretty much always are

Was I the only one who thought that new mini was a bag of shite? I liked nothing else other than the dime-a-dozen diaura PV song which is always palatable

@helcchiBless, your contributions is the heart and soul of this thread. You've just summarised the spirit of the fad perfectly with all of those bands. Some I had not even heard of before like Gemmik I'm surprised I didn't link the blogspot and top 10 brutal vk bands youtube video staple DIE3IRAE on the first post. It's them with Since1889 and yaminade that I usually think of first if the topic steers towards this crap. @aetarnaI started socialising with other weeaboos only after 2007 ( the kids in my neighborhood were more focused on getting 2pac from winmx while I was wondering whether scalpel tron porn type on limewire was a real dir en grey song ) and so I missed out on every bit of fraternising and ostracising that went on amongst them. What it seemed like to me however was the scene was quite uniform as long as the An Cafe's and D'espairsray's were still around, which were the main culprits along with deg and gazette who brought vk to Finland. When the first went to hiatus and the second died, they took the scene with them and left only smouldering ruins behind, along with yours truly. The Piass going nu metal was something I never understood. I guess Takayuki felt like wanting to take a part in the fad and make some cash for once after all those years of activity. The vocalist had literally the perfect vk chorus voice and it's a shame that allegedly he just took off without informing anybody, sending the piass into the netherrealm of eternal recording hiatus in the process. A band that was very popular in Finland at the time, performing here on numerous occasions and fukken Mikaru even dragged his other band black line to flop in front of the Finnish public the first chance he got. A very important band to me as well; in fact I quite fondly remember once being angry at my parents and choosing to sleep on the floor in protest and rock the spanking new vk band called Dio all night from the headphones. Now if I wasn't the intended target audience for this crap then I don't know who was! Self-flagellating weeaboos congregate here. Hey I just found out that apparently he is fronting Fixer these days! I had no idea lolol btw what company starwave uses to shoot their pv's? they're all horrific without exception

@doombox I definitely agree on EYA and it's a bit peculiar why not many other bands went as deep into the sound as they did. I presume this is because after the dust had settled from the initial nu metal phase in vk, most upstart vk bands started taking cues from other vk bands instead of the American originators - with EYA being the exception. I also had the fortune of seeing them live and being a part of the saddest pity circle pit ( on the band's insistence ) of out of shape weeaboos you'd ever see. Meth is definitely another blogspot stalwart that stuck around for a uncharacteristically long amount of time. My first time hearing them must have been on one of those MOST BRUTAL VISUAL KEI METAL BANDS videos that you'd might still find on youtube. The nu metal riff is so characteristic to visual kei now that it's never going to go away as long as they have guitars on hand. Now it's a co-existence of the newer core influences with the traditional use of nu metal that's been present for a long time now ( which is something that is quite apparent in a portion western metalcore as well. Back in the latter half of the 00's most the new core musicians had grown up on Slipknot which clearly showed through ). Visual kei is an unique mix however from the melodramatic X chorus to Luna Sea's soundscapes, and stuff just keeps piling on it. @aetarnaYes, it's good that you mentioned Vulgar because there is a good chance it really was the most influential album released in the tradition. Iirc mejibray's tsuzuku said it's what got him to vk ( or at least made a lasting impression- CURIOUSLY ENOUGH he was also keen on having a band that played baroque's brand of vkei, so now we have these two traditions coexisting ) As an aside If you don't remember these kinds of videos then leave this thread. I reckon the lot of them have been deleted and this is a fairly new one as well from 2010, but at least the spirit lives on in the rad editing and bad english

This is something I hoped to get an answer for too. While everything post-baroque ( actually, oshare might as well be separated into pre and post brq eras lolol ) is easy to accredit to their influence, it's really that transformation from Eliphas Levi to Vinett that's puzzling me; the scene abandoning the old styles seemingly overnight after 2000. What bands specifically triggered the interest in the underground to shift towards what oshare was around very early 2000's. I don't know jack shite about white kei and everything that went on circa 1995 1999 so there's massive gaps in my chronology. That doesn't mean that I can't ham handedly fish out possible precursors from where I think I can see them I think Luna Sea is side by side with Kuroyume in who's had the greatest overall impact in the sound of the scene. That riff is ttl proto-oshare Oh and Shazna's and they were mighty popular in their day weren't day? My favorite from them though is the demo

tbqh all ains bands are more nu metal than anything. Kuroyuri is obviously the best example and their album is a good primer on them. The Korn vibes are strong and a track or two is loaned from Girugamesh straight up. 12012 I never got more than cordially familiar with, though definitely essential as far this stuff goes- speaking of undercode however, the extent to which the nu metal influence made its presence know As a testament to the flexibility of the nu metal ethos, bands like Vidoll managed to employ it quite a lot in their early days without particularly being known for it. There are a number of other bands who did just one-offs either as a dark atmospheric number or as a live staple

@robkun That's one of those bands I always knew about, but never listened to! I always put it off for some reason even though I enjoy the pv songs... @itsukoii Gregory was great for the couple of songs they put out. Really a shame that the band petered out so fast and the members seemingly went nowhere, which seems endemic to these bands. Here's more contributions of my curatorial genius A band time will certainly forget. Yaminade sporting the most generic fashion and sound of the era and what happens at 0.53 is one of the most nu kei things ever ( in fact the only thing that's more nu kei, happens at the beginning of the song DESPERATE GAIN by a band called Hated. I was unable to find it on youtube but if you manage to get your hands on it, you will not be disappointed. ) Should be recognisable to anyone who scoured through blogspots at the time. Considering that they made it to like 2013, they must have been the last one of their kind to disband. Born in the heyday of the fad, there's probably a box that they don't manage to check. Also named after one of the most classic songs in the genre: Blind by none other than Korn from their s/t that's a western vk album if there ever was one.. I remember when Sadie was referred to as Dir en grey's juniors so much so that you'd think they were stealing riffs from the left and right like Grieva. That's not exactly true, and while the influence is certainly there ( l does that drummer remind you of anybody? ), this is more a case of the musical illiteracy of the dumb western weeaboo who can't discern a clear case of the nu metals from just music where a boy with big hair yells a lot. Sadie is also a band that stuck around for way too fucking long instead of just disbanding the second they had conclusively blown their nu metal wad. Although nowhere near their best releases, Neo destruction deserves a mention because that riff is still being ripped off to this-a-day. I must have counted four instances of having seen it elsewhere, although the only ones I recall off the top of my head now are DEZERT and Mediena who took it wholesale. Nega got nu metally right after their first demo ( their best release ) and more or less stayed so until their disbandment. This goes to show that Kyoka wasn't the only one with nu metal aspirations towards the end of Aliene, and it's strange how they were suddenly unable to work together despite being into the same music. Maybe that just has more to do with that Nega actually started out really good and Kyoka hasn't been a part of anything even remotely decent since like, 1999... Because he sucks.

You posted stuff I only cut out due to brevity. D'espairsray was my first vk band and coll:set was a tremendously important album for me for the longest time. They really set the ball rolling for me and Hizumi was my idol from when I was 13 up until those three singles after Mirrors when I disowned them for having betrayed the cause. Forgave them years later and today I'm even a little fond of stuff like Horizon. D'espairsray also deserves mention because they were one of the first of their kind around, although the very earliest releases weren't as nu metally as some of what other bands put out. I was once informed by my mother that she didn't enjoy the screaming when I played Reddish from the CD player whilst riding the family car. Definitely a watershed moment for me as a person and as a loser. Love that Black:list song. It's a shame they didn't get to put out more stuff. They had a show here back in the day too, but of course I was a dullard and missed it. Most definitely. They clearly appeared at one point to identify themselves as such too, not to mention that they ripped off a bunch of the big bands like the forementioned D'espairsray.

Consider it a sister thread to the oshare kei one. I think this is a delightful dualism to make, and I am all about that vkei history anyway so I'll take any excuse to make another one of these. The adoption of the nu metal riff and attitude into visual kei's musical framework happened just when the scene changed forever with the implosion of the old labels and bands. In the usual visual kei fashion we were late to the party just about a good five years too. It snuck itself in slowly, making cursory appearances at such places as MUCC's Antique from 1999, Kagerou's Biological Slicer from 2000, Aliene Mariage's farewell album 21st Century from 2001 and probably in retrospect most importantly, Dir en grey's Six Ugly from 2002. By the year 2006 ( which saw the release of both eight's ILLATIONAL and Girugamesh' 13's Reborn ) the nu metal riff had fundamentally transformed the landscape of visual kei. Below are some examples of the development that took place. Before I get to that though, I have to say that there's not many scenes that can even begin to rival the longevity that visual kei bands, venues and its marketplace have enjoyed throughout its history. Still living both in the underground and occasionally even willing to take the L of performing at a half empty Budoukan, it ceases to amaze the spectators that stumble upon it; all the while all the goths of the bat caves, punks of 77' and dadrockers of the whatever, live out their legacies either through grandfathers or hack retro acts that suck by default. Granted it doesn't look the same, but indeed the willingness of its adherents to assimilate new currents have kept the hangman at bay and those nails off its coffin at least for now, which has allowed visual kei to remain a relatively recognisable brand for just about a few years short of three decades. This thread while also about the seminal bands that managed to break through, is just like its oshare counterpart moreso dedicated to honor and celebrate those little bands that everyone other than south american blogspots from 2007 forgot. If you were that angry young man in your mid teens back in 2008 you ought to know this stuff by heart If anyone can name an earlier instance of a just straight up nu metal riff I'd appreciate it greatly. Early Mucc is of course classic vkei and Tatsurou puts in just a canonical performance as the narrator of desperate hearts. Their nu metal sound would get thicker and thicker up until 2004, when they went literally out the deep end, supposedly almost disbanding by the sheer weight of the recording process. My preference however remains the very earliest releases up to 2002. From the band that made one of the best visual kei albums of all time comes a ripoff of "Eyeless" by Slipknot - that's the sound of Aliene imploding into disbandment. While I think it's undeniably shit especially considering merits of their career up to that point, they lowkey took part in pioneering the nu metal sound in visual kei. Keep in mind that at the time of this recording Slipknot's s/t wasn't that old, and it is a sound that vk bands would keep on ripping off for almost a decade afterwards. Another thing of note was that the vocalist Kyoka also ditched the frilly dresses and adopted the nu metal fashion! While his sins are numerous, this has to be his worst offense. Either way an important document for visual kei's metamorphosis. If the disease had only previously been a cough, after Dir en grey got through with it the scene quickly became hospitalised by it. They would continue riding roughshod over the genre until 2008's Uroboros where they'd go on to do more of the scene's pioneering work. Say what you will about them, they've continued to stay relevant through all these years and I think it's only very recently that the scene has stopped riding their coattails as much as it has. I'll keep it at that, though rest assured there's certainly numerous other examples of the early usage of the nu metal riff from around 99 to 2002 of varying importance in the canon. Early Girugamesh is what most people have their fondest memories of, and everything up to 13's Reborn is as good as gold as far nu kei is concerned. Their suit wearing while certainly not the first time it had happen in vkei, it was probably the context in which girugamesh presented it that made all the difference for the future: the blackclad angryman playing just nu metal influenced visual kei. Oddly enough I despised Girugamesh as a child EVEN THOUGH THEY SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALL THESE OTHER BANDS and it took me deep into adulthood that I finally warmed up to them at all. Unsraw was my Girugamesh in a sense that they were the filthiest band I knew in my seminal vk years. Hearing Unsraw sent me on a quest of finding the most rad nu metal vk band out there, and more often than not it just led me to the disappointments that contributed to the failure I am today. Yuuki's vocals made a huge impression on me and it was ever the more bitter pill to swallow that they got very boring very quick. Their Core the Child hits being contemporary with Girugamesh' early ouvre, they can also be considered of relative importance. This is what this thread is about. Look at those clothes, that breakdown from 2.10 that lasts for an eternity and Since1889 was in general just the quintessential nukei vk band. So bad it's good. Despite this band having just about eek'd past the 2010 limit, they deserve mention being one of those final bands at the tail end of this fad. The look is still very much 00's and not the glitz of the 10's, and more or less free of the soon scene dominating metalcore riff. Glorious vocals as well. There's a million of these bands, AND THEY'RE ALL GREAT. Post favs, early specimens in the scene, anything that fits within the parameters.

I just noticed for the first time after years of patronage that there's a very queer reproduction of Manet's un bar aux folies bergere hanging on the wall of the chinese owned watering hole downstairs. I'd kill myself if I had to live anywhere else in this shitty country

Likes lil uzi vert and is thus okay by me