Karma’s Hat

okay now I kind of like it, but that's only because I enjoy 2010's vk trash. I'm not proud.

I'm listening to the Nakigara wo tape rip that was uploaded here recently, which you should go download if you haven't done so already, and it's healthy to be reminded every now and then how incredible this band was. Fuck d'erlanger, x japan and the whole lot, nobody was playing music like this. Outside of the odd Luna Sea track like Shade, there's no instances of any other band at the time conjuring this kind of darkness and depravity. The sound of this album has been ripped off on a regular basis for over two decades now. Kuroyume invented visual kei and I pay no heed to any other opinion on the matter. They realised the sound that everyone else had only flirted with at the time.

This sounds criminally bad for having a Moran member on it. I don't think I'd have a problem with this if it didn't have a guy in the lineup who should be occupied with far better stuff.

They have plenty, but here's one This shit really is the bane of my existence. It's like a visual kei version of South Park's City Wok bit.

Two things Reality: The upcoming Morrigan album is a good example. Any sort of romantic ideal you might have in your head about these guys just going out there to express themselves in sexy angry music and nais hairs and heavy makeup crumbles down when bands pull shit like this. Really releasing an album that's essentially a compilation shows a complete lack of vision, ambition and concern for their own image and legacy. The curtain has been pulled back and the money grubbing hackery is exposed in clear daylight. The profit margin unfortunately is part and parcel of visual kei, and it works to the scene's detriment. The other thing is when these bands bust out the _traditional_ Japanese instruments to give a song some corny folk ornamentation. The worst recent offender I can think of was Avelcain. It wouldn't be as bad if the music actually treated the concept with some respect instead of hamming in a melody that sounds like it was composed for a TV advertisement about frozen chinese food. It's so fucking bad, like it's literally the same if a Finnish band played around with Kalevala image and dressed up in fucking furs and tar face paint, which is made all the more worse by the fact that there are bands that actually do that. For me personally the experience of seeing these bands is what a person from India ( pardon the generalisation, I know it's an infinitely diverse country ) would feel if he saw a band doing a concept album about the kamasutra while dressed up like Apu from the Simpsons.

Mejibray: In This Moment cover band Baiser: dead member

Hardly listened to anything ( in general ) last month. Doesn't have anything to do with the stuff that's out there, I've just prioritised doing other shit ahead of it. This has to have been the least music I've ever listened to in my active music consuming life, which started at around 2005 I'd gather. From visual kei I enjoyed Pentagon and Diaura. Pentagon took surprisingly little time in finding their own distinct sound and concept after that flop first album. I think it was literally on the next release after that where they adopted their current sound and gimmick that suits them perfectly. The color of the gaudy carnival visuals works for them, and so does the blend of visual kei metalcore and hirokicore. I'm overly simplifying for sure, because I really do think they have an unique thing going that's all distinctly Pentagon. Popcorn Monster is their best track to date I'd say. Diaura does Diaura. Sometimes it's better and sometimes, or rather often times, it's worse. Recently it has been quite good and I've been very slow in warming up to it, but it's good nonetheless. Playing ballads also masks the abysmal taste in riffs of the guitarists, so everything in this works in their favor here. What else... Kuroyuri was quite alright, however I decided to symbolically omit them from the previous two because while I really did like the live dist. songs it has ( especially the first track ), I am getting such bad vibes from them. It's going to be the next release or the one after that where I go "fuck this nonsense" and get tired of their shtick. It's working for the time being, but there's only so many times when they can play that song without getting tired and loosening up the quality control. I'm reserving the the chance to take back everything that I've said, since I may just be paranoid from Gossip having exhausted all their energies. From western music I listened to Young Thug, Frank Ocean and Rae sremmurd and something else or another that I can't recall. First two are great, the third less so but a few tracks bang.

The most important thing that one can tell themselves in 2016 is: Stop doing nothing all the damn time

Anything that contributes to my future coronary

San's musical acumen is very suspect. That the whatever band he had between NEGA and Black Gene was so shit.

To add to what was discussed above: Kpop was the new VK insofar as the weeaboodom was concerned. The scene that was here from early 2000's till the end of the decade either disintegrated into kpop or musical apathy. Kpop certainly has a wider reach in demographic, but it swallowed the visual kei culture in Europe and spat it out. There were more reasons to its demise such as the general decline of physical sales, bad promotion & mismanagement, the death and emergence of a new generation of vk bands in Japan and the general zeitgeist not being all that in favor of "alternative rock", with the kpop vulture certainly swooping in at the opportune moment to pick the carcass. It almost seems as if by fate that kpop really hit its stride right around the time when the vk bands of the early 2000's responsible for the western market breakthrough started disbanding and/or sucking en masse.

I CAN'T SEE WHERE THE FUCK I'M GOING I CAN'T DO SHIT BUT GET MAD

I don't mind VK going on its shield into the dustbin of history if the other option is yohio apps and youtube reaction videos.

I like everything they've put out so far, but I can sense a slowing down in momentum. On an intuitive level I feel like the next release is going to be either lame shit or just tired tripe. All I got from this were bad vibes

Love this band. Hooks for days

Their looks lately have improved drastically to the fucking dreadful mallgoth drags they used to have on with all the chains and leather pants. They're not beating the vocalist's Hisui look from a while back anytime soon thou'

420 by mejibray is in the top 20 vk albums of all time* * if it's one album from each band

holy shit november is stacked

I'm not 100% on the chronology, but a safe bet would be that every pic where they look like emos is an old one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resVHI0KW5I The picture displayed here has to date prior to them turning VK. For a bonus here's a really good cover of Pray for plagues they did. I wouldn't have minded if they had just stayed as a BMTH and Suicide SIlence cover band, even though I have learned to enjoy most of their output especially after the live.

Who did the condom first? Gazette had one sold at the dome live in 2010

The vocalist is my boy... ... Unfortunately the music they put out isn't as good as his look is. Nice amount of full length albums for the last two quarters of the year. Avanchick, Morrigan, Follow, Clowd + others I'm surely forgetting about.

I like it! Could have added it here actually. Speakin of Migos i actually like them more as features than on their own material like on Dipset. Can't recall a single bad offset or quavo feature on the spot nice to see other fans of #realhiphop here!!

@The Reverend Agreed. Flockaveli is a classic and such an artistry defining statement that I thought everything afterwards was just additional baggage. I pretty much treated him like Keef that in my eyes their careers were capped and done with, but this just bangs exceptionally hard. Then again I also like Migos and they've quite literally made the same shit for years now.

Fucking love this band now. That compilation album is just fire from beginning to end, and they actually don't rip off gazette as much as I thought. Good description would be EP gazette mixed with Grieva, in a good way. While their riffcraft isn't on par with prime godzette, they make up for it by accentuating the savagery of that sound and amp it up. The recent singles haven't exactly set the world on fire, but like Grieva I reckon the quality will fluctuate over time. Either way the compilation is more good material than most bands put out in their time.

I don't think the single covers are them being lazy, but more someone responsible for them thinking that it's cute. They've had that aesthetic for a long time now and it's kind of their thing now. For the record I do think the regular cover is shite, despite having learned to live with having tzk adorn the other editions of every single. The DVD cover I do like.