Karma’s Hat

vks dead again damn

Last time I went to his twitter he was listening to the shit they dug up from Lil Peeps coffin, so yeah it’s gonna be shit

Probably because it's such a mickey mouse operation that they'll just keep taking them as they're offered with not much planning otherwise. I think they'd still draw a decent, not great not terrible, crowd in Germany, Paris and possibly Poland as well. I'm just curious what kind of price they're asking for this if no one in the EU went for this. DIMLIM can sleep in my place if anyone pays the flights and books the venue lol Despite that one positive concert review that was posted here some time ago, I'm totally convinced ( with no proof of course ) that this is a total disaster and this is the worst album rollout strategy in visual kei history especially when you consider that the album probably isn't going to come out either.

It's actually nice that we got a definite thread for this topic, and musing on some of the posts above I'll also go ahead and say that the vk boom in the west about ten, fifteen years ago consisted of 10% was X's gigantic popularity landing on western shores due to word of mouth and tape trading and what have you. Lots of people in the metal community knew about vk even some 20 years ago, and some went on to be converted into visual kei fans that travelled to Japan. These people were real music fans™ that were willing to learn and study despite the challenges and were unlikely to trend hop later on to the next big thing. These people did do a lot of preliminary work for the fad that was about to come by setting up databases online and etc. 90% a by-product of the big anime and manga culture craze that had thirsty weeaboos take anything Japanese, internalise it and then finally project themselves unto it. It had very little to do with the fandom in Japan, but more with the ( the teenage female variety, not the 4chan alt right one we see now lol ) anime fandom and the culture specific to that one ie. people switched their sasukes to uruhas and as soon as that trend stabilised the cultural moment was gone. It also helped that we were still living the outer reaches of the post-Linkin Park alt metal age that's pretty much dead now. Visual kei is very unfriendly to beginners and takes a lot of legwork to really wrap yourself around. It's culture is completely foreign to gaijins and musically also pretty unusual to people with limited musical vocabulary and experience. It got big by complete accident and caught everyone off guard. That won't happen again and like in some of the posts before me, that's completely fine with me. I think the way the scene is going to develop in the future will depend solely on its internal economical circumstances that are then of course tied to the economics and cultural situation in Japan. Visual kei has already proven that it will live in its own way completely in spite of western fads and it's quite impressive that somewhere in the world there is a music scene that's still making bank playing stuff that's not at all popular anywhere else anymore. Sometimes it reaches into its past ( Ains, old bands like MUCC and Deg looking visual again, Starwave ) and sometimes it tries to look into the future with rather umm... mixed results ( Royz, Realies, Heisei Ishin all those bands with neon colors and funny synth. ) And then some dudes decide to hop on the culture while playing what's pretty much X influenced* metalcore while slowly fads like the nu-metal riff creep into its DNA. It's a world onto itself that keeps on doing what it wants to do at its own pace, and that's pretty cool. Unfortunately like I said before the time when all those legendary big bands retire it is definitely going to be felt in the amount of boys who want to play this kind of stuff when the knowledge about this scene starts slowly getting more and more underground and other idols replace the old rock glam gods of the past. Still despite all that, there's going to be at least a few 7/11 clerks with long hair who are willing to give it a shot, if only just to get laid. *I maintain that vk's fondness of ballads and guitar solos is still leftover from X's influence.

Yeah in that way it's a very successful album imo, especially compared to Arche that seems to find an unenthusiastic middle position in everyones list ( or TiW that's in the middle at best or bottom at worst. )

Before people mentioned it here I had totally forgotten that not even that long ago they were using pretty much none of the social media platforms used in other countries. The Japanese are just not interested in investing time in figuring out how the market here works and then investing money in those foreign markets if it doesn’t work out practically by itself like when manga and anime did the heavy lifting for them, and that’s it. I doubt most of these labels have any business savvy other than the yakuza school of street entrepeneurship that was beaten into them. They’re about as clueless as to how things work here as most of us are about how it works there. You can’t really blame them for that when things are lucrative enough domestically, and everything else is a great unknown with big risk and mediocre reward at best.

i don't think that's tru m8, the lamestream is for sure edgier it has ever been before. there was a time when you couldn't even make a political platitude without the management being out for your ass, and now it's sometimes even part of the marketing both from left to right to say something inflammatory. coloured hair, face tats and anti-social behaviour is endemic and you have dudes like XXXTENTACION and Lil Peep becoming legends. After years of everyone looking the same ( think of a generic early 90's rapper and then a generic early 2000's rapper, now think of the scene today ) all kinds of old barriers are breaking down, aesthetic movements from the past that people used to think were in bad taste like nu-metal are being reappropriated almost solely for being edgy and brutish. even Billie Eilish is a gigantic jump from the saccharine feel good corporate morass of the 1980's that everyone loves for some reason, the same 80's where without the big business say so no one could get famous because the music business controlled every single media outlet that didn't involve some dudes mom's basement 'zine factory; now you can make a living independently and do what you want just by E-begging, let alone being "yourself" and selling the music you do. I doubt we've ever had as sincerely political and personal music before as we do now with all sides of the spectrum being represented. it's even acceptable and almost expected to like all kinds of music now, whereas back in the day it was common for the general music consumptee to identify with just one thing. theoretically I think if there was ever a time for vk to finally break through with people who seriously actually spend time with music then the time should be now, but in my opinion we'll never see a time when vk will get rid of the anime weeaboo kawaii stigma. people who like good post-punk, goth etc. stuff will never discover what vk had to offer and all those gems around the millenia will be just forgotten somewhere in dead blogspots and dusty cabinets because of this, and that's unfortunate.

Fuck I wish I had not clicked those links

Well there's many reasons and we've had topics or discussions about this before on the forum so if you do some digging you'll find some decent posts about it. Here's some points tho: 1. The Japanese have stopped investing time and money in the western market. The big tours and promotion campaigns and shit are all long gone after everyone ( most likely ) lost their money ten years ago. This situation has actually now started to change slightly with big relevant bands like DADAROMA making the exception for anime conventions for that big anime cash, and also they've been starting to wake up about the potential of streaming services like spotify despite having been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I don't think this will amount to a boom like it was before, but maybe at least it will normalise the situation where our existence is at least acknowledged in some roundabout way. 2. Visual kei ain't doing so hot in Japan either. Now with the hiatus of R-shitei the amount of big bands is only dwindling down and the fact that successful new bands like Raid that, let's be real, are nothing to write home about musically and that would never ever get any press outside the vk fandom because it's strictly for visual kei die hard gyas only, super niche. Also the biggest media draws are getting dangerously close to retiring for good if not by their own will then by time itself. The international rock circuit is not going to recover once those legends are gone and the time is almost here, and I'm open for suggestions as to who'll replace X, GLAY and L'arc and draw like they did. 3. General culture shift is hugely in favor of music that can be done at home and then toured for fraction of the price ie. rap music and electronic music. Big spectacle pop performers aside, touring a rapper and a singer without loads of equipment is significantly cheaper and easier. People can start realising their musical ambitions without finding other people even in the middle of nowhere; and then to this you add the reality that rock music stopped innovating for the culture years ago. Nothing came after the metalcore post-hardcore fad, and rock audiences are aging by the year while hip hop audiences span multiple demographics from all male to all female and from young to older and the underground scenes change faces around every six months. Techno is also insanely profitable where the night lives of cities around the world function around the techno economy that can cater to normies and underground diehards at the same time. People ( normies ) go to rock clubs on the weekends as a curiosity to listen to shit that's at least 20 years old and most often between 30 and 40 years old.

So bad it's good. Brutal kei cheese if there ever was the vocalist looks like a mix of TOXIC era Ruki and Karma lol

Sounds better than the singles. Back on board the hype train

Very surprising ’cause I can’t imagine Mamo in any other project and they were for sure raking in cash lately. I thought their stuff was hit and miss, better in their aesthetic rather than their music. wouldn’t put it past them coming back one week after as a stunt

For sure a fan decided to either fund it or get enough people together to finance it

Similar poorly produced demo compilation incoming with programmed drums and credits to someone’s home studio as the mini

I don't get this reading that the post was aggressive or even passive aggressive. He was happy to be there and wants to come back, and yeah if you look at the videos the crowd knew no lyrics at all so it's understandable that he'd hope the people listen to more of the stuff they do other than just The Final.

Ahem, you mean Tooru Nishimura hates touring abroad

my money is on iiid empire as the last one. no fucking way it's new age culture

Their recent stuff has not been bad and two nights in berlin sounds like a fun gimmick and the best chance to hear oldies

This is tru. It's a pig gaijin audience who doesn't care and is just out there to have a good time and throw some bucks out the bands way. The weebs cheering the asian roadie is still funny and worth a laugh, but it's nowhere close to as weird and cultish as it was 12 or even 10 years ago. You can tell the audience has gotten significantly older from back in the day and the behavior is more in line with general young peoples metalcore concert vibe*. *sans the fact that getting a pit started is still all in the shoulders of one brave individual who's willing to start swinging by himself. I remember from the last two deg gigs how there's dudes in the middle kind of eyeing each other and waiting for someone to pull the trigger. edit: oh yikes I just saw one World of Mercy clapping video. cancel this

Early golden bomber, the stuff that came before memeshikute 😕

They’ve played gauze, macabre and kisou material overseas before so anything is possible

we need a show at an undisclosed location in the woods 14 people maximum. to purchase tickets you'll have to know kyo's real name and have spent at least 200 euros on the shipping of their cds that you bought exclusively from japan discoveries.

lol at the crowd having no idea about the lyrics. they fucked up that part in World of Mercy that they were supposed to sing along with as well.

I fucking love the hotarubi performances on the blitz and mode DVDs

Everyone was trying to forget about it