Ikna

@ricchubunny the link that leads there is hidden in a post. But I think you need a certain user rank to see it.

Well, I probably won't be through the DL sections before the site closes, I hope it's true it will be hosted as read only later. I have to say, going through the section I discovered a shitload of bands I totally missed out on or neglected in the past.

Emmurée as well! 

Uploaded some right now, if you can even consider them VK

@reminiscing2004 their singer is gene from sick2 (ex SectMa) btw. Quite the change the dude went through…

this gives me very awful flashbacks…

You forgot about the biggest crime in smartphone design in the last years: removing the headphone jack. I don't care how convenient it is to have no cables - the jack worked fine and the sound quality is better and more reliable. I know people who'd smash their bluetooth speakers and headphones against the wall if it weren't for the peer pressure and "coolness factor". 

The last years we didn't have any true improvements as storage, memory and cpu capabilities are only slowly getting better and at this point it's just producers and brands inventing new gimmicks to incite people to buy the lastest tech. Shit like making phones so thin they need a screen repair after one year and having to buy extra bluetooth devices or an adapter to listen to music are the things that help these companies to fake innovation to get more money… while prices are increasing every year. 

I've recently also started to listen more to melodic and softer VK. I am usually more the punk and post-punk person, when it comes to oldschool stuff. We already had a thread about Oshare and the Nu Metal trend, so one about softvi kei would be a good addition. 
Rob seems to know the most about those bands, maybe try to ask him if he wants to write up something? 

I had that problem with a few files too, never found a way to fix it though. It annoyed me with some releases so I grabbed the CDs and ripped them 😕

I just wish they were more well known and popular. They are basically veterans at this point, but I feel not many people actually know they exist.

Enjoy the pristine video quality and high budget

@Disposable indeed it is! Some of my biggest favs were from that period. It's such a shame that most bands that had their success through that label went to shit once they went major (*cough' 12012, Vidoll…). 

They were supposed to play live where I live, but thanks to Covid that's cancelled. never saw them live and wanted to check it out ;/

Well, since we were talking about post-punk influences… I am certain G-Schmitt had a huge influence on this trope, as they had a few songs with spoken parts. Here is one song, that always reminds me heavily of the dark 90s VK bands:
 

The intro of this Gilles de Rais song is also very Deshabillz-esque (and features Lucifer from Gille's Love)

So I'd say it's been around quite some time, just like counting on German (earliest use by Zi:Kill afaik).

@Himeaimichu The only explanation I have is that goth in itself is so heavily misunderstood and our subculture was often mistaken for a lot of things that have barely anything to do with it. The scene has kinda developed a disdain to be linked to anything vaguely non-post-punk and it's very anal about categorizations. For the same reason it's become impossible to bring up "proper" gothic metal á la Type O Negative to the table. You will be shutdown quite fast for these people will "educate" you how bands like type o are 100% metal and metal isn't goff. It doesn't matter that Type O's sound is heavily influenced by post-punk or that a gothic metal band like Paradise Lost straight covered a bunch of goth rock bands like the Sisters of Mercy.

I guess it's the same with VK. Goths don't want to be confused with/linked to VK fandom and japanese heavy rock music. I remember that tension already existed way back in 2007, when some goth people I knew were very pissed off by the fact that Moi dix Mois were playing at WGT. (the irony here is, that a  lot of music at the WGT festival isn't even goth, but EBM, Metal…). Their argument was that this new invasion of japanese "faux-goth" will muddle the scene. Believe me, I tried educating some friends about the links between early Vk and post-Punk, but they keep insisting, that VK, because of its Metal influences nowadays, is a blight on the scene andhas no connection.

It's an ok video, but I am bothered by how people like her are denying the huge influence british and japanese goth bands had on early VK. Sure, they are not the same thing, but there were some heavy connections…

Some Suggestions (though some of them may also be from early 90s): DIE-QUÄR, Media-Youth, D≒SIRE, Silver~Rose, L'yse:nore, Canary, Speed-ID, Rapture, FANATIC◇CRISIS, Maschera, Kneuklid Romance, Romance for~

Pretty sure there's plenty others, the early to mid 90s were the best time for VK, lots of great bands as the scene exploded and reached its peak.

@saiko I am sure as time goes on even "the stuff that matters" will become rare. For some reason japanese bands aren't really good with archiving or conservation of their stuff, already there are so many old releases from the 80s and 90s that don't have any reprints, won't ever get one and thus are likely to become rare. I actually wonder what happens with many of the masters, do japanese labels withhold them from bands and the public,  like some western ones did? (like Universal Studio, until the place where they stored all the stuff burned to te ground and a lot of media is now forever lost)
 

I generally have this feeling that a lot of the media that we consume nowadays is fleeting and ephemeral and will not last as long as some other art from previous eras.

Edit: also I know you meant the download links and not so much physical releases, but even dl links will be gone. I can't see mediafire still existing in 2080… 

lynch is cancelled now

@heresytrash didn't nintendo say you can't play the events via time travel? As far as I understood it, events are supplied via the updates and atm the updates only gave us bunny day and earth day. Plus  there's something bout having to connect to the internet to activate the event... nintendo has put this in place to prevent people from experiencing the events earlier than others. Also I imagine there will be new features in future updates as well, since the game still looks kinda unfinished.

They have been doing this since at least this spring. There used to be a discussion about this on their support forum, which seems to have been removed as well by the staff, but an archived version exists under this link: https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/why-did-last-fm-decide-to-kill-a-bunch-of-artist-pages?

"goth"

Depends. As an "artist" who paints both traditional and digital you can make both look great. Both media have heir pros and cons and digital really isn't that much easier, nor objectively shittier. Sometimes it takes even more time than painting traditionally (also 3D animation isn't easy peasy either, you have to really learn it).

I think the problem is more that modern animes are produced fast and cheap and there isn't much time invested to make it good from the get go (see the enhanced BluRay releases, while the initial premier on TV is the crappy alpha version).

The industry has become pretty unforgiving (you either loose a lot of money or you win a lot) and studios try to cash in as best as possible, hence they produce way too much in shorter timeframes. Hell, most animators nowadays work themselves to death with 12+ hour workdays, yet earn almost nothing. They need to puke out these new episodes like a machine. I think there was recently an animator who died because of overworking.