Ikna

not sure if it's actually him, since I didn't investigate so much, honestly. It's from tumblr and tumblr is quite often not a reliable source, but who knows. There isn't anyone who has seen jabell yet, is there?

I remember, lol. But I guess only the old-skewl fans were crazy or was this at a time a larger part of the VK fandom still cared about him? I actually wonder how many of the late 90s bandmember can still ring a bell in other people's ears. I personally think not many (except the members from bands who are still active after 30 years, like Luna Sea, L'arc~en~ciel and so on). Does yune from Gazette also count as old vk guy? He has apparently shared a photo of him since he is now in Jabell:

"Pizza of Death" "Rotten Orange" what's with the names, lol?

I tried to mention the white kei guys as well, see my line about "frilly New Wave boys with Boy George make-up". But yeah, I am a bit ignorant against the bands that totally had no real visual style per se but still counted as VK, such as later Fanatic Crisis or Blüe (who dressed rather mundane). And even those bands weren't a bunch of idealistic host boys. I'd even go to say that Soft Visual kei was generally more accepted as regular Pop-Rock or J-Rock groups anyway. Most people knew them rather as that than visual kei (let alone the fact, that many japanese people don't even know what VK is, but they are aware of the bands associated with the term. This especially seems the case with groups like Shazna, Sophia, Penicillin, Jeanne Da Arc or L'arc~en~Ciel. However: blackdoll was talking about the type of bands in very exaggerated couture and with white painted faces, not about soft kei bands. I don't think it would make so much sense to conter with that anyway, since White kei isn't comparable to most of the modern "Br00tal" Metalcore influenced bands, that seem to be in trend now. I actually don't even know if Soft visual kei still exists, it always seemed to me that it just fusioned with the regular japanese rock scene and Oshare kei pretty much took over to be the "light, bright side of VK". Correct me if I am wrong.

I should be going to sleep, but I just saw the preview and damn... love the outfits! And so far the song is promising. It's not a progression or big change from their other stuff but it's great (and I am totally okay with fast-tempo, aggressive old vk sounds). I get the Kiri to Mayu vibes from the PV as well (and maybe a bit of Ash too?). I actually think the white gowns suit them well, it's something different from their previous all black costumes. I like the CD cover as well. Now I have to order this.

In my opinion THAT is actually what i really love about the old looks. Surely, the outfits were sometimes really silly and exaggerated and the make up sloppy, but i prefer it that way dozen times. Why? Because I feel the old styling looked more raw, dynamic and interesting. It wasn't the complete über-perfection which it is now, some guys looked like Drags, others like punks, the others like a bad version of Sayako from Ju-On. I really dislike how most vk make-up nowadys looks so polished, everything has to be precise and perfect from teint, complexion to eyes and the boring hairstyles. It makes sense though - new VK guys rather look like Hosts (who are supposed to look like ultimate perfect bishonen straight from your wet manga fantasies) than frilly New Wave boys with Boy George make-up (or oh so spooky goths in drag). I guess that's where everyone's opinion differs, depending on their taste and aesthetic preferences. I personally adore a well done old school make up (and I tell you - it's very very difficult. I've tried it a few times and it still looks rather "meh". You can fail pretty hard at a late 90s Matina/Soleil style make-up if you aren't really good with the tools. Also: see all early 00s cosplays. All the people who wanted to look like Mana or oldschool Kyo and failed epically...). Especially the white faces are my faves, because they can be expressive (almost Harlekin like), yet it doesn't really matter how beautiful the person is who wears it - they don't need to be super beautiful bishonen and the focus lies more on their style and make up. Of course I can see and understand people who like new VK make up better. It's more polished, clean and it can be worn outside the stage in mundane life as well- so it is more versatile. Old VK styling is rather extreme and especially the outfits aren't supposed to be worn daily. But I still miss this style though and I am happy a few groups now are still dressing that way.

^ The fate of being an artist. If you publish your work, then there will be people criticising it and not everyone will be nice while doing it. I and Arithemtica have already talked about Sada and he is indeed terrible, but for old skewl standards it's adorably terrible, it really just misses more typical 90s dark veekay craziness. I'd still wish there would be decent old school VK influenced bands who don't sound just simply boring and awful

People already have mentioned most of the important influental gothic rock and post-punk bands, but I am surprised nobody has mentioned any japanese ones yet. Groups like Madame Edwarda, Phaidia, Neurotic Doll and Sadie Sads had quite a similiar style to many of the post-punkish early visual kei groups of the early 90s, especially Nagoya kei groups like Silver~Rose, early ROUAGE or Gilles de Rais. Makes sense, since this groups operated within the regions and venues were Visual kei groups later would form, so there was a direct influence. Also compare Sadie Sads' Glas Bruch (I feel it has quite a strong proto Visual kei flair). G-Schmitt should be worth mentioned too and of course all the other underground gothic rock bands from Japan (ASYLUM, Sex Android, Geil). Some of them are technically considered oldschool visual kei, such as EX-Ans or VOISS. Oh and: if you mention Bauhaus then you should not forget Siouxsie and the Banshees. Their influence on early visual kei is often overlooked, maybe because it's not all too obvious, but the Banshees were quite big in Japan (and Siouxsie herself was influenced by japanese fashion and culture). Siouxsie was your typical 80s goth prototype as a lot of (new) wavers, punks and new romantics aimed to look like her. Black backcomped hair, massive amounts of dark eyeshadow and red lipstick are her trademark – and you happen to see this exact look a lot in early Vk bands too. Inoran from Luna Sea almost looked like a male japanese version of her. Big But: I'd rather put all of this bands in a seperate thread called "Influences/origins of visual kei". Because it's a bit weird to say that those groups remind me of visual kei, when it's rather that this groups influenced (among other bands from different genres) visual kei (so early Vkei reminds me of the old Punk and New Wave stuff and not the other way round). For me most of them are still post-punk groups. A thread about the history, influences and origins of visual kei (and how it shifted from Hard/Glam/Punk-Rock and New Wave inspired music into the weird style mix thing it is today) would be very interesting though! (especially since I only know about the wave and goth origins so i'd be interested to hear about the other influences). When it comes to groups outside of the "has influnces Visual kei in soe way" spectrum... then I don't know any bands who remind me of Vk. Sure, a lot of goth, Hardrock, Nu-Metal, etc bands sounded similiar to the struff from the late 80s to 90s, but as said again: that's because those genres had a definite influence on Visual kei. I don't remember seeing so many other modern bands drawing influence from VK, let alone being similiar to it (without having the intention of being a VK band). Some people would argue that groups like Black Veil Brides are reminding them of Visual kei because of their looks... I wonder if the band does even know about Visual kei's existence? (I don't know, I am not a fan of them). But I can see why people would have the idea that make-up heavy Metalcore (or Emo?) groups are VK, especially since the musical style became popular within the Visual kei scene in the recent years too. There was even a time magazines tried to sell those finnish rock bands full of adrogynous men to sell as Visual Kei. And bands like Tokio Hotel... most of the time it#s just the look which is reminiscent (or comparable) to Visual kei, but that's it.

Agree with everything said before. Old school VK demo tapes kick ass ;D I often prefer the demo versions over the proper studio recordings (if there any), because I like the low-fi and "raw" sound of tapes. The studio re-recoarding often lacks this charisma and tends to be too clean for my taste. Best example: Deep Sky and Sexual by Syndrome. I don't like the Sexual Remix on their Remix Single as much as the original tape version (and the re-recoarded version on the de-light taoe is fine too). Deep Sky on Sosei sounds a bit different (also lacks a whole part which was in the tape version) and it's too clean. I love most of the Matina band tapes, especially the song 夢又夢... by Das:Vasser from the 青玉-サファイア- tape. Other favs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuwxZbikhGU (anything by Ruellia actually! Oh and does anyone have that tape here? XD) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui19pDjXeok (so deliciously low budget) I have to say that the low fi aesthetic is not only limited to tapes. Quite a lot of vinyl recordings have that charme as well, especially in certain genres like Gothic Rock, Punk Rock, Post Punk, Minimal (Electro), Noise and Shoegaze. This industrial piece by Cabaret Voltaire for example fully embraces it.

Why do most non-asian Visual kei bands always end up looking like either Mallgoths or Emos? :/ (my thoughts about the music are in the other thread... but I repeat it again: the vocalist sounds terribly monotonous)

I actually think he looks okay. XD Isn't really the youngest anymore and honestly... many VK bandmembers look like shit without their make-up and intense photoshop airbrushing.

Sounds very old school-ish and reminds me a lot of the type of melodic visual kei songs from the mid 90s or Matina bands. (was Syndrome maybe an inspiration? I think you have done a Nostalgia cover, Neolicht) I hope you find some new members, I feel this project has potential. And yeah, also agreeing that you should also look up some of the post-punk/goth rock influenced stuff. With the kind of guitar playing in the dystopia song I feel it would fit very easily into your groups disco. Key Party bands are defintely a good start for inspiration, especially Aliene Ma'riage or Eliphas Levi.

Yeah, that list looks nice. At least Grieva aren't like Phantasmagoria who would re-release and replay the same 10 old songs over and over. @Hyura: we all have our dreams I'd be very glad as well if Grieva would start to incorporate song structures and influences from other oldschool bands. Even though 90s bands all copied each other resulting in certain elements appearing in a lot of sogs of different groups there is still such a big pool of different styles of the era you could draw inspiration from. I am sure Grieva can pull off a typical Matina sound (Azalea, Mist of Rouge or maybe DAS:VASSER). They probably won't be able to make a pure Madeth gray'll tribute song, because Kyouki's voice doesn't really fit (in my opinion), but if they mix it it would be very awesome (Dir en grey + Madeth mix).

Animu Yakuza kei!

recently there are a lot of one day revivals of Matina bands which is so nice. Now if someone could please pay me a flight to Japan, it would be perfect and very kawaii, thx.

I love Ruellia! Glad that they are going to re-form.

Pömpel... ich glaube, dass man das bei uns in Ö auch nicht sagt XD Was genau ist an "das geht sich nicht aus" komisch? XD Okay, für mich ist es als Österreicherin völlig klar, was es heißt, aber ich denke man kann es auch so recht gut verstehen, wenn man quasi bildlich denkt. "Fix" ist bei uns generell so eine Art universal-Ding. Es kann sowohl "fertig", "klar/eindeutig" oder "Ist Klar/ Machen wir!" heißen (z.b. wenn jemand ruft "Das ist fix!"). So ähnlich ist es dann auch mit dem Begriff "ur", was ursprünglich eben von "uralt" kommt, aber bei uns auch als Wort verwendet wird. Z.b. "Ur super", das heißt dann "Total super". Ich glaube, dass es das auch in manchen Regionen in Deutschland gibt? "Beömmeln" ist mir seltsamerweise auch bekannt, weiß aber nicht woher. Aber sagen nicht manche Berliner auch "dat"? Oder habe ich mich da während meines kleinen Berlin-Ausflugs verhört? XD Kennt eigentlich irgendwer die sogenannten "Krocha"? Das waren eine Jugendgruppe, die sich in Österreich innerhalb der Clubbing Szene entwickelt hat und das Verwenden von Wörtern wie "fix" zum Lebensmotto gemacht haben. Sahen auch ziemlich scheiße aus mit ihren lustigen Hosen und Neon-Kappen. Anscheinend gabs vor ein paar Jahren, als die noch "in" waren einige Befürchtungen, dass sich der Trend nach Deutschland ausbreiten würde (was ich aber immer skeptisch betrachtet habe, aufgrund der Sprachbarrieren).

I doubt they'll "copy" Madeth (of course that would be cool. Even though I don't think Kyouki could pull off Hisui's singing style). Madness and Death were the top old skewl visual kei clichés (followed by weird erotica and serial murderers). But we'll see, right?

Oh dear... first Cinema Bizarr and now this. And lol at how uncreative they are for naming their band and song. The vocalits is so bad and sounds so bored, holy fuck. I had to skip through this whole shit. Oh and I found something new too: I actually think it's not that bad. It sounds also a lot better than their stuff from 2006 (I know those are lives and this one is studio). Still your average cheesy Malice Mizer-ish old school VK. But at least these guys have mexican lyrics and I think the language goes well with the typical visual kei melodies and rhythms.

That's pretty fast indeed. As much as I like them I think they should need a small pause just to find themselves, by which I mean collect more inspirations outside of the Dir en grey Nostalgia hole.

Kyouka needs to have a new real band releasing stuff. He could reactivate his solo or just make Pink Tribal his solo stuff. I don't care, I just want to hear something new. Oh and: I think it's wiser to make a new thread for news, because everytime this gets pushed you think "does he have health issues again?"

Thanks for all the infos and stuff. I saw that list of you, Champ, yesterday when I got curious if I have missed some bands. An update would be really cool I understand that Visual kei fans primarily like the bands due to the beutiful guys. It was more of a rethoric question I posed conderning the female guitarist who pretended to be a guy. I understand japanese fans think differently and also the majority of foreign fans prefer to look at hot cross dressing guys rather than girls. But I still wished women would be more accepted. There is sure a lot of jealousy, but when I look at many Exist Trace fans who really like the band members (and especially Omi) than it gives me a bit hope that female muscians might get at least a bit of fan support. And what I noticed too was the small, yet growing numbers of male visual kei fans who like groups like exist trace or Danger Gang. And yeah, it seems the all female bands are more popular due to the fact that the girls can't "interfere with the male band members. And I too think more girls could bring a bit more innovation into the "genre". It's nice that nowadays there are apparently many bands already with female members (only sad, that most of them disband or go on hiatus, like Secilia Luna or Cocklobin...) And oh, forgot Az:Madius. Really awesome old visual flavoured band. Deep female voices are also my thing. And I wasn't aware that the Hybrid Zombiez vocalist is a girl. I only listened to them a few times (but I really like her voice) and just read this discussions about her gender. In Visual kei you can get easily fooled or confused. i also always thought Omi was a boy for example.

^ very interesting, Champ! I did know this band back from my early VK weaboo days. I think they even played once here in Austria. And I also always had the feeling that the guitarist was a girl due to the facial structures. I think it's really an interesting fact that she wanted to hide this fact that she was female. Did she do it because she thinks the fans would like her as a guy more? And yeah, I bet there quite a few (if not lot) members who are female but we don't know it.

Well, I can't remember this has been a discussion before soooo... let's talk about women in visual kei, female bandmembers and all-female bands! I personally have a thing for women in Visual kei for a few reasons: first there aren't that many women participating in the visual kei music scene, most of the female demographic are just fans. Quite surprising when you consider how femenine aesthetics are important in VK. Of course not so surprising since rock and metal always have been dominated by men, including frilly glam rock with guys wearing skirts and make up. But that makes female VK bands even more special and outstanding, I find. Well, then female vocalists. I have the feel the women seem to be better at singing or at least it doesn't show so much when they don't hit the right tones as it does when the male counterparts are doing it. Surely we are all used to the way the guys sing, especially the deep growls and screams... but women can pull it off too. And I just like the voice of some of the girls So what do I expect from this thread? A little discussion what you think about the lack of women (or their popularity) in VK, if you would like to see more female members or bands. And of course discussing about bands that already exist! And: tips for bands to check out , but mainly the rather unknown and obscure groups (because we all know who Exist Trace are) I mainly use to listen to 90s VK, so I'd be personally interested if someone could manage to dig up some VK girl or mixed gender bands from that era. And: a few bands with female members I know of: - Exist Trace (obvious) - Necro Circus - Clothoid÷Doll - Solfege - MARY☆RUE - G~Angel - Greece Grace - ZEDEKIAH (I always thought the vocalist was male... turned out to be a woman?) - Danger Gang - R'OSE - AMADEUS - Pleur - Pyuera - CaMin - Kilhi+Ice apparently the singer of Hybrid Zombies is rumored to be a girl. And I have heard the drummer of Matina band allure idea too.