saltofstones

The samples sound really good! Too bad it's only on iTunes Japan.

I can't stand those obnoxious female vocals in the chorus, which is a shame, because I like the rest of the song. Overall I much prefer it over Ibitsu & Derangement for instance, I didn't like those one bit.

Oh no, that's horrible. I don't want to expect the worst, but it's kinda hard not to.

Great news! I also hope they'll be including those recent singles on the album. But is their drummer Yuta not part of the band anymore? He's absent from both the line-up for the album and the promotional pics.

The beginning sounded familiar, then I realized it sounds almost exactly like Dezert's song MONSTER with a bit of Mejibray's Sabato thrown in the mix.

Terrible news for me, they're one of my favorite VK bands. I'm thankful we're at least getting another album, but damn, this is so sad.

I'd rather not listen to anything while studying or reading as I have great difficulties focusing when it's not dead silence. But I don't live alone so there's bound to be music or voices coming from the other room, so in those cases I have no choice but to play something to cover the other noises. Listening to music in my own room allows me to focus better than hearing someone else's music from the other room for example. Usually it's IDM, ambient, shoegaze or dream pop, though I prefer instrumental music otherwise I get too distracted by the vocals. My artists of choice that seem to work better than others are Displacer, The Luna Sequence and Go-qualia.

Nice, I'll be looking forward to it.

1. Rin Toshite Shigure 2. ART-SCHOOL 3. DIR EN GREY 4. Straightener 5. Coaltar of the Deepers 6. Lillies and Remains 7. PLASTICZOOMS 8. Arukara 9. THE NOVEMBERS 10. 88kasyo Junrei I had to kick some bands I was really fond of from the top 10, it was painful.

That's too bad. Although I didn't like their last album, it's still really sad to see them go.

1. LIPHLICH 2. Grieva 3. umbrella 4. Tokyo Heroes 5. DISH 6. cocklobin 7. CATFIST 8. DEZERT 9. Miss Jelly Fish 10. DIMMDIVISION. These are not in any particular order except for LIPHLICH. I would've added Munimuni and dieS to the list, but they haven't had any new releases in a while so I tried to replace them with others. There are other bands I enjoy that didn't make the list like CELL, Lament, emmurée, the god and death stars and others I can't think of at the moment.

I don't mind him doing pop/dancey music if that's what he wants, but personally I don't like it. It's true, Miyavi never sticks with one style of music for too long and he's an ever-changing artist, so it's not all that surprising he's gone doing something different again. Although I think it's pretty cool that he's playing whatever he wants to, that doesn't mean I'll like everything he does. I heard all the samples a few days ago and I'm pretty sure I don't like the new stuff. Some songs actually reminded me of Backstreet Boys or the English boyband Five.

First time hearing this band and I am quite impressed. The song is so lovely. Cool PV as well.

Yay, exciting news!

Used to be a big fan of these guys when I was younger, I was really into their first three albums, than The New Game came out and I didn't like it at all, it was a pretty disappointing release for me. I don't even know what they're doing these days to be honest (except for Chad's side project Hellyeah which I heard is pretty terrible), I kinda lost track of them. Listening to Mudvayne again would be really nostalgic, for sure.

Great news, can't wait to hear something new from them!

Another disbandment coming out of nowhere. I liked their last album although it wasn't anything to write home about. I would have liked to hear more. Oh well.

I used to have favorite bands and I still do consider a selected few as being my absolute favorites, but lately I tend to think of my favorite music more in terms of albums. I find that it's very hard for a band to consistently release quality material or at least a majority of it (quality as in being to my liking since there's a lot of subjectivity involved in what constitutes a quality release). There are bands that almost always release stuff I absolutely love (ex. The Birthday Massacre, DEG, Ling Tosite Sigure), but there are also bands who have certain releases I really enjoyed, but not necessarily all their stuff is that good in my eyes. I tend to think most bands fall in the last category for me, hence why my favorite music is usually certain albums and less certain bands. When it comes to my favorite bands, yes, I have trouble picking an absolute favorite album since I love them all. As for genres, I like a lot of them, but there's also quite a lot of stuff I don't like in almost all of them so they're not that representative for my music taste. Also there are genres that I usually dislike but there's still one or two bands I find amazing in that particular genre. I use genres as vague indicators for what I might like, but ultimately the sound of that particular band is what matter the most.

I actually wanted to vote for the 2012 contest because I listened to way more Japanese rock that year compared to previous years, but I just couldn't decide on just one choice for certain categories so in the end I ended up not voting at all. It's also quite hard for me to pick a VK artist/release over a non-VK one or the other way around since I enjoy both. I think having the possibility to enter 3 choices for certain categories is a really good idea!

凛として時雨 01. ハカイヨノユメ 02. O.F.T 03. abnormalize 04. JPOP Xfile 05. a 7days wonder 06. 赤い誘惑 07. シャンディ 08. illusion is mine 09. a symmetry 10. replica ART-SCHOOL 01. KILLING ME SOFTLY 02. サッドマシーン 03. モザイク 04. DIVA 05. ILLMATIC BABY 06. 君はいま光の中に 07. Missing 08. SHEILA 09. メルトダウン 10. Anesthesia Psysalia Psysalis Psyche 01. SUBWAY KILLER 02. CITY 03. HATE 04. SUNNY DEAD 05. take me out 06. Eternal Youth 07. X Is To Y As Y Is To Z 08. Midunburi 09. Marry & Albert 10. Butch & The Sundance Kid Coaltar of the Deepers 01. The Systems Made of Greed 02. Aquarian Age 03. Automation Structures 04. Frontier 05. Prophet Proved 06. Newave 07. Without Hesitation Into The Door Away 08. Star Love 09. Snow 10. Zoei

Happy to hear new ART-SCHOOL so soon!

Sounds and looks awesome. LIPHLICH is being as good as ever!

Oh that's too bad. They didn't even release much of anything.

Never was a fan of Aicle. That being said, I really dig this. Now I'm really looking forward to their first mini!

My first contact with Japanese music (excluding Sailor Moon OST songs) was in 2006. A friend of mine showed me Kagerou's Zetsubou ni Sayonara and Wrist Cutter PVs, then Miyavi's Are you ready to rock? PV. It wasn't really love at first sound, but it was definitely interesting so I took everything he downloaded to give it all a listen later, which didn't really happen. Then a few weeks later I stumbled upon some guy's profile on a site dedicated to industrial music. He had a big DIR EN GREY background picture. Upon seeing that picture my sister asked who those Marilyn Manson lookalikes were. I knew a had some of their songs and a video from my friend, so we both watched the Obscure PV and that's when it finally clicked for me. We ended up downloading their complete discography that day. I still remember how confused we were listening to Missa and Gauze because they sounded nothing like Obscure. Nevertheless, DEG is still one of my favorite Japanese bands today.