r...

Or maybe, just maybe, they just happen to prefer how it sounds? Of course I'm only speaking for myself here, but I'm really big on vocals... not only in the quality/talent but the general "sound". If you gave me the same song with an English-speaking native singing in English and a Japanese-speaking native singing in Japanese, I'd almost always choose the latter. I find that Japanese just sounds more pleasing and flows better to me (likely due to the consonant-to-vowel ratio) than the harsher sounds of a Germanic language, for example.
 
Cheers m8

Who?

Ugh... 5 Seconds of Summer?! No, thank you.  I wish them all the best and I hope they achieve whaever the hell they want to achieve abroad. But you gotta draw the line somewhere and having  ALL TIME FUCKING LOW, WASHED UP AVRIL (NOT EVEN DUMB FUN LET GO-ERA, AVRIL) and 5 Seconds of Summer all together means I'm out. They won't miss me, for now atleast. but call me back when ONE OK ROCK bombs and decide to celebrate the 10th anniversary of BEAM OF LIGHT or ゼイタクビョウ.
 
Wait... Shit, ゼイタクビョウ IS TEN YEARS OLD ALREADY. Ok, I'll wait for the 20th anniversary, then.
 
And I really agree with this part:
 
 
Integrity doesn't pay the bills but being completely broke totally beats than having FIVE SECONDS OF SUMMER on your record.

Oi, that Omoinotake song is all kinds of amazing!

I highly recommend Xaa xaa if some of you guys are missing that old school sound and want a ''Nostalgic'' feeling.
 

I would love to jump on the bandwagon...but to be fair growing up in visual kei we had a similar phenomenon, except the flavor of the decade back then was bland metalcore and bubbly oshare. The scene cares not for yesterday's interchangeable acts such as GHOSE, BIOSPHIA, DELACROIX, Crest of Aleist, DILIAL, Xepher, Re:dis, DIO -distraught overlord-, SHEDIA, DEPAIN, WERKMARE, THE RUDIE SATAN PARK, ichigo69, Diavro, GAUZES, GremlinS, トーマス, SCAPEGOAT, Since1889, Annabyss Coast, Gossip-ゴシップ-, Gimmick, DI3SIRAE, Deflina Ma'riage, Lustknot, JyuLie, 2the DISCOLAND, VIRGENOW, 2nd dyz, Heartless, Crazy shampoo, Golbeza, Dragonwapppppper, PIECElang, 東京指定., V-last., REALies, Zip.er, お遊戯ゎが魔々団×【PaRADEiS】, ZUCK, CANZEL, Called≠Plan, Zelktage, DIS★Marionette, Ap(r)il, 御主人様専用奇才楽団Virgil, xTRIPx, v[NEU] or 0801弐209336 -ゼロハチゼロイチニーニーゼロキュウサンサンロク-. Great bands, good bands, shit bands all forgotten to the sands of time. Half these bands are why people left the scene in the first place. Never forget the massive amount of shit we had to wade through when the scene was at its lowest.

As for me, I think it's obvious I stopped really paying attention to certain sections of visual kei a while ago. Really indie bands get no burn from me unless they establish themselves since I'm over getting into bands that disband in two to three years. The crossover between visual kei and indie/alt rock is what has my attention these days.
 

Yes. And no.  I first got "over VK" in 2007 or was it 2008? But then a year or two later I returned. Then I got bored again. And thus begun the cycle.
 
Now I'm just having years when I'm "less interested what's going on in VK, but still checking out from time to time" and years when "gotta work with that backlog of stuff".
 
I might not be as enthusiastic fan as I used to be when I was younger, but I can't really just drop the scene like it never existed either. Especially since I still can find listenable new stuff, and few old favourites (Buck-Tick, L'arc en Ciel, Dir en Grey) are still around and kicking.
 
Oh well, joys of getting old.

Hopefully due to VK-related causes, of course.

I fell out of the Visual Kei scene in 2010 because all of my favorite present bands were disbanding or going to shit. I fell back into Visual Kei in the last two years because of a discovery/re-appreciation for all of the gold in the late 90s and early 2000s.
 
While I don't have anything present or new to look forward to, I keep finding new things I love from the past. All of my favorite bands I discovered in 2016 were ones that disbanded 15 years ago! And despite that, they make me feel like I've really gotten into VK again.

I'm gonna admit, I hate most of the new bands coming up these days, yet I stan the hell out of older bands like MERRY, Megaromania, etc. However, this year, I've checked out some recent stuff like Moran and Crucifixion, and older stuff like Deadman, and I really liked it. For the rest of the year, I'm making it my goal to check out other bigger bands that I haven't listened to yet and broaden up my vk horizons a bit more, since I feel like I'm totally missing out at the moment.

The idea of them making music together is so far fetched/seems impossible, but all the signs seem to point to exactly that.
 
Shit is insane. But then again, there was a time when the idea of Luna Sea and X getting back together was absolute madness.

Also consider, comparing record sales nearly 10 years apart from each other isn't totally seamless, because physical sales have been on the decline drastically.

2 bands that didn’t associate
2 objects that didn’t meet
A destructive contact
JULY 2017

I've been thinking a bit about how this reminds me heavily of Girugamesh...

But, at least with Giru, the sound they were going for was just a super light Giru, whereas this...
These songs really love to oversell themselves, they go for that vast "epic" sort of stadium song feel without anything to back it up, at all. It's empty, shallow and heartless, like it was written by someone else for them, like 90% of modern major pop acts. There's no energy to it, there's no emotion, it's just generic. It's not compelling, it's just slightly nodding whilst I'm doing anything else that's far more interesting.
 
I find it funny that the American label that signed them also produces a lot of similar bands that suffer from similar issues. I'm happy for them if this is their thing, it's not often we see a band of a language other than English make it into the market but at the same time it really sucks because of what they had to give up in order to do so, to be successful you have to tick boxes, the more you appeal to the masses you appeal less to the individual. It's easy to make something that thousands will like but harder to make something that hundreds will love and I suppose at the end of the day you need to ask yourself which matters more.

I believe what you say sun days
I'll be with wow...

Her face was shining with happy
I'll be with wow...

I would like to be a rockar
I'll be with wow...

Be away rocking in sun days
I'll be with wow...

Stay active and stay young
What self bades street
Stay with me alone to sun
What self bades street

I believe was rocking my dream
Shining what pop sun day
Be awake greenness run a way 

This one is my all time favorite.

Today's arrival !
 
Initial'L - Moon light down all types
the god and death stars - It isn't a singles
DALLE - ambivalence to violentia
Kisaki Project - Re:Requiem
megamasso -  雨降る夜に
megamasso - Frosty +  雨降る夜に for my girl @eiheartx (who will probably be in love after this pic :D)
 
LUNA SEA The holy night SLAVE FC limited tee shirt
LUNA SEA The holy night candle
 
FInal Fantasy XV Limited Collector's edition + Amazon JP pre order bonus
FFXV Prologue drama CD

Lol this band will be the death of me. Look at this fine specimen of 2d trash, either MERRY are making it very clear that you need to buy that DVD, no freebies, or I'm deadly mistaken. The zombie is the best.
 
 
And it's unlisted already, like the last pamphlet trailer. If you're gonna do this just stick to it lol. Or did you know we'll share anyway? 
Edit: It's public now ^^

SOUNDS SO GOOD. Where is that goddamn album already?!

Listen to this:
 
 
How can people not miss this kind of subtle, sexy japanese-ness? What a great fucking band. 

My good Sir, don't even entertain buying into that "looks don't matter" nonsense. The placement of every hair follicle is both an artistic as well as a political statement. Approach to taste should always be entirely holistic, and I refuse to believe there has ever been an auteur who has dressed bad. It is merely the mediocrity propaganda of idiots who think that when a visual element is so closely associated with rock music-the dressing up in cargo shorts and a backwards cap somehow transcendents these barriers to make the music "legitimate". With rock every promo picture, and even omitting to have them is a conscious decision in response to the tradition; even the most banal t shirt and shorts outfit is falsely considered a culturally neutral stance when in fact the opposite is true! Everything one does with ones appearance is a statement of values. The peacock who decides to not to ruffle its feathers will die childless! Colourful hair and leather pants are our strenght and virtue.
 
 

lmao visual kei is far from dead in japan. if someone manages to believe so then you are definitely looking for shit bands on purpose in a haystack of bands. or like, don't attend gigs at places like shinjuku urga on purpose just to find bands with 10 fans. truth is, the scene has never been big except for a few bands. ikebukuro cyber is a small shit hole that shouldn't cap more than 50 ppl, yet madeth gray'll and bands who we in the west consider ~*legendary*~ giged there a lot.

the hi-res cover art is on their FB and it's mf fantastic tbh
 

People often note similarities between MUCC and XAA-XAA, and I hope that doesn't carry over into how often they release material. That is, I don't want a good thing quickly get watered down because they don't pace themselves. MUCC, at one point, was releasing three to four singles (with b-sides) and then an album EVERY YEAR. Hell, in 2006 they released four singles, and two albums. It became overwhelming. MUCC had slowed down significantly, but at the cost of some fans already being burnt out. I know I personally haven't loved anything MUCC has done since Kyuutai. 
 
So, that said, I hope XAA-XAA doesn't follow the same route. These guys have enormous potential and showed me VK may still have some life in it. But, then again, so did NoGod. 
 
Eh.