cvltic

i nabbed it off of jp itunes and i gotta say i'm a little surprised. this album is heavy on atmosphere and clean vocals.

literally would not piss on midorigawa if he was on fire, mathilda did that

@IsuKa no problem! 

if you have an itunes JP account, JOKER and GROTESQUE are available for early purchase:
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/id1400142282?l=ja&ls=1&app=itunes

^ there are on the side of the video, but they're also here on rocklyric: https://rocklyric.jp/lyric.php?sid=1751426

what jojo writes and sings are at times quite different, so i've included romaji too

kanji

romaji
 

english
 

the super deluxe edition or whatever the hell is probably of more interest to hardcore fans, but hazuki put up the trailer for the documentary on his instagram. definitely looks like emotional porn for AK fans... slowed down roblox death noise.ogg
 

this was Karma-Shenjing's whole gig!
 

i'm so stupid & unaware of time, i genuinely assumed 18:00 was when he woke up
 

9 minutes ago, Jeen said:

remember BEAST

god, this was honestly the worst selection for D.A.R.K's PV... it's the one song on the album i continually forget exists and that's saying something bc i've heard it live like 10 times. i always ask myself why they didn't pick ILLUMINATI or, you know... D.A.R.K....

i'll add on to your info with some other stuff:
the Yusuke songs this time are RENATUS, SENSE OF EMPTINESS, and A FOOL (which Yusuke also wrote the lyrics to, so i was surprised they were in English)

the Manson bit in JOKER is an homage, and the whole song was written so they could make a circus PV... ok... werk
whatever song FAITH is taking a page from is supposed to be an homage too (Hazuki wrote "if you know your old songs this song will make you laugh")

@Jeen damn you're fast

RENATUS sounds so fucking good
& i don't have enough pre-00s vk knowledge to know what song FAITH is supposed to be an homage to but i like it

cursed digital art

3 minutes ago, nostalgia said:

Download count on MEGA, MediaFire, and etc.

unironically the best way to measure a band's popularity overseas imo...
i guess it's important to distinguish between popularity overseas/domestic success for this conversation

most of the non-meme replies here are right that there's no way to know for certain, but i still feel like if you're forced to approximate, capacity of oneman venues seems like the only usable metric. perhaps consistency, as in the number of times a larger (1000+ cap) venue is used could help to counter the trend to race toward the biggest venue regardless of whether or not you can put bodies in it -- as i assume that's not doable on a continual basis. alternatively you could try to track if they're "backsliding" (e.g. if they go from Nagoya Bottom Line in tour A up to the bigger Nagoya Diamond Hall for tour B, but then go back to Bottom Line for tours C, D, E)? but sometimes it's just as simple as the venue not being available.

i feel like it has to be done in a more methodical way than just "biggest ever venue" but i can't really wrap my brain around it.

this is just a hunch, but ticket price might also be a hint when it comes to trying to further divvy up bands, at least at the very top levels? spoilered for being long and boring
 

someone i know was like "this song is just lynch.'s CREATURE" and i thought "oh come on now no one would steal it that soon"

oops... it lines up second for second at the beginning at least lmao (pv embedded for the unfamiliar)

my poll vote should clarify everything

36 minutes ago, Komorebi said:

Aren't they #1 overseas?

i think oricon is domestic only after looking at the info BrenGun provided --  it makes sense that foreign fans are making good use of digital download options and it's a shame we won't be able to see a worldwide number for vk digital downloads afaik

 

31 minutes ago, Duwang said:

more than three types

never forget 10 types for Kyubi. Kiryu's 彩 in 2016 had a massive 21k sales. are they even pulling in a quarter of that in live attendance regularly? (no.)
but for my Kiryu shade, they can at least back it up by booking budokan (and supposedly filling it not too badly).

the Kiryu/Royz/Codomo Dragon sales are nuts. i might be totally wrong, but i think their instore fanservice/skills are what leads to these sales? Kiryu and Royz in particular are associated with "extreme eigyou" -- the kind of fanservice where you get "kisses" and hugs/sit in each other's laps for your photos with the members. and even just looking at their schedules, they do like 2-3 instores a week and each requires at minimum a CD purchase for a ticket.

the Raid. has also been coming up in sales while their reputation for doing basically anything you ask for photos spreads too, lmao.

since i was able to find the data for weekly singles going back, i decided to double-check and had to add/adjust some entries from bands that had been excluded from the original list:

21,105 / 2017.04.05 #CDが売れないこんな世の中じゃ / Golden Bomber (adjusted to add sales for 2nd/3rd week of charting)
16,510 / 2017.01.17 硝子の瞳 - SID (added + combined sales for 3 weeks of charting)
10,359 / 2017.11.15 BABEL - BUCK-TICK (added)
4,024 / 2017.11.08 BLOOD THIRSTY CREATURE lynch. (added)
3,376 / 2017.10.10 蛙-Kawazu- - Kizu (adjusted to add sales for 2nd week of charting)
2,385 / 2017.02.01 傘と雨 - MERRY (added)
1,354 / 2017.11.22 R-P-S - jealkb (added)
1,285 / 2017.11.22 スターゲイザー - JAKIGAN MEISTER (added)
1,035 / 2017.03.22 CALLING - VAMPS (added)

additionally since i'm trying to make lists for 2016 & earlier i adjusted some numbers by adding the numbers from subsequent charting weeks when applicable, since i think that's how i'm going to do it for the earlier lists as well

1 hour ago, frayed said:

this is a lot of speculation without anything concrete to back it up, lol.

well, the part where they were blacklisted from venues came straight from the dudes themselves at their first show. it's not beyond the pale to think that this extends to other parts of the MEJIBRAY brand when they can't even rent the fucking venues(!), the most basic component of band activity that isn't actually associated with the band's image. of course it's still speculation that can't be proven unless some tsunagari has LINE convos to dump, but it's not a total asspull -- this is pretty much the accepted version of events in jp fan communities, and this isn't the first time a band's label has held parts or all of a band's branding hostage.

regardless i'll be waiting for some sort of article from a known Japanese music publication that mentions 8P-SB at all, and i'll be waiting even longer for one that mentions them in the same breath as MEJIBRAY in the same way MiA's new project has been reported.  🙈

abc was on a different level for sure. i was thinking about trying to pull together 2016 and 2015 if i can find the numbers and then they can shine, lmao

are vk fans really buying digital tho? it seems more like the domain of pop songs.
there's a digital ranking for oricon but i think (just based on my own experience) most vk bands tend to sell hard copies because of the possibility for in-store tie-ins and other promos. for example, gazette is #3 on the weekly album rank but nowhere to be seen on digital album or individual song ranking.
 

i have no idea for now, maybe Misa repossessed his bass equipment (i'm only half-joking)

he's banned from using Tsuzuku lmao, same with koichi using "koichi" and not 恋一

they can't use the MEJIBRAY name at all either -- it's easy to brush this off as just not wanting to associate your new project with your old project but it would make a lot more sense if Japanese news articles listed them as ex-MEJIBRAY, right?
but wait, there's a complete lack of articles on Japanese music news sites about 8P-SB. weird considering MEJIBRAY was a big deal, hm...

when you get blacklisted you get blacklisted hard.

3 hours ago, nekkichi said:

they didn't release singles in 2017; ningen… is their worst selling single to date tho. 

and it's currently the top seller for singles in vk of 2018 anyway, oof (kiryuu's 春時雨 gave them a decent run for their money though)

 

1 hour ago, platy said:

I'm very surprised that kizu, SuG and even zonbi sold more than DEZERT. Thought dezert had pretty much major status and would've been higher up in the list. 

some of these bands perform better in ticket sales/getting bodies into venues than CD sales and vice versa, for sure. for example my impression of vistlip, Royz, and to a lesser degree Kiryu, is that they sell CDs more effectively than tickets, my impression of lynch. and DEZERT is that they sell tickets more effectively than CDs. (you'll notice everyone in the first category abuses type A/type B/etc. releases, and i also personally associate them with a strong instore hustle.)

but it's a lot harder to measure ticket/attendance performance. of  i've seen some unofficial, not-at-all-comprehensive numbers bounced around for highest venue attendance for active, non-legend status bands that would suggest DEZERT is doing better in that department than some of their peers.
 

The question of ranking success in the industry in terms of numbers was on my mind so I did some searching and was surprised/glad to see someone actually took the time to make one of these, so I thought I'd share.

Oricon's actual indication of copies sold is only available on the weekly ranking for the current week. So some enterprising individual has to archive the VK bands each week and create a final ranking based on that. Hopefully this person is also going to do it for 2018....
Titles left in Japanese because I think the artist is probably more relevant than the CD (?) and it would be time-consuming af when the date is already there so you can look it up.

VK Singles in 2017

bands whose single sales increased throughout the year: 0.1g no gosan, Arlequin, Royz, R Shitei
bands whose single sales decreased throughout the year: DADAROMA, A9, Codomo Dragon, Plastic Tree
participation ribbon: CLOWD

VK Albums in 2017

band whose album sales decreased throughout the year: MUCC
busiest beaver award: MUCC
please no more: best of albums

who surprised you by pulling good sales, who surprised you by being a flop? who's going to move up after this year and who's going to move down?
 

On 5/30/2018 at 5:48 AM, The Piass said:

不響和音(Fu hibiki waon)

minor nitpick, this is probably fukyou waon like a play on 不協和音

i haven't seen anything this band has done since their cursed first pv song, i had no idea they'd changed so much... 不響和音 is kinda catchy