WhirlingBlack

What has always struck me when it comes to Merry Go Round is how disconnected they were from the "visual" scene of it's day. And I feel like it was almost a conscious choice to keep a distance stylistically to the other bands around at the time. I've met Kazuma briefly a few times and he's a seemingly very nice (and ancient-looking) guy, but his connections to the "visual kei" scene remains fringe at best, despite participating in some sessions and things with established people in the scene he's never been a part of it properly in my opinion and his influences and interests at large seems to lay elsewhere. In terms of their influence on the next generation it's the most obvious in the other "fringe" acts, bands like deadman, mucc, emmuree, munimuni, etc. owes a lot to Merry Go Round and I don't think anyone disputes that, just look at how aie rushed at the chance of forming a band with Kazuma back with highfashionparalyze like a giddy fanboy (And for anyone who has watched KEEL live can attest that he treats Tomoi the same way, haha). If you compare it to ROUAGE for example you'd find that they did their part influencing these acts somewhat as well but carried more influence into the more "typical" visual kei of the late 90s what with the chorus style and more "melodic" touches in the darkness. Anyway, great that you're shedding some light on this band again because they're easy to forget about these days and certainly easy to overlook for anyone new to the genre.

I'm really curious as to why people keep saying the band hated doing the GAUZE tour, and most likely only base it on the one performance released on DVD. As someone who attended the entire tour I can attest to the fact that it didn't lack energy at most dates. Sure, it was a bit uneven at times, but that's how this band is. Some days are bound to be better than others and I've come to terms with that many years ago. I wonder if people confuse the nature of some of the tracks which doesn't really call for a whole lot of audience interaction, or in some cases I assume, can't be afforded due to the technicality and state of practice, with boredom and dislike. The truth is, they wouldn't have done the tour if the whole band truly despised doing it, so I'll just put these opinions in the pile of other tinfoil hat conspiracies like the monthly disbandment speculations (that have appeared at least for ten years if not longer by now), Kyo communicating with aliens via inward screams and various other things in descending order of crazy.

I think it's because it's not far from the truth quite often if you've experienced the scene for yourself.

You'd almost have thought it was a performance art installation, walking through the Budapest art museum while the guy next to you is consistently and completely unashamedly tinder-swiping instead of watching the paintings. Really putting in a lot of work there!

I forgot but I have to add: Getting free gift cards (was it at CDJapan?) for joining Tainted World 2.0, Dai and Jake version. Did anyone ever get any? I legit want to know if this business strategy worked out for them during the ten days or so their forum was actually almost active.

I would estimate I started lurking here pretty soon after things got off the ground, I remember back in the day people advertising Tainted World as a replacement for the Batsu download forum which it's now-infamous admin Kevin decided to take down after being told off by someone or just having some stroke of paranoia. Either way, as long as Batsu flourished I only used TW for downloads and once that forum started declining and I simultaneously had some harsh encounters over there I went into lurker mode for several years. I decided to make my comeback only in 2012 at the insistence of other members here ( @Biopanda and @allisapp) and started hanging out regularly in the chat primarily, which is why I'm sure I'm most familiar to the chatbox crew. All things considered, those years when the chat had it's most intense activity, were truly great. Like @Disposablesaid, it was a short (I think less than two years?) but very intense period and so many things passed by. There was the DemonAndroid drama involving his many cousins of unknown provenance who always seemed to provide "legit" (read: Youtube) rips of wanted CDs. Then in the end when his transcodes got banned all he could do was ask people to come upstairs. I remember the guy from Colombia who hung out for like two weeks and talked about trains and raping corpses. It was a strange little parenthesis but I remember it well for some reason. There was drama back and forth with Ryu/DarkWater/tons of other alt accounts, long speculations and teasing about what sai actually looks like, discussions about angura rarez in the old old Skype chat that caused Prism to ban me and a bunch of my friends... Zess and his ever shorter username. I'm sure there's more but it takes time to remember everything. There have been differences in opinion between how a forum is best run to be sure between myself and some of the staff, culminating in the revolt and finally break which I helped facilitate. But ultimately I think this forum gained a lot from that event. Just like the protestant reformation forced much needed changes to the catholic church, this place underwent a lot of changes for the better after that and I can honestly say right now that I'm quite happy with the way things are. I've met a lot of amazing people here and I can honestly say that it really has changed my life for the better. If anyone still have hard feelings from those days, I hope we can move on and hopefully face the coming years as a community.

People who claim to have been into vk for 10+ years yet barely know entry level acts is the main fad amongst noobs these days.

Maybe he's one of those transethnic people, don't judge now. If he identifies as a German dictator we shouldn't tell him otherwise.

Any answer that isn't the indies period is incorrect. Also 鏡になりたい is one of my all time favorite songs, so there certainly are people that like it!

Förresten, om du har möjlighet så PM:a gärna din Facebook till mig, försöker få igång en grupp för de rester som finns kvar av folk intresserade av J-rock här i Sverige. Det går lite trögt än så länge men har också haft lite begränsat med tid att få igång något.

They might celebrate the date of their first live as the anniversary but I'd rather probably see this whole concert project where they play a tour for each album as their anniversary gift to the fans.

Lol, bygghandel, unikt namn! Välkommen hit hur som helst! Är också mest fan av äldre material.

Hello, what forums were you active on in the past?

They need to find a new niche to rip off. I bet after they disband they'll come back wearing over-sized knit shirts and play mediocre shoegaze. I don't think there's any moderately popular Plastic Tree rip-offs yet. Or they'll just do like that other new band and simply steal the name of an old band (Lamiel -> ラミエル, was it?) and play lackluster neo-vk. God knows we don't have enough bands who play generic-core with badly implemented synthesizers.

INTJ-T As expected, I've done it a few times always with the same result.

Using a "he shouldn't behave like that" excuse makes me think of the courts where they ask rape victims what they wore at the time. Let's not be so accepting of cultural differences that we try to relativize this kind of brutal and medieval laws. These countries who enforce sharia law should be condemned internationally but for some reason they always slip through the cracks. It's as if we don't expect them to be able to live up to the same standards of human rights as "white" countries. Sad and unacceptable.

From the list I choose D'espairsRay although if there were a MUCC (1997-2004) option i would've had a hard time choosing. My dream is a vk band that can fuse the raw despair and occasional quirks of the old MUCC sound with the refined somewhat frail darkness of emmuree combined with the atmosphere of old burzum or other mid-tempo Black Metal. Throw in some shoegazing reverb for good measure. Please give me that for 2017.

Dies name surprisingly isn't Daisuke, so you might want to edit that. Great review otherwise, I'm interested in trying this myself as well once I get some time.

Avel Cain and deathgaze are not nagoya kei.