WhirlingBlack

18 minutes ago, filth_y said:

Wish someone would do a wiki like knowyourmeme with knowyourvkdrama

Seconded. Someone get onto that. So much good drama that will be lost once us in the older generation quits.

1 minute ago, Tokage said:

cant believe it'll finally be batsu's time to rise from the ashes again

First you have to find Kevin who disappeared like ten years ago, since registration is closed on batsu, and it's limited to 140 characters per post.

On the topic though, remember when Batsu deleted their entire download section preemptively because Kevin got scared of a lawsuit?

Great, I wonder if they'll pick any of the shows I attended for the dvds.

Agreed, Kisou is great throughout. I expect them to play the full album during the Japanese tour dates, at least the ones which feature two days back to back.

And yes, one of the songs I'm looking forward to the most is Pink Killer, it's amazing live and they haven't done it for almost ten years now. That and Filth.

Do we have confirmation about it being the new version of the tracks that was remade by the way or are we just assuming it so far?

It would make sense since they played the new versions during both GAUZE and VULGAR with the exception of Tsumi to Batsu which they played both versions of.

Damn, you hate Dir en grey enough to go with the wikipedia-caps version of the bandname. 

I can see we're not going to get along, sorry.

At the moment nearly all guniw tracks are re-arranged as well since they only have one guitarist. Generally softer and more "mature" sound.

Don't have time to look into it too much at the moment so I'll just quickly drop some examples.

Dir en grey has rearranged too many songs to count during concerts, going all the way back to their earliest days. Some of which could be deemed more a case of evolving work in progress though, but if we count things that have been released then it goes back to the macabre era where certain GAUZE songs would be rearranged completely.

Shinjuku Gewalt has re-arranged tracks for live shows several times, adding and removing elements between concerts.

Sugar performed full acoustic lives.

MUCC has performed acoustic versions of tracks at instore events.

Lament. has performed acoustic shows with piano, acoustic guitar and vocals only, I attended one and it was amazing.

emmuree/the god and death stars/DIMMDIVISION/DISH/dieS/those kind of guys frequently do acoustic sets either alone (vocals+guitar only) or with the full band.

I voted for Dir en grey, I mean Grieva. I saw them all live and Grieva stood out to me as a good tribute band whereas the rest sort of just faded from my mind very fast.

X Japan is the most "well-known" I'd say, but if we are talking in terms of fans I'm pretty sure that Dir en grey has the advantage by far in the overseas fandom.

It's pretty similar in Japan, almost everyone knows X but few are die-hard fans, while for a band like Dir en grey most people you will find who knows of them are pretty invested in them as well. The whole household generic rock band vs. a niche artist deal that you're bound to find whenever discussing western artists too.

When it comes to quality I have no doubt in my mind that Dir en grey is the more consistent artists. X Japan had a short period of brilliance that they've been living off ever since while Dir en grey has released consistently good material for almost 20 years now.

I'm guessing only a fraction of the audience showed up for the early bands though, at least on that other big vk festival event in 2011 (?) Where they did invite swede-kei band seremedy, they played to a mostly empty arena. Still better than their average show for sure though in terms of exposure.

Sounds like Die wants to be some kind of indie-snooze version of Sharaku from Metronome. Not really feeling this, I was hoping they'd go for a more heavy/crushing shoegaze sound based on the show I attended back when they started out, but it's clear now that this project is firmly rooted in upbeat music.

Some people don't like sex, that's cool. Some people like it, and that's cool too.

It's not so much about what people want out of their relationships and judging others by that, but rather that people should try to find someone who have similar needs and goals when it comes to such relationships. And there's plenty of other things than opinion on sex that needs to align in order for it to work out. Mismatched couples rarely last because they get on each others nerves due to one party feeling neglected and the other smothered. A lot of these situations could be avoided if people were just slightly more open to talking about these things.

At least that's my take on it.

The previous trend was to name the band differently but play the same music as the original.

Perhaps the new trend will be to name the band the same but play different music compared to the original?

Can't wait for the new glittery pop band ディル・アン・グレイ!

I own this CD and I can confirm what was just posted by inartistic.

Tog mig friheten att starta en grupp i alla fall, så om ni kan PM:a mig era namn på FB så bjuder jag in er, tänkte ha den invite only till att börja med tills vi fått igång något och spikat namn och så.

(Sorry admin/mods for double post.)

Jag missade att ni hade svarat på mitt meddelande, 

Men kanske skulle kunna dra igång en grupp på Facebook till att börja med? Går det att skapa någon form av gemensam "grupp" som också fungerar som en chatt? Att både ha en gruppsida och en chatt ihopkopplade skulle vara nice, men är osäker på hur man skulle administrera det rent tekniskt. Är tyvärr inte jättebra på Facebook,  haha.

Skype-grupper är ju också nice men det kanske blir lite mer svåröverskådligt beroende på hur mycket folk vi lyckas gräva upp. Facebook kanske är lite mindre krävande också.

Hursomhelst, om ni har tid hör gärna av er med vad ni tycker är bäst, saknar att prata med andra svenskar så skulle gärna få igång något projekt om jag vet att det blir fler än jag som går med, haha.

If he had actually hanged himself on stage at the end of their indies era, even by mistake, he would've been the greatest legend in vk by far.

Also agree with everything you two just posted, couldn't say it better myself.

So basically this would've gotten a 9.5/10 if it were a mini album?

For some reason I can sort of agree with this in a general sense, I feel like a lot of lynch. albums would benefit from removing some filler tracks and I'm sure this one is no different, without having tried it yet.

A lot of vk bands are on radio, problem is Japan has like two radio stations for every citizen so you're bound to never finding the right channel. 

I'd say the problem is that the teenagers aren't socially awkward and angry anymore. Don't know what happened but the "I dress in black and hate the world, also im misunderstood and poetic"-kids, which formed the faceless masses of casual vk listeners, are all but gone. Only the hardcore are left and they always just formed a tiny piece of the fandom.

Heading for a bachelors degree in Japanese at the moment, just started my third year/fifth semester of full time Japanese studies. Focus on reading and translating as it's what I'm going to use the language for in a work setting in the future. 

I'd say I'm decently proficient at reading at this point (1000+ kanji) but if you asked me to write them by hand the number would shrink by a lot, but then again I've heard it's the same for a lot of Japanese people.

This might be a case of European vs. American perspective. I think VK was a much bigger "thing" here in Europe back in the day, possibly. I feel like the American scene has been pretty much static in comparison with decent numbers throughout but without any major spikes, but I might be wrong since I can only base that assessment on the online community. It might also help that metal and rock are pretty commonplace here in the Nordic countries as well so the threshold might've been lower to get into this kind of music.

Second difference I suppose is how mainstream k-pop has become, we don't have K-pop on national television and most people here never made the connection between gangnam style and k-pop, it was just that one funny song from Korea, sort of like how Rammstein's popularity didn't cause a wave of german-language metal to become popular either. It's very much a subculture just like VK is/was and share a similar "obsessive" demographic and type of fans, since a lot of k-pop fans here are otaku who enjoy anime and things like that, people you'd think at first glace would be vk fans.

2 hours ago, nekkichi said:

 

to be fair, kpop is the next vk. it doesn't overlap with jpop fandom that much as far as I know, and quite a few vk stans moved onto kpop at some point.

Was about to say the same thing: VK was a huge thing around 2007-2008 (you know, when it was in national newspapers and Dir en grey could sell out a 1000+ man venue in tiny Sweden?)  but around 2010-2011 I'd say a good 75% had moved on to K-pop. To this day I meet people every once in a while through my Japanese studies who mention being into VK/J-rock a long time ago but moving on to """better things""" (that is, K-Pop).

I enjoy reading Kyo's comments as a very strange sort of deadpan humour, sort of like his strange comments during the Ghoul documentary DVDs. I think he's very self-aware these days of all the strange things he says, or at least that's my take on it.

On topic: Will be joining Kisou tour starting from the second half so will report on anything unusual happening yet again.

If this had been Core the Child vs. Since1889 it would've been a much more difficult fight. Also note that some of the tracks people consider UnsraW "classics" are just covers of Core the Child.

I really enjoyed much UnsraW material pre-hiatus but they mostly put out garbage afterwards, and while it's true that Since1889 declined towards the end of their career too and had a much smaller discography, I feel like that they at their height (up to and including unfair single) had a better and tighter sound than UnsraW. It's sad that their location and lack of funds unabled them to record more material with that lineup. (they had a lot of unreleased songs during this period)

So for partially unrealized potential, personal nostalgia and just the fact that they reached a higher level, even though it is with a vastly smaller discography, I have to go with Since1889. 

You guys really should attend a live where they play MASK and then tell me how you feel about it again. My respect for the track increased enormously during the GAUZE tour, despite the fact that it's one of few Dir en grey songs where fans actually do some more intricate furitsuke, it's a really engaging and fun track. Plus the lyrics are legendary (and printed on the tour wristband, one of my favorite pieces of merchandise in my collection.)

Seconding that Unknown.Despair.Lost is a crime against humanity though and I will stand by that comment no matter what. A good example of where a song didn't need to be re-recorded in the first place.