WhirlingBlack

While I have no sympathy for this guy and his music whatsoever, I find it amusing that some people tend to associate the vk genre as an ethnic one rather than a cultural one. Sure, VK is a firmly rooted Japanese subculture, but claiming that someone is ineligible to play in a visual kei band because of their skin colour is about as logical as saying that blues or jazz music, equally firmly rooted in the black culture of America, should be exclusively played by black people. The problem with people like Yohio and perhaps this guy (I honestly do not know enough about him to tell) has been explained pretty well above in regards to talent and/or unjustified fame, but there's plenty of domestic japanese artists I'd want to use the same words to describe, to be quite honest. It's not about western people playing in visual kei bands, its what most do when they are trying to be vk, that's a problem. Or else let's enforce racial exclusivity on all genres and subcultures based on who ostensibly founded it, but I think most would agree that's not preferable or even doable in practice.

So its sukekiyo light with people from unfamiliar scenes. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen their first live.

True, Tousei is performed pretty on point, too bad its still a pretty boring experience. Personally, as someone who has seen ARCHE live, I can agree that Uroko lacks some of the album energy, I somehow want to say that its partly the audience fault though for not really getting into it, a lot of "great" live tracks like Rasetsukoku derive their energy equally from the band and the audience, so I look forward to seeing it develop, tracks with complex patterns tend to take longer for both band and audience to break into and if I had seen it in Japan I might've had a very different opinion about it. "Behind a vacant image" only really gets any kind of drive in the last part and I'm confused as to why since it kind of relies heavily on that deep sludgy tone to keep it moving, but for some reason its very treble-happy and lacking low end live. Revelation of mankind works well live, in my opinion, despite the complex vocal patterns. So does Rinkaku although I can agree the vocals part is a very case to case situation, but its been done well at least 7 or 8 out of the 9 times I've seen it so to me its within the error margin. I want to say a contributing reason why tracks like Cause of Fickleness, Chain Repulsion, un Deux, etc. works so well live is that they're rythmically clear. Which is probably another reason why Rasetsukoku became a live classic as well.

Pretty clever way for bands to inflate sales if they expect each fan to purchase ten copies of an album. I'd call it unscrupulous if it weren't for the fact that the fans don't really seem to mind.

Finally a reason to go to Japan in August. These guys are pretty much deadman 2.0 in terms of sound. Also that demo never surfaced because it was never released.

The new SE is very ambient, slow synthesizers only, without any discernable rythm or anything, which I think is my major issue with it, it does nothing to enable audience interaction.

One thing I'd like to note is that the current SE is terribly boring... really doesn't do the job compared to say G.D.S or GAUZE -mode of adam-, there's no room for the crowd to get pumped up in any way.

And tall people get annoyed with short people who feel entitled to go in front of you. Just because you happen to be tall does not mean that you should have to stand in the back, it's not like you can help it. Just like you don't want people trying to guilt you about moshing, I don't like people trying to do the same because I'm tall. Let's agree that it's all personal perspective and ours are on opposite ends of the spectra.

Clearly nisimaldar has never been to a gig in Japan, there most certainly is a Japanese way because everyone does the same thing over there. And while that actually is every bit as intense as it is overseas, you don't have to struggle to keep your footing nor have to wonder "what should I do now?". Not trying to argue anything objectively now but rather just explain the difference and why some people, like me, prefer headbanging and synchronisation to moshing and being generally forced to focus more on the audience than the band at times.

Best part of today's show: the setlist. Worst part: all those mosher guys that look like they're straight from the soccer teams fighting division. (I don't care what people think, I prefer the Japanese way.)

Where were you? I'm going tomorrow again and would love to meet up with all you MH people.

Going to London tonight too. If seen, MH members are encouraged to say hello to the blonde guy in the mode of gauze tour shirt.

Overseas Fukai stands at 0 plays, Asunaki at 1 and New Age Culture 2, none of them would qualify as "commonly played" in terms of overseas performances, but both more "common" than Fukai. In terms of total times played, New Age Culture is at 94 and Asunaki at the slightly lower 79, both a pretty negligible difference compared to Fukai's 95. So I'm not sure what parameters you're using, but perhaps a preferable one would be "songs I'd like to hear live"? That's the one I use and it generally serves me pretty well. If we're talking rare you might as well just beg them to play Toriko. It's not going to happen but at least that would qualify as rare using your parameters.

I think you mean Fukai. Though I certainly wouldn't object to audience KILLER LOOP. either of those two songs could save the setlists. MARMALADE CHAINSAW would be nice too but what are the odds of that happening...

Setlist is underwhelming and it has nothing to do with ARCHE. It's the fact that they feel like they can shorten their already very short setlists just because they can get away with it overseas... plus lazily just throwing together the encore by squeezing all their most overplayed tracks together. I'm surprised dead tree isn't in there. If they don't play Fukai on any of the gigs I'm attending I'll throw the VULGAR scorebook in Kaorus face at the last gig.

I really miss this band called MUCC, It's sad how they suddenly disappeared without a trace in 2005.

DECAYED CROW is an excellent live track, though.

Personally I think there are several ways to look at a "worst song", a song that you dislike because of the way it sounds, and a song that you dislike because you've heard it so many times you're sick to death of it. For me, THE FINAL falls into the second category. I really don't think I need to hear or see it live again for the next decade or so, but I don't think its a bad track per se. In the first category it's a lot more difficult, because several of the songs I used to dislike I enjoy nowadays because of their freshness value, and some tracks I used to adore ten years ago I might be tired of, like THE FINAL. I have often said that S is their worst track in my opinion, but at the moment I think The Domestic Fucker Family is worse. The beauty of this kind of discussion is that no one is wrong. I'll just be silently judging everyone calling tracks like Я TO THE CORE and HYDRA -666- bad.

"Kyo's real name" -> "Kyo's purported real name" I think I'll save myself the theological discussions and just make that edit to my statement.

Thanks as always for your hard work posting the setlists. However, if you need to use Kyo's real name, which I don't see why unless you do this across the board with everyone who has a stage name, please render the romanization correctly as Tooru.

the 90s were muccs best era, but those days are not coming back, the album name is probably just a reference to how long they've been around. I'm sure we can expect the same upbeat poprock mess as they've been dishing out for the past six years or so.

Just waiting for the announcement of a macabre themed tour now. Probably won't happen but it'd be nice if the Gauze thing wasn't a one off deal, and their ticket sales haven't been higher in many years than it was then so, one can always hope.

16. THE FINAL I wonder if they did that just to tease me...