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WhirlingBlack

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  1. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Tokage in Dir en grey   
    yall  have no taste when it comes to looks smh, the weird shit is at least interesting and creative when you compare it to the boring-ass "check it out bro we're all wearing SUITS" or "dude we're totally wearing kimonos lmao we're so traditional" looks that way too many vk bands do nowadays
     
    i'd much rather take the weird yoda stuff over smth like kiryu, who have basically been recycling the same 3 or 4 general styles their entire career, for example.. for people who claim to be into visual stuff a lot of y'all are still pretty quick to write off anything that deviates from the generic vk pretty boy norm
  2. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Paraph in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    Not really understanding how an opinion on personal taste has more/less merit depending on how long you've been a fan and if you've been to Japan or not. I personally have been listening to this album more than anything they've put out since VULGAR/Withering, so because of that it stands out as being one of their better efforts as far as I'm concerned. 
  3. Like
  4. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Arkady in Moi dix Mois presents, "Deep Sanctuary VI ~MALICE MIZER 25th~ Anniversary Special"   
    Too much beauty in one image
  5. LOLOL
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from emmny in Dir en grey   
    You'd be surprised, it's disgusting how in Japan every time they start playing Sustain the Untruth, the fans act like Christmas came early. Seen it 30+ times and by the end of the tours I would feel like the band was doing it on purpose just to mock me. A show without Sustain was like a gift. Easily the most annoying Dir en grey live track. 
  6. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to blacktooth in Dir en grey   
    Waste of an encore slot. Play an actual throwback (like rotate in a Six Ugly track) instead of IKITSUUUITA
  7. LOLOL
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from Seimeisen in Dir en grey   
    You'd be surprised, it's disgusting how in Japan every time they start playing Sustain the Untruth, the fans act like Christmas came early. Seen it 30+ times and by the end of the tours I would feel like the band was doing it on purpose just to mock me. A show without Sustain was like a gift. Easily the most annoying Dir en grey live track. 
  8. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to HotaruFilth in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    Reminded me of deadman's "follow the night light" lyrics. "Wake" in the first line "wake nara hanasenai..." was actually written as 理由なら話せない.
  9. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to EzraEroguro in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    I hate having almost data, i need to listen to these remakes, like now.
     
    Who has the ability to wrap them up for a guy?
     
    Also, Hot Takes for Hot Cakes:
    I've been listening to this album through my Harmon Kardon monitors, EQ'd so there's a bit more on the high end, and it sounds incredible for it. 
  10. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from Ro plz in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    Kigan is ruined. I can't say much more. It's a terrible re-imagining which doesn't at all preserve the feeling of the song. The VICTIMIZATION part lost it's impact completely.
    THE DEEPER VILENESS was amazing. I'm not surprised at all, and personally with the mood and ferocity the band seems to display right now I wouldn't mind a complete re-recording of THE MARROW OF A BONE.
    Wake just sounds like Wake, it's not bad at all but I fail to see the point of re-recording it. The solo sounds lazier and that's about it. Dir en grey at this point was all about simple repetitive/hypnotic solos and I don't enjoy when they try to do some feel-y wank-y stuff out of it. Let's hope they never re-record audience KILLER LOOP.
  11. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Karma’s Hat in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    In defence of deg and this album in particular, I always seem to go back and forth with them throughout the years. Even on this forum everyone lists their favourite songs and the ones they dislike with the tone that as if it were the general opinion, and that's the sort of strong opinion they get out of people. It's early, but I think this is going to be one in that line of work; today I think of one thing and three weeks another and in two years something else. Applies to many bands surely, yet not this strongly.
  12. Bitch, excuse me?!
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Saishu in DIR EN GREY released their 10th album "The Insulated World" on September 26, 2018   
    Real talk, Devote My Life is borderline unlistenable. 
  13. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to hyura in PUNCH RECORDS / DOPE. to release Japanese Edition of Madmans Esprit new album 『無意識の意識化』 (Muishiki no Ishikika)   
    PUNCH RECORDS / DOPE. will release the album japan-wide on October 15th.
     
    Madmans Esprit - 無意識の意識化
     
  14. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to Peace Heavy mk II in Homage-系 - The Art of Being Someone Else   
    The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids.

    “Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is.
     


    There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor.
     



    Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.”
     
    Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.”
     


    Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise.

    Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else.
     



    Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei.


    Or was it???


    Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz.
     


    Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.
  15. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to xLIZ4 in Show Yourself (again)   
    Sup🤘
     
    Where are my fellow the GazettE/hide/MORRIGAN/SARIGIA/DIMLIM/まみれた/R指定 fans?

     
  16. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from PIZAZ in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  17. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to merchenticneurosis in La'veil Mizeria 祈狂 & 邪鬼 cosplay   
    Didn't know which category these would fit the best, but hope this is okay!
    Have been slowly working on these since the late summer
    Inspiration mostly from 薄紅ノ葬 but combining elements from various looks, live & printed.
    Makeup, hair, costume by me
    Photos by Riotcolor
     
    ✝️
     

     

     
     
     

     
     

     

  18. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from heresytrash in What is up with DEG and Gazette fans?   
    The rivalry only exists in the western fanbase as far as I know. In Japan, The Gazette are firmly viewed as a kouhai band to Dir en grey, and they treat each other as such, despite that Gazette is, as far as I understand it, a bigger commercial success at the moment. Dir en grey was at their peak of popularity in Japan when Gazette started and it only makes sense that they took inspiration, just like Dir did with the peak acts of its era. five years is a long time in the late 90s - early 2000s in Visual Kei.
     
    Dir en grey fans in Japan had short-lived rivalries with Pierrot fans, and also with La'Mule fans for a certain period of time, the second of which due to some kind of drama between the hardcore fans regarding attacking each other etc. I don't remember the exact details at the moment. I don't think the band members themselves had any animosity in either case though, although I did get some glances from Kon (La'Mule singer) when I saw him live last year and wore a Dir en grey shirt, heh.
     
    When it comes to Gazette I think it's simply the case that both bands became large roughly around the same time in the west with the big "boom" in 2006-2007, they competed for a similar demographic and had a similar style, and since teenagers love to pick sides and create ever smaller groups within already small groups, it was probably easy to force people to identify with either or. I know that as a Dir en grey fan first and foremost, for a long period it was among many of my acquaintances viewed as unacceptable to be anything more than a casual listener of Gazette. Being equally fans of both bands would never happen as you would be fostered into this group mentality from others based on whichever band happened to catch your fancy first.
    Thankfully, I haven't seen this in many years among people I associate with, but it could be because I no longer am in touch with the youngest generation of fans, and all of us oldies have matured past that stage.
     
     
  19. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from meat in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  20. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from EzraEroguro in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  21. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from Jigsaw9 in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  22. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from Seelentau in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  23. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from saiko in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  24. Like
    WhirlingBlack got a reaction from suji in Dir en grey   
    Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.
  25. Like
    WhirlingBlack reacted to platy in Kisaki Drama 2k18   
    @cvltic regarding the fact people ignore the allegations against Kyo, as far as I know there is no proof or anything beyond what's been discussed on tanuki,probably because it happened so long ago and as we all know most things that come out of a gossip forum should be taken with a grain of salt. With this Kisaki scandal we have a lot of supposed evidence in the pictures and screenshots, making it harder to ignore. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but that's my take on it. 
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