saiko

Any thoughts on their disbandment?
I've always felt that 95% of the stuff after Fierte was pretty generic, thus boring. I deeply believe it reflects an atmosphere of low creative energy, clearly derivated of the loose bonds between the members, with their easy comes and goes. This is something I've never came to understand fully, since there is much evidence that, although they never reached the mainstream attention bands like Shazna had, neither the levels of popularity bands like Dir en grey or Pierrot enjoyed in those years, Lareine was indeed a solid band with a strong concept, decent musicians and organic compositions, that had marked with fire the scene for ever. In fact, it is obvious to me that they started the prince and princesses trope back in the day.
I will always praise their contribution of a very genuine and refreshing approach to the visual kei clichés that will never be forgotten.
A tragic-concept band project met an actual tragic end...😢
 
P.D.: the tears I shed while watching Kamijo sing Fiançailles during his anniversary tour date in my country were the worthiest ever. 💗🌹

Wow, this kind of vk and American gay culture crossover thrills me a lot. 😍 Partly because VK was ALWAYS about gender-bending, heavy (homo)sexualized costumes and performances... but, paradoxically, all of that kept in something like superficial for the eyes of the fans, or at least not really pointed out or signified as something "gay" and valued for that.  I think that were Western fans that pointed it out the most, and in cases used vk as a platform to explore gender and sexuality and its possibilities, but I can't figure that as an option for Japanese fans...
But, for instances, many bandoman seemed always pretty non-straight for me, even when there was actually no words from them of anyone else about it, like Jasmine You for instance🤔

Are those facts or just assumption?
Actually as a gay man myself I see those far from what happened in reality.
I mean, you do know that these drag queens have trades in every cities they performed in, right?
There are gay men who are into men in make up, either sexually or mentally. And you shouldn't count them out.
IMHO, your opinion mostly based on generalization of what Gay people are.
 
 

this. i've spoken to enough gya who would notice any minute change in a song arrangement and analyze lyrics/the meaning behind something artistic (or "artistic") a band has put out.
 
but sure, some of them are in it for the fantasy, and that's awesome too. don't see much of a difference between dudes who don't know a lot about music and flail over cool guitar solos/how badass this and that musician is and gya who react pretty much the same about pretty bandoman.
 
 

Kinda wish a few more VK dudes were out and about, if only to satisfy my irrational curiosity.
I have this vision of peak VK being like '80s UK synthpop, where like 90% of anyone good was gay/bi.

+1. Who the fuck is this guy? The only thing I know is that he produced Dir's "I'll" single back in the day. 
 
Who is this guy?

Any thoughts on their disbandment?
I've always felt that 95% of the stuff after Fierte was pretty generic, thus boring. I deeply believe it reflects an atmosphere of low creative energy, clearly derivated of the loose bonds between the members, with their easy comes and goes. This is something I've never came to understand fully, since there is much evidence that, although they never reached the mainstream attention bands like Shazna had, neither the levels of popularity bands like Dir en grey or Pierrot enjoyed in those years, Lareine was indeed a solid band with a strong concept, decent musicians and organic compositions, that had marked with fire the scene for ever. In fact, it is obvious to me that they started the prince and princesses trope back in the day.
I will always praise their contribution of a very genuine and refreshing approach to the visual kei clichés that will never be forgotten.
A tragic-concept band project met an actual tragic end...😢
 
P.D.: the tears I shed while watching Kamijo sing Fiançailles during his anniversary tour date in my country were the worthiest ever. 💗🌹

I only care about the EU tour coming up if they keep zetsu

The PV track is aight, but at this point it’s always the same blastin’ riff to the same chinese restaurant OST instrumentals, with vocal melodies about as varied as the tones of gray on concrete slabs. A band of impeccable musicians throughout, reduced to treading waters that’ve other times slightly risen, other times slightly receded. As as mentioned by someone else in this thread before: they used to have riffs that one could discern, changes of mood and colour. 

I thought the same! It seems that for nowadays scene old-school=ZAN... If their plan is to just emulate, there are a ton of bands to get inspiration...

I get that, it's the way the original poster on Tanuki put it with "I don't want Screw fans telling me they feel bad for [Byou]". Like, how can you not after reading some of that stuff (I understand that stuff may be false info but still)

I thought the same! It seems that for nowadays scene old-school=ZAN... If their plan is to just emulate, there are a ton of bands to get inspiration...

Well composed, well executed, well recorded... but man, so, so generic. Still very attached to the clichés of the 90s (in this case the ZAN one), like Grieva and the bands from the nostalgia kei  boom did for almost every song they put out... I wish this will help them to get a wider audience, at least.
Diaura is very special to me. They are one of the last bands that I followed with quite great passion, because of their skills at creating a sound that combined the best from the old-school reminiscence and modern influences, eveything done with their own mark (seriously, Diaura achieved one of those things many bands lack nowadays: a style that makes you recognize them from meters away). Their Focus and Triangle album are masterpieces, from the very beggining to the end. I guess they are having a hard time trying to overcome them...

The whole 'band decides not to play their hit songs' thing happens all the time, 'anthems' or not, see also Radiohead's relation with 'Creep' as a Western example. There's really nothing  wrong with it at all imo, bands don't owe it to their audience to always play the hits.. As far as Dir en grey goes, they have been pretty consistent with still featuring occasional older tracks in their setlists and mixing it up, apart from a couple songs, they haven't really turned into one of those dinosaur bands that just goes through the motions and plays the same 'greatest hit selection' at every show

Ask me when Dir played a song the last time :^)

I'm not crying it's only onions raining in my eyes.
Back then I knew Lareine weren't very big in Japan, but I didn't know they struggled so much, and had so much passion for what they did
(And that we could have had them still if someone would have responded to those ads! 😡)
 
Now I'm even more glad I started to stan them so early and spent so much money on their new releases when I started to be able to buy original stuff (I know that they got only a minimal fraction of the ¥¥, but still), before they disbanded.
 
Thanks for sharing this and fighting the good battle versus the Kamijo haters, for us too (non japanese speaking western fans). Luckily here in Europe I don't remember much negative reactions at the news of the birth of Versailles and its members. On the contrary.

I lived in Tokyo and went to all their local shows and many of the away ones too during their second period in the 2000s. Something that I think isn’t fully appreciated among international fans is just how unpopular and broke Lareine was during that time, and how desperately and passionately they worked despite the obstacles. But every concert was magical. It had to be. There was no reason to do it otherwise, and a million reasons to quit. It felt like borrowed time, and I was always so happy and grateful to be able to see them despite the bittersweet feeling they would have been better off doing something else.
 
They always looked exhausted at events, rarely had new costumes, rarely even had new goods because I think they had trouble coming up with deposits. Cheki didn’t start to become a thing until late in their history (2005-ish?) when they’d already spent years grinding away with little return. I suspect the reason why they were able to put out as many releases as they did is because back during Lareine’s Sony days Kamijo invested in buying a bunch of his own production equipment. I think normally an indie band at that level wouldn’t have had those resources.
 
But time to write and rehearse seemed like a scarce commodity too back then. There were times when Kamijo looked half dead. And every time Lareine did a little tour we could watch Kamijo perk up day by day, at the same time as us fans with normal lives were getting more and more tired as the tour went on. It always made me wonder what on earth kind of awful schedule he normally had in Tokyo, juggling the band and probably a part-time job, that going on tour would feel like a vacation to him. (Later on when I read Versailles interviews, they mentioned that Kamijo and Hizaki first met while working at Third Stage.)
 
Unfortunately by 2003 Lareine was already perceived as old, out of date, and uncool. A ‘90s band. If they hadn’t paused in 2000 maybe things would have been different, maybe they could have built a solid base like Dir or Pierrot. But coming back in 2003 it was too late, the trends had already changed. Lareine had few fans back then, and it seemed like all of us were fans from before. I never met any Japanese fans who said they were new. (only international fans) Young VK fans didn’t care. Lareine wrote some of the currently trendy themes into their music in ways that were interesting instead of pure copy/paste, and us old fans had fun, but nobody else cared. They did some amazing experimental stuff on stage, and nobody saw it except us few old fans. To give you an idea of how young fans perceived them, there was a big outcry when Versailles was announced because people didn’t think a pansy weak vocalist with a thin high voice like Kamijo should be playing with awesome (but unknown) guitarists like Hizaki and Teru. They really got outraged when we heard Versailles was going to have a heavy sound. I got in a lot of arguments online at that time with people who clearly thought I was a delusional fangirl for saying that Kamijo’s voice is powerful enough to sing heavier music.
 
In February 2006 Kazumi announced that he was leaving Lareine and retiring from music. I never blamed him, I was thankful that he had done his best to help bring us great music for so long despite the hardships. But this was really the beginning of the end. Lareine put out big ads in the major VK magazines looking for a new drummer, and they even went out of their way to explicitly write that they would take applications from anybody regardless of age or sex or nationality, as long as they could play and would love the band. I think that would be shocking to see in a band’s want ad even today, and this was in 2006 before the explosion of international tours had happened. But they weren’t able to find a drummer, and then during the summer Mayu vanished again. Honestly I can’t even blame Mayu either for wanting to quit under the circumstances, but it was terrible that he vanished without communication or warning. The Club Citta live they did in October was originally supposed to be a Halloween Party event live with multiple bands, not their last live.
 
I went to as many of Kamijo’s anniversary tour dates as I could, since it was so special. The Tokyo final with everyone was amazing. So glad I went.
 
p.s. “Drama” was so great live that to this day I can still half-hear the performance in my memory, even though they only played it twice in Sapporo in February 2006 before Kazumi left. It was so powerful. Kazumi and Emiru were much louder than on the studio version; this song actually has a really sexy rhythm when you can hear them. Mayu took the electric part instead of the acoustic one. They came together solid and strong booming on the beat in that last chorus on the song, Kamijo singing powerfully instead of gently, and hard on the beat like the others. I regret not bringing my MD recorder to Sapporo, but I never imagined that those 2 nights would be the last times we could enjoy Lareine normally.

LOL band members and their groupies, every rock bands have one, wherever they are.
Reminds me this one report when Marilyn Manson, either being honest or trolly, told about one time him and his band mates (mainly Wayne Gacy) were doing this one deaf groupie girl back stage, from groping her, had sex with her and then gave her the golden shower, to the protest of Nine Inch Nails members.

Any thoughts on their disbandment?
I've always felt that 95% of the stuff after Fierte was pretty generic, thus boring. I deeply believe it reflects an atmosphere of low creative energy, clearly derivated of the loose bonds between the members, with their easy comes and goes. This is something I've never came to understand fully, since there is much evidence that, although they never reached the mainstream attention bands like Shazna had, neither the levels of popularity bands like Dir en grey or Pierrot enjoyed in those years, Lareine was indeed a solid band with a strong concept, decent musicians and organic compositions, that had marked with fire the scene for ever. In fact, it is obvious to me that they started the prince and princesses trope back in the day.
I will always praise their contribution of a very genuine and refreshing approach to the visual kei clichés that will never be forgotten.
A tragic-concept band project met an actual tragic end...😢
 
P.D.: the tears I shed while watching Kamijo sing Fiançailles during his anniversary tour date in my country were the worthiest ever. 💗🌹

So I'm coming home from Kiryu's show in Osaka and I'm really worried about Mahiro right now...
I'll do a proper live report tomorrow when I have more time but here's the "short" version of what happened.
From the very first song, Mahiro didn't have a lot of energy which was already making me worries but after a few songs, he got back to his normal levels of energy and so those worries went away.
But at the end the set before the encore, one of the staff members had to help him walk off of the stage.
For the MCs during the encore everything also seemed fine. Mahiro was even smiling a lot but for the very last song Mahiro looked really really tired and then when the song ended he was stumbling a little. And then started talking in this really delirious tone and I couldn't even really catch what he said. Then he was stumbling a lot more and bumped into the mic stand a few times and a staff member caught him before he fell down coming off of the stage. I don't think he fully fainted but he couldn't stand up straight. A good hand full of girls were crying after that (I teared up a little too). 
At the very end of the live Mitsuki was trying to calm everyone down and even made a joke about the 6-man tour they're doing next.
But after this, I really want them to take a long break...seeing Mahiro almost faint was so scary... And I really think he's pushing himself too hard. 

This I think was (partially?) thanks to the fact that in those day Lareine wasn't one of the cool bands to stan (too pop-rock and kitsch), so pretentious *ssholes stayed away and in the fanbase there was people enjoyin them  and very happy to see someone else doing it, since there was not very much of us around. Or at least this is the impression i got from the italian VK fanbase pre band disbanding. 

I feel the same way, for me the best Kamijo work will always be Lareine, it was very unique.

one of my very first vk bands. so unique and nothing has come close to what they did music-wise since then.
 
also there are like three full length lareine concerts on YT if u're looking for a nice way to spend ur friday night ;^)
 
edit: also their western fanbase as a whole back in the way was super chill & very welcoming. wish we could have that now uwu 

+11111111
 
FUCKING SAME.
 
Inhale is in fact one the tunes with the highest replay number in my list. Superb composition and execution. Great blending of contemporary metal with the classic visual kei harmonies. Nothing more to say; 11/10. On the other hand, the genericness of their other releases keep me getting more and more decepted. Still can't believe they are the same band... I just don't get it.
Thanks God we have Jiluka to satisfy our starving for prog-tech-metal kei.

big ol reminder that i'm not writing this as an insider or anything but as a nerd who reads a lot of tanuki rumors
 
Kyo's drinking party was ハーコン/Harcon and the members are sometimes called ハーディー/Hardy, for anyone who wants to look it up themselves.

I can't say I remember everyone who's been mentioned as a member but:
Kyo
Daisuke & other Kagerou members
Gara & other Merry members
Tatsurou & other MUCC members
Satsuki
Kisui
Wataru (ex. 12012)
Some combination of baroque/kannivalism members
Byou (as Kagerou's roadie)
 
Daisuke and Kyo are probably the ones you'll read the most about. A lot of the stories seem to indicate the old vertical hierarchy/roadie culture (e.g. Kyo bosses around Daisuke, who bosses around Byou) which seems to have died somewhat with the idolification of visual kei in the last 10 or so years. There are threads specifically about Harcon but I don't really know how I feel about translating them because they have some fairly serious allegations...

The story about Ruka getting his ass beat by Yayoi/Yuuga is pretty famous too, but the details aren't really clear. Just everyone seems to know Yayoi and Yuuga wanted Ruka's ass beat and then it happened. One version I read is that Kazane from the Anarchist Records band Misery took the blame for it for a while, but that was because Yuuga pinned it on him after Yayoi ordered Yuuga to beat him up. Folding chairs were allegedly involved in the beating in the most often retold version of the story. Kisaki may or may not have intervened. The only reason I ever heard for this was that Yuuga and Yayoi got tired of him having a stank attitude and not greeting them properly.