Jigsaw9

I must admit, re-reading the thing it doesn't sound too harrowing, but very poor choice of words / expressing himself. Like, he could have just said "hey guys, these times have been tough for all of us, and we know we didn't do much like other bands, but we do have this big gig coming up now so please come see us live there, we're counting on you"... instead of just going "what's the future of this band? well idk, but you better come and find out ;^)" I guess I'm just too tired of all the cryptic bullshit after all these years, but vk's gonna vk.

Ah yes, love a good "you better show up or we'll call it quits" scenario. Classic move. :'))))

Some cool ones that come to mind: - anything by 88kasyo junrei: These guys have been such a trip all the time, hard to choose a release. I'm just glad they exist. - BUCK-TICK - Arui wa Anarchy: A very strong and playful album after being so long in the game. No choice but to stan. - cali-gari makes it hard to just choose one, as I'm really fond of both their albums 11 and 13. Crazy/weird/beautiful stuff. - Chemical Pictures - Sekai wo utta otoko: Yeah, it's a compilation of singles but wow! Creative juices and catchiness overflow. - DIR EN GREY - DUM SPIRO SPERO: Can't forget this ridiculously monolithic album. DEG goes ham on the avantgyarudo vibes. - Grieva - Oni to kage / Shuuen: Speaking of DEG... ;D When thinking of full albums in recent vk, I can't go without these two. - KYOKUTOU GIRL FRIEND - Katte ni shiyagare: One of my most-played albums. A+ punky songs presented in A+ arrangements. - MUNIMUNI - MAGICAL MOONIES: Another one in heavy rotation. The songs, the sound, the gloom, everything works. - Psysalia Psysalis Psyche - #7: I know, it's more like a singles collection, but damn. Insanely catchy indie-rock, miss them so much. - SPEECIES - SOVILLETTA / SEXIVIA: Always fun times with these two records. There's just something irresistible in their style. - Vior gloire - Gloomy and wakeful night: Possibly in the top 5 of best indies-vk albums of the past decade. 'nuff said. I probably missed a few other greats, but right now these are all I could think of.

Possessor - Just fuckin' superb. What a relentless and bleak movie. Great to see the younger Cronenberg walk in his father's footsteps.

Wicked hairdo on that lad. Preview sounds/looks good too!

For some reason this completely flew under my radar, but it appears RAKUGAKI has released their 1st digital single under their alterego moniker 羅苦餓鬼 (also read as "Rakugaki") on 2020/10/31, titled 『殺意二満チタ貴女へ…』("Satsui NI miCHITA kijo E..."). As you could guess from the stylization of the title, it's more of a dark kote-kei influenced record compared to their usual eclectic pop-punk rock style. This comes as too late now, but they were also taking pre-orders for a special made-to-order cassette version of the single until 8th November (i.e. the number of copies are limited to the number of preorders). So that slipped us by now, but at least we can listen to the tunes online. TuneCore link Here is the Youtube playlist of the single for those who don't have Spotify and want to have a quick listen: I thought this was quite fun! Still sad to see these guys go so soon...

Gotta say, I'm nto a huge fan of this band but I've been enjoying their Note blogs lately (especially since they're also available in English). Hope they keep it up. Also they began assembling member-curated Spotify playlists, which is also kinda neat. Even though I don't have Spotify, it's interesting to see the members' tastes by browsing the lists (so far pretty much what I expected from them, haha). Ray: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3vbsWIgAOUucwVgBZ2I3Sl Aisaku: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0sm2CGm98acMJRDvOLhC2Q

Yeah, the only thing I wish is to travel back in time to experience all the gimmicks in person, cuz it seems like (to me) that's half the fun. In the last few weeks I also saw House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts but those didn't amaze me that much on their own (I liked Haunted Hill better). I have The Night Walker downloaded, will get to that one too, eventually.

@Bear Good to hear praise for Sputnik! My buddies and I were planning to watch it together (but Corona struck one of us so had to postpone), looking forward to it with moderately high expectations. Heard mostly good things about it so far, we'll see. I'm not sure what my last horror flick was, I'm watching a bunch of shit lately with the days blending together... but nothing amazing sadly. The last two movies I remember seeing that entertained me more than the rest were The Tingler and Mr. Sardonicus. I especially liked the latter one. Great story with an eerie atmosphere and powerful dramatic scenes (even if B-grade melodramatic at times, lol).

Agreed! She was so great. Very solid movie, I didn't expect it to be this good but they delivered. I've been in an X-Men mood lately, so my last watch was Apocalypse. It was a bit too long for my taste but it was okay, I was entertained. Next up's probably Dark Phoenix, of which I've heard nothing but shit but I feel like I gotta see where this whole story ends up at.

@Bear Nice one!

Welcome, hope you have fun~

They sound pretty good so far! But I do hope they'll make an effort to have actual drums on their subsequent releases.

Damnnnnn, I'm so bummed about this. They were so much fun. Getting kinda unclear vibes from that announcement + comments, about this being a temporary break/pause or an actual disbandment, tho I doubt that they'll be back under this same band name at least... too bad.

emmHOORAY~

For me they were all cool visuals, laughably bad/primitive music. Wondering if AINS will recruit some new bands...

I was recently thinking about / hoping that Meku would be back fulltime in a new band.... but not like THIS.

Watched the new HULU movie Books of Blood loosely based on some of Clive Barker's writing. I was preparing myself for disappointment but... it was actually good??? I enjoyed it at least, almost all the way through. There was some dumb stuff in it (some of the "connections" between the stories were kinda forced/lame) but otherwise I liked the individiual stories they presented. This sort of format is ripe for sequels so I hope that 1. they'll make one, 2. when they do, they won't fuck it up. Solid stuff.

Top-notch band! I've only come around to listening to more of them very recently, but haven't heard much I didn't like. During these newer listens Better Than Raw stood out to me the most, but my all-time favorite has to be The Dark Ride... but that goes back to my teenage years when I was just discovering metal and this album was what one of my friends had and lent me. What a powerful and catchy record!

David Hasselhoff has some #lit #bops too~ (this one's a cover of an '80s tune but still)

DOBE has announced on their official site that the band will disband after their show on 2020/11/19. The members wrote lengthy comments which can be read here. Sounds like it was a mixture of lack of progress and some members half-assing it basically. I appreciated these guys, they were pretty fun. Too bad this had to happen. I assume we can expect everyone except maybe the vocalist (who said he's gonna quit doing music altogether if I understood it right) turn up in some new bands in the future, hopefully.

Hoping these will all find their way onto some legit album / mini album released in a wider distribution. Otherwise good news!

Cool stuff! I was excited for a moment about the "unreleased" SPEECIES, but then I remembered they already released it (as a PV).

Lovin' the shameless COMPLEX homage, haha. The album's great too, some surprisingly cool tweaks in there.

Yeah, that random single they dropped out of nowhere a decade ago was actually pretty solid, so I somewhat have faith in them being able to churn out some rockin' tunes (even if none of the members' solo or side-endeavours are my thing at all). Keeping fingers firmly crossed.