Jigsaw9

45 minutes ago, Bear said:

Dr. Phibes Rises Again is fantastic. Have you seen the excellent The Abominable Dr. Phibes as well? It's awesome. Robert Fuest is a fantastic and sadly underrated director, and Vincent Price is, obviously, one of the greats names in all of cinema. Robert Quarry is also one of the greats. Amazing actors!

Yep, saw it maybe a year or so ago, so I thought it was long overdue to watch the sequel. It was pretty fun! I liked the first one more but this was completely fine too. Gotta love all those wacky death scenes and elaborate traps, haha (and the ending with that music was really great too). Too bad they didn't make more sequels.

@Bear LOL, looks great, thanks for the recommendation! Definitely gonna check.

And while I'm here I gotta mention I saw I'm Thinking of Ending Things yesterday and wow.... I did not like it. Too long, too pretentious and even though it managed to slowly ramp up the unsettling/uncomfortable factor for a while, it all just got incredibly tiresome and boring by the last 45 mins or so. Shame it all went to shit, because somewhere in the middle there was a good chunk that I absolutely loved (and the whole movie was nicely shot/composed). Also, afterwards I read the Wiki synopsis for the novel it was based on and WTF, that sounded so much better in terms of ending/conclusion, it's mind-boggling why they didn't go with that. Overall, I was very disappointed.

Right now I'm watching Dr. Phibes Rises Again which is a heck of a lot more entertaining (I know, completely different ballpark), lol.

Gotta love all the people back in the day mixing up their files trying to give birth to releases they didn't own.... :'))))

tfw you're a fan for almost 15 years and you just now hear something you thought you did all along.

This version is awesome btw.  

Yeah, I continue to have high hopes (I'm not that much into that very first preview but otherwise everything sounds good).

In the meantime Eureka got officially upped to Youtube too, due to the all-around streaming availability I guess:

Nice warm and fuzzy poppy tune, I like. LOVE & PIISU

Oh strange, copies are available again at Zoisite now... When I wrote that it said it could not be ordered anymore.

False alarm it seems (or maybe they just temporarily took down the option to purchase it).

Some previews, heckyeahhhhh

do you even bleep bro

The box is now complete... ♥

...aaaaand the CD's gone. :')))))

A preview of the track "Eureka" can be listened to at various online streaming/digital platforms (for example here).

To me it sounds like the light poppy melodies of SEVENTH HEAVEN fused into the modern streamlined electro-ish production of the last few albums, and I'm sorta HERE FOR IT. This album is looking to be better and better by the day, hope it won't disappoint.

Wow, that's too bad... I wasn't the biggest fan of their stuff after they came back from their break but the last album SIN DIVISION was actually their strongest post-hiatus release for me! Shame that the whole situation led to this, but hoping they'll each find happiness in what they do in the future individually.

Mhmmm, that's what I'm a bit afraid of. I'll wait with it for now, hoping they'll resume overseas shipping soon.

3 minutes ago, carddass said:

I haven't ordered from them in a while, do they do international orders?

I saw them having English-language info up just a few months ago on how to order from overseas.......... but now it looks like that's no longer an option (I suspect due to Corona).*  So at first I was like "heck yeah, I'll be able to buy this hassle-free!" and then ".....oh."

* right now they say "OVERSEAS MAIL ORDER will be temporarily suspended."

LMAO wow, way to inflate the price×4, with some digital bells & whistles... :'))))

I'll give these guys a break, the revival live was pretty solid. I've always liked the VANITAS album so I didn't mind the setlist to begin with. But this was probably one of Jin's best NEGA performances that's for sure (at least to me it felt like it). The other guys were tight and competent as usual too. Weird to see them together on stage playing these songs after so many years, almost felt like stepping into a time machine.

NEGA's last live DVD left a very sour taste in my mouth (weird setlist arrangement, awkward atmosphere and a faulty/error-ridden audio mix ruined the whole experience so much I still haven't watched it all the way through in one sitting), but this performance redeemed them a bit. That said, I do admit these songs work a lot better in their studio-recorded form rather than played live. But they tried to make the best of it I guess?...

Some suggestions:

禁色 (桜井青江 ver.)

禁色 (SAX remix)

禁色 (feat. ETERNAL MEMBER 武井誠 freestyle R・A・P)

I'm still baffled why he didn't choose to make a vid for that ultra-catchy YAAAAIYAAAAIYAIYAIYEIYAIYOOO song he played at CRUSH OF MODE.

Would have been so much more memorable.

OH NOOO YOSHIKI WATCH OUT YOU'RE GONNA FALL ONTO THE MASTER TRACKS OF THE NEW X JAPAN ALBUM NOOOOOOoooo

Phew, that was a close one. Lucky thing that the album isn't actually mastered yet.

@Yukimoto Yeah that's what I was guessing too, at least based on that event period. It just confused me how they strictly wrote no archive in the description (I only bought a ticket for a stream one other time on Zaiko, and there they explicitly wrote how long you can still watch it afterwards).

edit: Never mind, the official site does say it will be archived till 28th September. Awesome!

On 8/7/2020 at 11:23 AM, Jigsaw9 said:

Too bad they don't have a date for foreign fans, would have been pretty cool to capitalize on that. I'm sure there would be interest.

I can't believe it, but looks like my prayers have been answered!

The band will hold a special livestreamed gig "ABRACADABRA LIVE ON THE NET" just before releasing the album, on 2020/09/21.

Further info here - basically the most convenient for overseas fans is to use the Zaiko platform. The ticket is hella pricey (5000 yennerz) and unfortunately the stream will not have an archive,* but I won't pass up this opportunity to finally see my favorite band live (I probably won't ever get a chance to do so in person anyway).

* although the Zaiko description says no archive will be available, the event period says "09.21 (Mon) ⇨ 09.28 (Mon)" so I'm now kinda confused, lol.

Scratch that, just saw that the stream will be archived until 28th September.

Well the setlist is pretty much a mini-version of the theme they went for at their last live. There they only played "NEGA" (i.e. after-returning-from-hiatus) tracks and only a small handful of relatively older songs in the encore.

But yeah, they could have included one or two 'classics'...

Wow, they really went all-in on the latter era NEGA, huh.

New song/MV:

It's... okay I guess?

I guess this could kinda-fit in the metal thread too, but whatever.

Bitter Lake Recordings has remastered and re-pressed the sole record of cult Japanese crust "supergroup" Grave New World, but also important that it's now finally available digitally too (as the physical formats are sold-out already). Just gave it a spin, still an excellent and demented album. The buzzsaw guitars and those King Diamond-esque wails are great!

https://bitterlakerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-sanctuary-lp