Kaleidoscope

That shriek in the beginning is one of the coolest things I've heard in a while. Clean vocals are pretty messy and the pitch correction does more bad than good in this case, unfortunately it makes his voice cracks stand out more. Solid first song though, interested to see what they are up to!

@Bear I gave Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse a few spins so far and enjoyed it, thanks for the recommendations! Not sure what to think about they keyboards yet though @VisutoxPantheion sound great as well, good stuff. Also love the artwork, might actually order this one. @pazzi314 I already knew and like Harakiri, gonna order their Aokigahara vinyl that is coming out soon! Never heard of Downfall of Gaia, but I enjoyed what I heard on YT so much that I ordered their latest album Their sound reminds me more of a heavier/more sludge-y version of Deafheaven, Ghost Bath and the likes, but I enjoy them way more than the latter at least. Thanks for the recommendations! I found something nice too a few days ago, they are called Archivist and seem to have some members of Fall of Efrafa. If you like the bands I mentioned in my message to pazzi314, I highly recommend checking them out, really high quality stuff and their album is free on Bandcamp!

I agree with everything that has been said about the language of the music, but I also think that the image of the band plays a huge role. If band A and band B both play similar music in style in quality, but band B has an amateur-ish look/a terrible band logo/lame cover artworks, whereas band A has a great look/great artworks/seems professional (which is all subjective of course), a lot of people would say band A is better. I don't know why some people have a problem admitting it, but for me the whole image of a band plays a large role and influences the way in which I enjoy or don't enjoy their music - this applies to VK as well as pretty much any other genre or style imaginable. Aesthetics are just something a lot of people look for when it comes to any form of art. Even scenes like the metal scene who often claim they don't are about appearances suddenly care a lot if a metal band doesn't fit the visuals a band in this genre is supposed to have.

I got back into Black Metal a bit recently and dug through some of my old favourites, really starting to enjoy some stuff like Darkspace, Xasthur and Midnight Odyssey again. Just recently, I also rediscovered the whole Post-Black Metal whatever thing, I still love Lantlôs, An Autumn for Crippled Children and now Deafheaven, which I actually had never heard before despite their huge popularity (they seem to be quite controversial though). You guys are probably familiar with most of the stuff I named, so I guess I will share some of the lesser known bands which I only know through the local scene. Der Weg einer Freiheit have some pretty good stuff, I interviewed their guitarist and vocalist a couple of times when they had their first releases. This one is the last album by them that I listened to - they do have some modern influences, but are rooted in the Norwegian scene according to themselves. Very good live band also! Ära Krâ are also nice, but they could be rather described as Blackened Metalcore I suppose? Especially the vocals take some time to get used to, I'm still not sure if I really like these guys or not, but they definitely do have some great melodies. Not from Germany, but a band I also rediscovered in my collection. Resplendent Grotesque was one of my favourite albums at the time, really creative and twisted Black Metal with an amazing vocalist. Curious about what they are up to nowadays, even though I heard that their old vocalist left. Gonna look through some of you guys' suggestions, I already saw Bear mentioning Cultes des Ghoules a lot, so I guess I will give them a try later. Also looking for a good starting album to get into Emperor, is anybody familiar with their discography? I'm interested in any other recommendations that might fit my taste - I usually enjoy more modern takes on Black Metal, but definitely like the more traditional stuff as well.

Much better than their first song, Juri's vocals actually have improved quite a bit since Deluhi.

Only had one listen so far, but really enjoyed it - might be their best since Shion for me.

Love the previews, the whole thing sounds pretty oldschool. I like that they moved away from the party rock thing a bit and sound more organic again, looking forward to this one!

Ah yeah, I loved the Shokran album too, good stuff! My most played albums from last year are probably Napoleon's "Newborn Mind" and Architect's "All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us". The former is just the most passionate and inspired Metalcore (even though they seem to be rooted more in Hardcore) album I've heard in a long time. The lead guitar is clearly what makes this band, but the new vocalist is also an amazing and very fitting addition. As for Architects, I've heard that quite a few people don't consider it their best work - I definitely do and think that the removal of most of the clean vocals and the cold and aggressive atmosphere work perfectly for them. And those vocals man, holy shit. As for non-core related stuff, I recently got into Dødsengel. "Imperator" is definitely one of the most interesting (and longest, two and a half hours) Black Metal albums I've heard in a while. The linked song is pretty straightforward compared to the rest of their stuff, but it's definitely worth to check out the whole album. Pretty mindblowing stuff in my opinion.

These guys sound promising. The first verse gives off a slightly old D'espairsRay vibe and his cleans are pretty strong, definitely gonna keep an eye on them.

Awesome news! I thought it would have been cool if they included their last three singles, but maybe they are confident enough in their new material, looking forward to it.

Yeah, I agree with you there. When I made the thread, I was mainly thinking about stuff I've been listening to recently (most of which is rooted in hardcore to some extent) plus some VK stuff. When I listen to music that is focused less on single songs, but more on the listening experience as a whole, I don't really care about the length either - even though I'd actually prefer a longer album in that case.

This is a topic I've been thinking more about this year after noticing that I have trouble remembering songs on albums that go beyond 10-12 songs. The worst offender for this is probably Mejibray for me - I do believe "420" could be an amazing album (I quite enjoy it as it is), but they sheer amount of tracks hurts the listening experience for me and makes it way more difficult for single tracks standing out. After coming across a variety of different album lengths, I feel like I remember albums with 9-12 songs the most, which equals 35-45 minutes for most bands. Unless they are a bit more progressive and have longer songs, of course. What is your prefered album length? Number of songs or the length in minutes, anything goes.

This is glorious

As someone who has been here since the early days of Tainted World, I can only say that I agree that a lot of the decline seems to be due to a lack of exchange online. When my interest in VK sparked again a few months ago, MH was pretty much the only place I could go to, since the rest of the international community is way too spread. It's virtually impossible to have a proper discussion about recent stuff going on in the scene outside of MH, and as @Disposable said, message boards are more or less a thing of the past (although I feel like the atmosphere here is way less hostile by now, or maybe it's just me growing a thicker skin with age). There are some large facebook pages like the Visual Loner blog which are up to date and would theoretically allow people to exchange, but somehow most facebook users can't be bothered beyond "reacting" to a post or linking some names under it. I still feel that YT plays quite a large role in the decline of interest too, mainly because it was an easy way to discover new bands through the recommended or related videos. But since YT got crippled by all the copyright nonsense, it's hard use it the way people used it a few years ago. As for bands who could fill the void girugamesh, D'espairsRay etc left, there really seems to be no band which I feel has what it takes (except for maybe Dadaroma, they have quite a big presence on YT compared to your average VK band and recently got a big boost through the Fine Bros video). It also seems like it's never new musicians who form the more appreciated bands, but always people that have been or used to be popular before, so there is rarely this feeling of novelty that bands like girugamesh had when they started out. Plus many bands feel very inconsistent or have too much output to really leave an expression. Here in Germany, we still have a few concerts every year though and some of them seem to sell quite well - from what I've heard, Nocturnal Bloodlust's show was very crowded.

Glad if I was of any help! Yup, that sounds like the right approach It's always good to analyze one's recordings (even though it becomes bothersome if you start regretting uploading something after you find more and more flaws ahaha), sometimes it also helps to look at your notes in a program like Melodyne, for me it helped to see where I usually go flat or sharp! Ah yeah, with the throat singing you probably mean the false chord stuff, lots of singers use it for growling - I find it rather uncomfortable and prefer to use fry screams (there's lots of tutorials for that on YT, it's pretty cool because you can transition to raspy and clean singing very quickly with it), but it sounds pretty brutal if you can master it. I haven't listened to AvelCain that much, but from what I remember he sounded fine. I think it's good to pick up bits from all singers you come across and like, there is always something you can learn even from singers who are technically not that good

Ich weiß gar nicht, ob ich hier jemals was geschrieben habe, aber ich sage auch mal hallo

Many bands on the list come and go, but here is a recent one with active bands: 1. DADAROMA 2. Dir En Grey 3. DEZERT 4. Gallo 5. ALSDEAD 6. the god and death stars 7. Hollowgram 8. Nocturnal Bloodlust 9. Mejibray 10. Codomo Dragon

Received my CDs last week and they were in perfect condition. The seller is very friendly and fair, I highly recommend buying here!

100% this. Kyo is a singer who has always used techniques before had learned to control them. I personally like this approach and follow it myself, but it is sometimes risky and often shows at live performances if you do songs that you can only sing in the studio. As to your issue, I went throught really similar thought processes too when I started with singing - thinking that my range and voice might be extraordinary, talking about it a lot and feeling the need to express it. And I think it's not necessarily a bad thing Especially when you just started out singing, it is important to have some confidence and believe in your abilities. However, a tip I can definitely give you is to look critically at your vocals and not lose sight of all the flaws you have - and I assure you, just as I still have them, you have them too. Without a teacher, it's actually fairly hard to notice them if your ear is not yet trained and accustomed to what your voice does, so it definitely helps to get some professional feedback on your singing! To answer your initial question: Yes, it is easy for trained tenors who have the basics of belting (basically powerful singing if you are not familiar with the term) down to hit most of the notes in Saku, it's not exceptionally high except for that high part towards the end of the song. In general, as you said, pretty much everybody can theoretically learn to hit high notes with certain techniques, but it will sound different depending on your voice type. I have a fairly low voice and my voice gets a fairly piercing and thin sound when I go really high - the trick is to use your head voice and mixed voice for the very high notes (not falsetto, every guy has that by default and it's usually weak and disconnected). From my experience, I'd say that it's actually harder to learn to hit super low notes (like actual low notes, Asagi from D doesn't sing very low most of the time, he just has a dark timbre). I can sing around Kyo's highest notes (you can hear it from 1:16 onwards in my example, sorry, it's a fairly old cover since I don't have any recent high ones), but I cannot keep up with his super low notes even though I'm a baritone. Turns out I wrote a whole essay, but I hope it helps! Good luck and have fun practicing

That was awesome, enjoyed it more than their previous stuff! Let's be honest, if these guys were actually Japanese, people would hype them as the next big thing in VK. They sound great, look great (except for that moustache) and Yohio is a better vocalist than 80% of what is currently hyped in VK.

@helcchiOoooh, I see! Now that you mention it, I honestly have no idea what could come next. I feel like the core thing will prevail a little longer, but since VK usually tries to become more extreme with each new iteration, I don't really know what would be the logical next step (since deathcore has been done to an extent already). If anything, my guess would be that there will be some djent-y stuff in the future, but who knows

Recognizing pretty much all of these obscure bands shows me how much I used to be into this era, I miss those times I loved and still love that XodiacK song in particular, their image is so ridiculous yet I still enjoyed it a lot, my favourite VK power rangers. @DisposableHad no idea they sounded that good, I only have "Bastard" in my shelf and it never really got me hooked. Gonna look for their old stuff on here later! But isn't that exactly what people would have thought about nu vk back then too? While I do get tired of every band doing the same style, it's no different from the nu metal period and I feel some bands are doing the core thing pretty well in some songs (DADAROMA in their heavier songs for example). But then again, I have always enjoyed Metalcore to an extent, so that might explain why I'm not sceptical at all towards it Visage's guitar tone is sick by the way, just noticed.

EYA were great! And I remember gemmik, never heard any other song but the PV one though unfortunately. Actually, I think quite a few of these bands had fairly decent vocalists - the guys from D'espairsRay, Awoi, Kalimero, MUCC and Kagerou are all pretty good singers for example. I also just remembered these guys, I think it's another Gossip than the one currently active though? @DisposableWoah I had no idea Vidoll did a song like this, only ever listened to one album of them back then and didn't find it edgy enough haha @helcchi DAMY do indeed sound a lot like DEZERT, but I like it! @Licio123 They disbanded, but some of the members moved on to form heidi. from what I remember!

Man I love this thread, so many old favourites in here. It's funny how negative people were about nu metal riffs back when I listened to this stuff non-stop, I sometimes felt I was the only one who was not ashamed of enjoying it Totally forgot about kalimero, such a sick song! Do they have any notable (mini-)albums? Never went beyond that one song unfortunately I enjoy pretty much all of the bands mentioned, but Awoi in particular, I always had a soft spot for this guy's voice. Dali were awesome too, but I never got into them that much because of their inconsistent discography. I think I'm gonna check out yaminade's stuff a bit more, my brother used to like them a lot but I never really actively listened to them. And Neo Destruction painfully reminds of the fact how great Nega (and The Black Swan as well) sound, but are completely ruined for me by Jin's atrocious clean vocals. I mean, I respect the guy for how passionate he is with his projects, but he just has no idea how to sing (even though he slightly improved recently). @Disposable Haha great memories man, I remember my parents commenting on Hizumi with "why does he scream so much when he can sing so well" too. But yeah, I completely feel you there, I was really disappointed after those three singles too, but after a while I got into REDEEMER as well, which I think is actually a pretty good album (albeit not on the level of the two albums before) - Karyu was just a really good songwriter until the very end, just a shame that Hizumi's voice was so wrecked on Monsters. And yeah, Black:List had so much potential, when it comes to writing memorable melodies they were miles ahead of many other bands. Missed them as well when they were here with Exist Trace Some new contributions, I also really enjoyed early 12012 and of course everyone's favourite -OZ-. On another note, are there any active/new bands who still play this style and do it well?