Kaleidoscope

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.

@KaleidoscopeI meant what kind of sounds would VK be making by the time we're looking back "fondly" at the core era is a scary thought. Post vk-core era could be pretty shit.
Every band that has lasted into the 2010s is now core… and I still listen to them. But now the decade is more than half way through and the more experienced musicians are getting old, there might be some drastic changes to the scene soon.

I have to post alice nine's former PSC-labelmates - bis - for this unlikely number:
 
and what's gossip without their predecessors Visage?
 
aaand a barrage of more bands
 
 
KANSAI
 
 
NAGOYA
 
 
I shudder to think how low would this scene have to sink in order to instigate a retrospection on vk-core...

pretty fucked up to imagine that in a few years people might end up making threads like these about the xxxcore-influenced sound plaguing the scene tese days
 
however, this thread fucking rips, probably one of my favorite VK styles overall.
 
My contribution:
Always felt like Zilch's nu-metal/industrial rock-ish hybrid was neat as hell and it saddens me that hide had to die before he had any chance to explore this project any further cuz it was pretty damn good
 
What the fuck. This track, along with Ghost (both off the same album, coincidentially) always felt to me like they mixed more than just a lil' bit of nu-metal in w/ their more grungey / alt rock influences.

I fucking LOVED this song when it came out, and found it quite the disappointment that it wasn't a style they pursued any further. That's only one of the numerous let downs I faced by bands who did only one or two songs like this, for them only take their foot off the nu-metal-pedal for the rest of their careers .
 
@doomboxI saw them in Finland and there were like six people from MH at that show too! Quite the event 
@KaleidoscopeEarly vidoll is some of the best shit that came after the implosion of the old labels. Their run until the first LP is legendary, and that encompasses quite a bit of material, which you can conveniently find on one of their numerous compilation albums like proposal and bijinkei. Should you not find these links working on the forum, I'll upload them for you in a heartbeat. 
From their 2002 mini. There were two that came out that year and if you combine them, it's like an album. While I don't think they were influential in any particular way, they certainly bridged a lot of the turn of the millenia and 00's visual kei characteristics. 
The riff that starts at 0.17 sounds like a modern Madeth Gray'll out take it's absolutely incredible. 

@Kaleidoscopeoh my god, how did i forget gossip? i LOVE those guys (and yeh, they're disbanded, not the same gossip that's around now)

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!

Thanks for the recommendations guys, enjoying both 420 and SM! I wish they albums would be a bit shorter though, makes it hard to pick out clear favourites somehow. 

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!

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!

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!

This came into my head instantly. Early Alice Nine kicked so much ass. 華想夢想紙 is a lovely mini, generally not very nü metal, but this song of course.
7 STRINGS THO
 
Also, if ムック's Kuchiki no Tou is considered nü metal, that's probably the best nü metal record I've ever heard.

Even Lycaon were doing it for a little bit. 
 
 
When screw were actually good. 
 
 
 
 
I have to post UnsraW again for this. I had this song and pv on repeat all over the internet back in like 2010. 

@helcchiBless, your contributions is the heart and soul of this thread. You've just summarised the spirit of the fad perfectly with all of those bands. Some I had not even heard of before like Gemmik
 
 I'm surprised I didn't link the blogspot and top 10 brutal vk bands youtube video staple DIE3IRAE on the first post. It's them with Since1889 and yaminade that I usually think of first if the topic steers towards this crap. 
 
@aetarnaI started socialising with other weeaboos only after 2007 ( the kids in my neighborhood were more focused on getting 2pac from winmx while I was wondering whether scalpel tron porn type on limewire was a real dir en grey song  ) and so I missed out on every bit of fraternising and ostracising that went on amongst them. What it seemed like to me however was the scene was quite uniform as long as the An Cafe's and D'espairsray's were still around, which were the main culprits along with deg and gazette who brought vk to Finland. When the first went to hiatus and the second died, they took the scene with them and left only smouldering ruins behind, along with yours truly.
 
The Piass going nu metal was something I never understood. I guess Takayuki felt like wanting to take a part in the fad and make some cash for once after all those years of activity. The vocalist had literally the perfect vk chorus voice and it's a shame that allegedly he just took off without informing anybody, sending the piass into the netherrealm of eternal recording hiatus in the process.
 
A band that was very popular in Finland at the time, performing here on numerous occasions and fukken Mikaru even dragged his other band black line to flop in front of the Finnish public the first chance he got. A very important band to me as well; in fact I quite fondly remember once being angry at my parents and choosing to sleep on the floor in protest and rock the spanking new vk band called Dio all night from the headphones. Now if I wasn't the intended target audience for this crap then I don't know who was! Self-flagellating weeaboos congregate here.
 
 
Hey I just found out that apparently he is fronting Fixer these days! I had no idea lolol btw what company starwave uses to shoot their pv's? they're all horrific without exception

@Disposable Vulgar and the nu-metal dilemma was very divisive, at least in my country's j-music fandom. 
 
This is going to be a little TL;dr story time, but I still remember the fandom split that happened  around the year between Miyavi's solo debut and Vulgar release. Basically, the fandom that was rather unified around one space, split into two different communities, which could very roughly be described as
 
community A) which generally loved Vulgar, the new DeG direction, which they considered more mature musically and less focused on looking pretty [no more fancy dresses for Shinya or miniskirts for Toshiya!], while generally hating the trend of Miyaboos - aka this kid can't sing, but is hugely popular because he's so pretty.
 
community B  which wasn't populated by miyaboos, as the A) insisted, but admitting to liking Miyavi there wasn't a social suicide. They mostly focused on trv indies like Mucc, Kagerou, Baroque, karimero, Fatima and early Undercode which includes mentioned above 12012 and Vidoll, and wrote-off DeG as amurrican nu-metal sell-outs who betrayed the scene, and were generally horrible now.

Of course this was centuries ago, and my memory didn't kept all the details, but I just find it so greatly ironic, that currently we can throw Mucc, Kagerou, 12012 and Deg's Vulgar into one bag of nu-metal influence. 
 

@DisposableIt's important to note that the music scene in Nagoya, which birthed Nagoya kei, has traditionally looked to the West for influences and developed independently of Tokyo. Perhaps that's why a lot of 00s Nagoya bands such as EYA were still lingering in that consciousness, even though EYA was an extreme exception as Ryouhei actually spent time living in America.
 
Nu metal seems to have particularly manifested itself in the Kansai and Nagoya VK scenes (and by extension Shizuoka due to the influence of Sequence Records and Tomozo's fondness of the genre maybe) - almost every band south of Tokyo carried this sound to some extent.
 
 
Other bands from the mid 00s include 
 
Reivier's contemporaries VanessA and As if in the darkness
 
 
 
@Kaleidoscopedezert clones DAMY (Miharu was a dezert roadie which may have influenced their sound)
 
 
 
 

Not that it would be strongly connected to VK (question whether this is actually related to visual scene due to their frontman is still debatable) but Kiyoharu's SADS had an album in 2001 (The Rose God Gave Me) which imho may have served as some sort of inspiring direction in regards to combining nu metal/sometimes American alt. metal ideas with various "progenitor" ideas of heavier visual kei music (glam rock-metal/punk).
 
"Because" and "Porno Star" are already familiar to everyone (not exactly nu metal) but this may be the nu metalliest piece Kiyoharu has ever made:
 
 
Limp Bizkit-meets-glam metal-ish stuff (ofc with good ol' dose of spoken word goodness)
 
This may also count, I guess (influence-wise) - awkward rapping bridges and climax are something which one would imagine in a nu metal piece rather than in some glam punk banger.
 
 
But interesting thread hey!

@doombox I definitely agree on EYA and it's a bit peculiar why not many other bands went as deep into the sound as they did. I presume this is because after the dust had settled from the initial nu metal phase in vk, most upstart vk bands started taking cues from other vk bands instead of the American originators - with EYA being the exception. I also had the fortune of seeing them live and being a part of the saddest  pity circle pit ( on the band's insistence )  of out of shape weeaboos you'd ever see.
 
Meth is definitely another blogspot stalwart that stuck around for a uncharacteristically long amount of time. My first time hearing them must have been on one of those MOST BRUTAL VISUAL KEI METAL BANDS videos that you'd might still find on youtube. 
 
The nu metal riff is so characteristic to visual kei now that it's never going to go away as long as they have guitars on hand. Now it's a co-existence of the newer core influences with the traditional use of nu metal that's been present for a long time now ( which is something that is quite apparent in a portion western metalcore as well. Back in the latter half of the 00's most the new core musicians had grown up on Slipknot which clearly showed through ). Visual kei is an unique mix however from the melodramatic X chorus to Luna Sea's soundscapes, and stuff just keeps piling on it.
 
@aetarnaYes, it's good that you mentioned Vulgar because there is a good chance it really was the most influential album released in the tradition. Iirc mejibray's tsuzuku said it's what got him to vk ( or at least made a lasting impression- CURIOUSLY ENOUGH he was also keen on having a band that played baroque's brand of vkei, so now we have these two traditions coexisting ) 
 
As an aside 
 
If you don't remember these kinds of videos then leave this thread. I reckon the lot of them have been deleted and this is a fairly new one as well from 2010, but at least the spirit lives on in the rad editing and bad english

Ahhh yes. This thread is definitely going to be gold. MUCC, D'espa, Vidoll, 12012. <3
 
Some of my old and new nu metal kei faves.
 
 
Especially older EYA has a ton of nu metal flair. They were able to broaden their influences as they went on but they're still a really strong contender for a band that was truer to the parts of nu metal that housed hip hop as one of the pillars.
 
meth. also worked a nice amount of it into some Nagoya influences. Still miss this band a lot. 
 
Arlequin seems like one of the newer bands carrying the nu metal torch (though further hybridizing it with a few other genres as well) with it still being a main vein in their style from the songs I've heard.
 

tbqh all ains bands are more nu metal than anything. Kuroyuri is obviously the best example and their album is a good primer on them. The Korn vibes are strong and a track or two is loaned from Girugamesh straight up.
 
12012 I never got more than cordially familiar with, though definitely essential as far this stuff goes- speaking of undercode however, the extent to which the nu metal influence made its presence know
 
 
As a testament to the flexibility of the nu metal ethos, bands like Vidoll managed to employ it quite a lot in their early days without particularly being known for it. There are a number of other bands who did just one-offs either as a dark atmospheric number or as a live staple 
 
 

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?

Thanks for the recommendations guys, enjoying both 420 and SM! I wish they albums would be a bit shorter though, makes it hard to pick out clear favourites somehow. 

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?

@robkun That's one of those bands I always knew about, but never listened to! I always put it off for some reason even though I enjoy the pv songs...
 
@itsukoii Gregory was great for the couple of songs they put out. Really a shame that the band petered out so fast and the members seemingly went nowhere, which seems endemic to these bands. 
 
Here's more contributions of my curatorial genius 
 
A band time will certainly forget. Yaminade sporting the most generic fashion and sound of the era and what happens at 0.53 is one of the most nu kei things ever ( in fact the only thing that's more nu kei, happens at the beginning of the song DESPERATE GAIN by a band called Hated. I was unable to find it on youtube but if you manage to get your hands on it, you will not be disappointed. ) Should be recognisable to anyone who scoured through blogspots at the time.   
 
 
Considering that they made it to like 2013, they must have been the last one of their kind to disband. Born in the heyday of the fad, there's probably a box that they don't manage to check. Also named after one of the most classic songs in the genre: Blind by none other than Korn from their s/t that's a western vk album if there ever was one..
 
 
I remember when Sadie was referred to as Dir en grey's juniors so much so that you'd think they were stealing riffs from the left and right like Grieva. That's not exactly true, and while the influence is certainly there ( l does that drummer remind you of anybody? ), this is more a case of the musical illiteracy of the dumb western weeaboo who can't discern a clear case of the nu metals from just music where a boy with big hair yells a lot. Sadie is also a band that stuck around for way too fucking long instead of just disbanding the second they had conclusively blown their nu metal wad.
 
 
Although nowhere near their best releases, Neo destruction deserves a mention because that riff is still being ripped off to this-a-day. I must have counted four instances of having seen it elsewhere, although the only ones I recall off the top of my head now are DEZERT and Mediena who took it wholesale. Nega got nu metally right after their first demo ( their best release ) and more or less stayed so until their disbandment. This goes to show that Kyoka wasn't the only one with nu metal aspirations towards the end of Aliene, and it's strange how they were suddenly unable to work together despite being into the same music. Maybe that just has more to do with that Nega actually started out really good and Kyoka hasn't been a part of  anything even remotely decent since like, 1999...
 
Because he sucks.

This thread... I am home. <3
 
My humble additions to the nostalgia train:
 
 
 
Also, props for mentioning GREGORY and Kalimero, hell yeah!
 
Also, lmao @ that Aliene track casually ripping off both "sic" and "Eyeless" by Slipknot. :'DDD At the time I somehow didn't notice at all, even tho I was heavily into Slipknot.