nullmoon

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give that a shot.

But it's so good! Maybe try some of his shorter works first and build up? ^^

You guys are super cute ^^

Rammstein! XD

A picture of the girlfriend and I from last year, my hair changed colors three times last year, but I haven't dyed it since last July or so. I'll have to figure out what I want to do with it. 😅

I think the word feminism and the movement itself should simply disappear, there's no salvation for this movement since it was already so distorted. It genuinely begun as a fight for equality and became a toxic ideology just like Nazism and communism.If women have to fight for their rights they should do it by voting on the right ones on the elections, choosing those who represents and gonna fight for their interests and other forms of civilized manifestations on social media,on the streets,etc. It's not about the media,those who were part of this group and realized how toxic it became, already jumped out and are against it now.
 
Black Lives,LGBT, feminism,MGTOW 
I don't think people should label themselves,we are men and women and equally humans. I can't see the benefit of making groups,it only works as the trigger for the division of society, turning all of us one against another. 
 

Haha I'm so spineless XD 
 
Authority: 0.00
Self-Sufficiency: 2.00
Superiority: 0.00
Exhibitionism: 1.00
Exploitativeness: 0.00
Vanity: 0.00
Entitlement: 1.00

It's been a while, but I'm prowling the games/spam section because I'm bored as shite.
 
Authority: 5.00
Self-Sufficiency: 2.00
Superiority: 1.00
Exhibitionism: 2.00
Exploitativeness: 3.00
Vanity: 1.00
Entitlement: 2.00
In total, that is sixteen. More specifically, I apparently crave power for the sake of having authority over others and I don't mind exploiting people to get what I want, so take what you will from that.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Necro-ing this thread, lol. Saw some super great choices above  When it comes to Mandopop/Taiwanese music, I mainly listen to mainstream artists, including some oldies, although it sort of blends in with Cantopop, lol. Some have already been mentioned, but I listen to artists like Jay Chou, Fish Leong, Cyndi Wang, JJ Lin (technically from Singapore, but sings in Mandarin), Fahrenheit, S.H.E., Tank, Magic Power, and a bunch of others xD I'll just post some videos, lol ^^;
 
JJ Lin - Tales of Red Cliff - It's somewhat based on the Chinese novel, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and has wonderful incorporation of traditional Chinese instruments. I think I once read somewhere that the person who wrote Jay Chou's lyrics wrote the lyrics for this song.
 
Cyndi Wang - When You - A sad love song with a nice vocalist
 
A-Mei - Full Name - She's known as the "Mandopop Queen" with a lovely, evocative voice
 
Wilber Pan and Rainie Yang - Bu De Bu Ai - It's based off of the Korean song, Please Tell Me Why by Y
 
Fahrenheit - Only I Have Feelings for You featuring Hebe (from S.H.E.) - A cute anime-like MV where all the guys have hopelessly fallen head-over-heels over a girl and each try to woo her heart. The song is written by JJ Lin.
 
Magic Power - Who am I - A band that has two singers who complement each other with a DJ in their group
 
F.I.R. - Crescent Bay - A band that has a female vocalist and a nice incorporation of traditional Chinese instruments (I think xD)
 
Tank - Three Kingdom Love - It incorporates traditional Chinese instrumentals and (I think?) Chinese opera singing techniques.
 
Mayday - 入陣曲 - They have lots of great songs, so I just chose a random one for this, lol. I posted two different videos, but they're the exact same song.
 
S.H.E. - Loving You - The bittersweet love song was featured in a love drama called Down with Love. S.H.E. is a girl group with Hebe Tian who I believe is also a solo artist. I posted two videos of the same song; one is the official music video while the other contains the lyrics and unofficial English translation.
 

Repping Mayday

Three things in life are inevitable as a visual kei fan: death, taxes, and your favorite band ending activities. If you are a fan of llll-Ligro- , then you experienced all three at the same time when they announced their second disbandment. I wasn't super into the band at the time of both of their disbandments, although they were on my radar and not on my shit list, so I can sympathize with fans who had to deal with heart break twice. Fans of yesteryear went through a similar phase with UnsraW's vocalist Yuuki, and depending on who you talk to he still hasn't gotten back to his prime ten years later. The similarities are so striking it's hard to resist the comparison. But this review isn't about UnsraW, it's about llll-Ligro- and their unreleased second album 弔 (Tomurai). The three tracks that managed to survive stand as a reminder for what could have been, and what should have been.

Before its cancellation, 弔 was announced for a 2018-05-30 release. Artwork and booklets were probably designed and pressed, but no scans other than the front exist. A track list was released but we don't know how many of the nine unreleased songs were finished. The album was delayed multiple times due to Hinata and Kazari's habit of postponing releases for the sake of quality, but Hinata's refusal to finish recording his parts due to acute chorditis implies that at least some of these songs were unfinished. As is, it will be impossible to give a full review of it, but there are several tracks we can reflect on. Those tracks are comeback single "INVICTA", live distributed single "basket case", and other promotional single "INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL". "深閑ガラス" (Shinkan Glass) is a track played at their last live but no recording of it exists.
 
 


弔 (Tomurai)
1. Blame me (SE)
2. INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL
3. basket case
4. Shinkan Glass (深閑ガラス)
5. Kuroneko wa Kaku Katariki (黒猫は斯く語りき)
6. Ratai Are Hateta Hyou (裸体荒れ果てた標)
7. DIRGE OF INFECTION
8. HIRAETH
9. INVICTA
10. Mist
11. DEEP SIX
12. Seija no Koushin (聖者の行進)
13. Kanransha wa Adabana to (観覧車は徒花と)
14. Isho (遺書)
 
 
Despite all the material released as a part of llll-Ligro- 's first phase, "INVICTA" isn't the ball scorching metalcore banger I was expecting. The unassuming opening does a lot to disarm the listener, and on the first listen I thought this was going to be a ballad, but before long the song ratchets up the complexity and the aggression. The band dips their toes into the progressive metal waters with this one, as everything from synthesized piano keys to acoustic guitars and a generous amount of toms and cymbal crashes makes an appearance. Hinata's vocals are one of the most striking elements of the track, featuring his signature skill of deftly switching between harsh growls and pig squeals. Sometimes the transitions are so fast I'm not sure if it's all natural or studio magic, but having to perform that live is absolutely killer. It's a seven minute trip far more realized than most of their contemporaries. If every band has their magnum opus, "INVICTA" could be theirs. This must have been a product of their time as 時限式:uadjet (jigenshiki:uadjet).
 

"INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL" is a much more straightforward track, and would have been the first track on the album after "Blame me", which is an SE so I don't count it. There are a lot of cool ideas here. I think my ultimate favorite part is around 3 minutes, where Hinata's clean singing is laid over his screaming, creating a great dynamic tension to push the song into it's last section. The piano motif returns again, which makes me suspect that we would have gotten at least one piano ballad on the album. There's also some pretty dope bass slaps before the eagle scream halfway through where I expected a breakdown to appear, which is what cemented my opinion of this track as an above average metalcore dirge. 



The last track that was released was "basket case", a live distributed teaser that ended up becoming their last official release. This would have followed "INVISIBLE INDIVIDUAL" and does a good job providing contrast to the first track. This wasn't uploaded anywhere else, so I'll try to give a good description of how the track sounds. "basket case" opens up with a short, distorted riff into a chorus with clean vocals with a straightforward, 'four to the floor' drum beat. The main guitar riff of the song sounds mental and the song moves at a frantic yet restrained pace, alluding to the title. Most of the singing is clean and takes place with Hinata's higher register, but mid range barks, growls, and a pig squeal makes an appearance shortly after the second verse. There's a strong emphasis on twin guitar melody for this song. The chorus has a very stereotypical visual kei melodic progression, so much so that I feel like I can place at least the first few notes of "basket case" from another song, but I can't figure out which one it is yet.

"basket case" descends into thirty seconds of noise as the track winds down to an end, and I find myself feeling saddened that the album will never be released in its entirety, and that I'll never get to hear "深閑ガラス" (Shinkan Glass). llll-Ligro-  hold the crown for visual kei bands with one of the most promising yet unfulfilled musical development arcs of all time, and that's not a title I'm keen on reassigning any time soon. Based on what I've heard, 弔 would have been the album that made a fan out of me. I just know there's a copy of the unfinished masters sitting in a vault in Japan somewhere, and perhaps a second or third copy on a hard drive, but the odds that we'll ever get to see or hear any more of this album are slim to none. At this point, I'd even take a mini-album of whatever is fit enough to be released.

A lot of unknowns remain around the members and the state of the band. Can Hinata ever sing again? Is the relationship between Hinata and Kazari too strained to imagine a third reunion? Do they even want to try or will they both move on to new, separate projects? I am reluctant to stoke the fires of hope for the remaining llll-Ligro-  fans out there, because that's just cruel, but the scene has shown with both HIZUMI (D'espairsRay) and Yuuki (UnsraW) that there's always a chance for Hinata to return.

I've just changed cars but haven't had the chance to change car radio's yet, so my current one has only a CD player (no AUX, no USB, no Bluetooth wtf?!). Anyway, listening to radio stations pisses me off so I had to undust my CD collection (incidentally most of the music I own in CD format is vk ^^).  
 
The point of this rant is, I keep all of my CD's in foil. Yep, all of them, some for 15 years. I did unpack them, took them out, ripped them but then I put them back in foil. So now that I not only have to take them off the shelf, I have to listen to them in a car radio when they can get scratched if a bigger bump comes along?! 
 
Guys, I drive more cautiously not to scratch my CDs. That's my life now. 

So are we calling 23yo people old now? I guess me and some other fellas here already on our thirties gotta start applying for retirement or smh, lol
 
Welcome to MH! Have a good one!

Welcome my dear children! How's vk doing these days? 😎
 
I see you can even listen to your weird japanese metal on Spotify, kids have it way too easy nowadays... 
BACK IN MY DAY I had to hunt single songs in 92kbps on dial-up Limewire and half the time ended up with "I did not have sexual relations with that woman.mp3".
 
Funny story, that's how I got into vk! 13-year-old me was browsing the wide web, probably for some quality Britney Spears, and found a grainy Miyavi's Jibun Kakumei PV instead. With a 20MB download limit per day, I thought CLOSE ENOUGH and the rest is history. 
 
Now I'm back after over 10 years of impersonating a Serious Adult™ and I have Opinions™ to share. 
 
Some bands that I used to listen to (some of which are surprisingly still around!): Miyavi (duh), MUCC, Merry, girugamesh, 9GOATS BLACK OUT, Hora, Kaya, Schwarz Stein (can't believe they got back together, it's like I never left!) and the whole shebang, Aural Vampire, Kagrra,, Yoshiki's classical stuff~
 
And some bands that I've discovered in the past few weeks and absolutely love: Initial'L and consequently Lycaon, DIMLIM, Xaa-Xaa~
 
Also, I'm Anna 💩
 
P.S. I also listen to a lot of kpop, all kinds of electronic and celtic music; don't expect there to be much overlap but you never know! if your music taste is as all over the place as mine, hit me up, we can share obscure recommendations!

My friend, looking at houses: That one looks quite nice.
Me, slouching in a spinny chair: If that house was a guy, it'd be so hot.

Dadaism #1. Done

Yeah but fuck the police. Everywhere.
 

Nero is amazing for uploading this video and speaking up. My friend and I experienced this recently and got called "ayashii" pretty much to our faces (they thought we couldn't understand Japanese). They asked us to show our resident cards, emptied our wallets and looked at the names on our credit cards. They also asked personal questions about my family. It was really humiliating but we complied because we didn't want to get in trouble. The real kicker was when they noticed my friend has a Yoshiki credit card and started talking to us about X Japan as if they were our  friends. It took all the restraint in the world to not tell them to go fuck themselves. 
 
 

YAAAAAAAAAS They have them on ebay

YAAAAAAAAAS They have them on ebay

are those cloud strife's piercings??? I WANTTT

I coloured my hair and wore glasses today. Am I K-Pop ready yet? XD