enyx

Very excited for this. MIYAVI is one of those musicians that just oozes creativity and I think he's matured a lot since getting married, becoming a father, joining EMI, etc. SAMURAI SESSIONS vol.1 was slightly disappointing in terms of it's length (I mean it was promoted as an album rather than an EP, which is weird) but the quality of the songs themselves was fantastic. If this album focuses more on the electronic stuff that he's been flirting with lately then I'd be pretty happy. AHEAD OF THE LIGHT was an awesome single and FUTURISTIC LOVE is one of my favourite tracks of his in recent years.

I never understood the level of hate for REDEEMER. Sure it has some of their weakest tracks such as HORIZON and 夜空, but I also thought it had some of their best like PARADOX 5 and R.E.M-冬の幻聴-. It's definitely their most inconsistent album and overall I'd consider it a step down compared to their previous work but that doesn't change the fact that there are some fantastic individual tracks on it, it definitely has higher points than MONSTERS at least.

HaKU posted another live PV teaser from their upcoming mini-album「wonderland」 For those that missed the first live PV teaser they put up (for a different song, no less) you can watch/listen here /watch?v=EUfYWpqmQjI

Thanks for the welcomes guys. I checked out LAGITAGIDA and they remind me a lot of Liquid Tension Experiment, pretty cool. Then you, my friend, are awesome.

Newbie here. I've been looking for a place to discover and keep up to date with new music for a while and this place seems pretty decent. I've already posted in a couple of threads but I guess I might as well "officially" introduce myself. So yeah, name's Pho3nyx (since somebody else already took Phoenix >_>) and I first got introduced to the Japanese music scene around the beginning of 2009 when I stumbled upon DIR EN GREY, who I instantly fell in love with and who has remained one of my favourite bands since. I started off listening mostly to bands associated with the Visual Kei scene, such as the GazettE and D'espairsRay, but over the last year or so I've drifted more towards the indie scene, including bands like HaKU, toe, Prague and 雅-MIYAVI-'s recent material. I just discovered School Food Punishment and absolutely love what I'm hearing... it just sucks that they disbanded already, anybody know any similar sounding bands that are still active? Aside from Japanese music I like a lot of other stuff, I guess some favourite bands include Metallica, Opeth and Enter Shikari as well as a few EDM artists such as Gemini or Xilent. So yeah, that's me! I guess I'll see you guys around.

I'm a little sad that and have only been mentioned once each in this thread, check the links if you haven't heard them before! Anyway, I've been definitely enjoying indie bands more than Visual Kei lately. A lot of VK bands seem to be recycling the same material over and over, even the ones that I feel used to be innovators in the genre (the GazettE spring to mind). Maybe it's just my tastes developing over time. I recently discovered School Food Punishment and Tokyo Jihen but it's kinda disheartening knowing that neither of them are likely to produce any new material going forward. Can anyone think of any other female-fronted bands with a similar sort of sound/style to these two bands? Preferably ones that are active and have easily-obtainable music (i.e. their music is available on iTunes or uploaded on an official Youtube channel, etc)?

Ashamed to say that I only listen to Kagrra, and L'Arc from that list. Probably should give some of those bands a listen. 1. Dir en grey - AMBER 2. The Wildhearts - Plastic Jebus 3. the GazettE - ART DRAWN BY VOMIT 4. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 OST - Landscape Under The Ghost -Kaminano (AD2012) 5. Opeth - Burden 6. HaKU - carpe diem 7. Metallica - Mercyful Fate 8. The Black Mages - Battle Theme (FINAL FANTASY VI) 9. Enter Shikari - Search Party 10. Gemini - And You AMBER just so happens to be one of my favourite songs, kinda convenient that it came up first.

Imagine the new (supposedly 16 minutes long) MACABRE with this level of quality, both musically and in terms of the production values (I think this is Tue Madsen's best mix with them so far).

Well that sounded awesome.

I'm very interested to see what happens here, Hizumi has one of the strongest voices in the Japanese Rock scene IMO. Even if he doesn't have a full band alongside him, I.E. making music along the lines of Screen (single version) and Yami ni Furu Kiseki (Classical White version), I'd be happy.

The preview is too short to make a proper judgement, but it sounds decent enough to keep me excited. I'm not sure what to make of Kaoru claiming that the songs haven't been changed too much. I love these remakes mostly because of how different they sound, some of them are more like "re-imaginations" than remakes, per se. Even if I don't like a remake as much as the original, it's always interested to see how they change.