paradoxal

Okay I finally finished the Intro Video and I'll apologize in advance for:
-my grammatical mistakes
-the quality
-that it took me so long
and please DON'T expect to much from it xD well here you go:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIhO5vygv3g

I have a small comment in reference to this. Because I've noticed, in Japanese music in general, and in Visual Kei as well, it's all about trends (Well, this is not just Japanese music now that I think about it). So one lolita and one masked member is a thing, just like how it seems song and album titles make the circles. Last year and this year I saw so many refereces to "End of the World/Owari no sekai/World's End". And now I've seen like 3 albums coming out in recently or the next couple of months all named "Supernova". I think while some people value being different, there's still a huge Japanese sentiment of 'following what everyone else is doing so you can be included'. A lot of these bands are simply trying to follow the formula that they believe works for the scene they want to be in. And I think VK has always had a lot of this, I remember there being a lot of bands that had similar looks to X Japan in their heyday, lots of bands who were called "Dir en grey clones" 10 years ago, ect. The popular styles now are just not as shock value oriented as they used to be, but lots of bands are just following what is popular.

Before I tell you and Gaz to unbunch your panties and take it to PM, I want to address the part I've bolded. I want to do this because there's a misconception I want to clear up and it's something that's been proven to work on this forum.
Sharing your music with people who actually care involves three things: music, sharing, and people. The problem with it when restricted solely to visual kei is that the sharing is inconsistent. Some people hoard the rare music and it eventually becomes lost and no one can ever hear or find it again. Some people share everything freely. If you want to find other people who like the same music you do, you have to make it freely available. But even more than that, there has to be discussion about this music. There are two very underutilized forums in the Artist and Review sections whose purpose is to facilitate discussion. If you wonder why the type of visual kei you like seems to get no attention, go look for all the topics people have started about it and look at the last time someone uploaded an album by one of those artists and wrote a review for one of those artists. It's probably been a while hasn't it? Now switch gears and look at a lot of the K-Pop fans (a good majority of which came from visual kei) and estimate the size of the fandom in comparison to VK. It seems so much bigger because they all talk about it!
The key here is "out of sight, out of mind". I'll touch on that later.
But first, let's jump into some MH history. The year was 2010. Overseas attention for visual kei was on it's way out, as Champ touched on earlier. Activity was declining on MH because a lot of fans were jumping ship to the next fad, but there wasn't any musical spheres here to keep them interested. Thus, people spent less time here as they spent more time exploring new music. CAT5 and I had a problem with this. There is an entire musical scene outside of visual kei in Japan that was getting the shaft and we wanted to fix that. We started by first uploading a lot of new music to the download section. That had limited success. The turnover rate was so fast that by the it hit page two or three no one checked it out anymore. Out of sight, out of mind. So to fix that shortcoming, we tried something new.
This was an effort on the part of a lot of people, many of which went uncredited and who I will thank now because I don't think I ever formally did this at one point. CAT5, Aion, lukrecia, and I started "The Non-Visual Recommendation Thread" which grew to be a 30 page behemoth of a topic filled with sample releases by different bands in Japan that were all non-visual. The idea was that if it was always at the top of the forum and being constantly updated, people would check it out from time to time and find things they liked. There were some issues with it (disappearing posts, MU dying, etc.) but it had it's intended effect of people finding new artists that they wouldn't know that they liked. Because we made a place for it and occasionally wrote reviews in the section, we got all three components we needed: music, sharing, and people.
We expanded this base by starting the end of year lists at the end of 2011. CAT5 and I devised this as an idea to talk about really great albums we liked that didn't get the attention they deserved, got a lot of attention and deserved to be talked about more, or weren't even Japanese but was just great music overall. We got a lot of great feedback from lots of users because it was a combination of visual and not visual artists. There was something for everyone. The topics got hundreds, if not thousands of views and even attracted the attention of some artists we praised. This got more people listening, and more people talking.
Then the staff decided to do something really crazy and split the download forum about a year back. There was always talk about splitting it between visual and non visual music because of reasons, but we were hesitant to do it because we always felt the visual forum would just eclipse the non-visual forum and the latter would die off. By mid 2013, there were enough people here that enjoyed the latter for us to give it a trial run and see how it went. It was only supposed to last for two months. But because there was a clean separation between the two, non-visual music would no longer be buried in the unified download section as it once was. Visual kei music also benefited from this as well. Now that both were easily available for view, people began checking out more non visual kei music. Instead of failing, it's grown and now there's more of a balance here than there has ever been before.
So the moral of the story here is that if CAT5 and I had never decided to do something about the lack of attention non visual music was getting here that fateful day in 2011, MH wouldn't be the way it is today. If you want to promote your preferred style of visual kei, you have to discuss it. And continue discussing it and generate interest in it. Talking about how it's dying is a start but actually talking about the music is better. Music doesn't ever die until people stop listening to it, and the fastest way for that to happen is to have no one be able to hear it and have no place for anyone to talk about it.
Now I know this isn't directly on topic but I feel that it addresses the point being made in this topic accurately enough to belong here. Now you two go play nice.

whet
 
 
I don't think referring to Latin American countries by their geographical proximities has anything to do with race.

8th copy incoming

I'm sure you've all noticed that DS hasn't been up for the past few months. I want to apologize for this - we ran into server issues with our host that knocked the site down. This happened shortly after I moved the forum to our new host, and by that point I was pretty burnt out.
 
Nothing was lost. I'll be working on moving DS to the new server this week and getting things back online. Once it's back up, I'll jump back into building out some missing features of the site (specifically, artist profiles).

It always mindfucks me a little bit to think that Japanese fan mobilization is completely different compared to the west
---
I wonder why PSC/A9 let the contract expire. PSC didn't re-offer? A9 declined? Mutual agreement? There's dirt there and I want it!

Me. I am Daniel. The Elusive Art-Keiteuse.
 

Here's me doing nothing.

 
 

Just started listening to this band.... Pretty cool as fuck

I don't know, man. It always rubs me a little wrong when bands guilt or threaten fans in order to get them to stop participating in piracy. DELETING FUCKING EVERYTHING from YouTube, declaring "war" on pirates, or calling your fans demeaning names (a la Kiwamu) is just going to make people lose respect for you and it certainly won't help you widen your fanbase. 
 
Sure, I have no problem if an artist wants to encourage fans to buy their music/merch/show tickets, but the attitude you have about it is important to consider too. Fact is, no one responds well to people who come across as whiny assholes, even if their music is the blessed gift of God to humanity. I'm not saying that musicians shouldn't feel angry at fans if their careers are clearly suffering, but there are appropriate ways to get people to sympathize with you and see things your way as opposed to alienating and punishing them. Especially since there's no possible way of knowing the reasons behind why every fan does what they do.  
 
Personally, I'm neutral about piracy as I'm not exactly well versed on copyright laws, issues, or ethics in that area. I don't think people should always pirate when they really do care about the artists and they have the means to donate a small sum to BandCamp or buy a CD, but I would be kidding myself if I tried to say that piracy was a force of evil that is killing the music industry and is always more harmful than helpful. I wouldn't have bought the massive pile of Japanese discs or have half as much of the digital downloads on my laptop if it weren't for people breaking the rules and uploading YouTube videos, torrents, etc. 
 
Just my two cents in response to the OP, I haven't had the chance to really read through the whole topic just yet. 

This thread is perpetually like Christmas

well i can't remember if i introduced myself...or not x.x so im going too..
 
 i LOVE jrock so much to where im addicted too it..(don't judge me) my favorite artistes are...well so far is 
 
my favorite jrock bands: Mejibray,Lycaon,Dir en grey,The Gazette,Diaura,Nega,D.I.D,Para:noir,Royz,Deathgaze,Born,
sadie,Screw and etc.
 
my favorite kpop groups: 2NE1,Girls Generation,Miss A,T-ara,Kara.4 Minute,F(x),Dal Shabet,  After School,Nine Muses(is that right? o.o), Orange Caramel, Crayon Pop, Girls Day,Big Bang, and etc
 
or..you can look at my lame last fm... . www.last.fm/user/BloodyChick2010
 
yeah...that's it i know it was lame <__< but whatever lolol.
 

Welcome to MH! Please join us in the chat sometimes, it would be fun to chat there with you!
 
Your musical compatibility with Hiroike is SUPER
Music you have in common includes アルルカン, Lycaon, Royz, コドモドラゴン and プラネタリウム.
 
That's a really nice music taste you have And if you don't mind, I already sent you a friend request in last.fm!

It's one thing to consent to give Facebook certain types of information. For example, I know that Facebook will read what I put on my wall or fill out as part of my personal information. But reading text messages on my phone that I did not give you access to? Not ok. Recording my phone conversations or personal conversations with other people using my phones microphone? No. Scraping that information from my phone and selling it to other people? Extra scummy. But then you want to take a function that I can do on my computer for free, remove it from your app even though it was working fine, and then possibly make me pay for it in the future? Mark Zuckerberg, you can suck my dick. The whole dick. Including the balls.
And you can take that information and sell it to third party advertisers too.

Wait for the next app update and you'll be forced into it. It's already hit my friends iPhone this morning so it shouldn't be long.

Tbqh Lolita is a brilliant book, thank you for summarizing it efficiently for me. I have read it myself when I was 15 or so, and it definitely belongs among one of the best of English literature.
 
 
Then something on-topic:
The thing that I find to be most disturbing is definitely the work culture. I could never stand working overtime without extra money. 

The point is that "banning cp" is an act that is not done out of concern for children (it does not decrease child abuse [http://bigthink.com/against-the-new-taboo/testing-our-moral-convictions-decriminalising-child-porn-to-reduce-child-crime]) but because it is a pointless moralist and self-righteous act that stems from the reason that "bad things ought to be illegal". It needs to be pointed out that producing child porn was illegal even prior to banning the pornography (because it actually involves children being abused).
 
Why should then animated or fictional pornography be banned? The argument in favour of the banning of real CP is typically the fact that some child was abused at some point in the process of production (in turn, the repression gives rise to dark secretive groupings of rapists who produce porn for their own familiar use, thus the rise of these serial-rapist rings). But with fictional accounts, no child was ever harmed; why should that be illegal? There is no justification, no reason, except a worthless moral outcry because one individual finds something deplorable and morally repugnant.
 
The book I mentioned because the plot revolves around a man who has an infatuation with a 12 year old girl, and this is part of the Western literature's commonly praised Canon (I have not read it - I do not like books like this, I have no interest in Nabokov). I mention the book because it deals with sexualisation of a minor. What's there to understand? Sexualisation of minors is rife across the world. It is not unique to Japan. Animated/comic pornography results - as has already been mentioned in this thread - partially from post-war puritanical censorship laws enforced by the American occupation government on Japan, combined with the particular comic (manga) tradition - but the content therein is not unique, and sexualisation of minors is everpresent the world over in one shape or another, no matter how you would like to change that.

im worried about my mom and you make a fucking joke about it...WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!! im REALLLLLY getting sick of your
shit...you better fucking quit...THIS IS NOT A DAMN JOKE...DUDE...YOU ARE ON THIN ICE RIGHT NOW....
 
(and i needed to let this out...forgive me)

I scored a 23.
 
Tetora and I are clearly the winners here. 

As some of you may have noticed I've been posting here and there. Can't say I'm super back for sure. I have just been so busy.

Not that anyone would probably care too much, but I started a new job with a two hour commute to and from work. I'm physically and mentally exhausted from the drive. Working 8 hours and driving up to 4 hours a day doesn't really leave much time for yourself other than eating, maybe a movie or laundry, shower and sleep. 

My free times are really on my weekends, which i'm privileged enough to have Saturday and Sunday off now. Considering that soon my siblings will start school and they already don't live with me, I have been using those weekends to really spend time with family and relax. I'm hoping that once I relocate closer to my new job that I will have more time for myself to interact with this forum again. 

I really do miss the chat, and late night plug sessions, but unfortunately when I get home I just want to sleep by then or play a quick hour of FFXIV >___> which if any of you play that please let me know what server you're on if it's an NA server. I'm specifically on Lamia (NA)
 
Anyway, I just wanted to check in and see how everyone had been doing. I miss you all and I really hope to be back sooner rather than later. ;;

I couldn't help but listen to this release after this detailed post and I'm on the first song right now....I really like this. And its very hard for me to sit down and check out random indies bands. I will def keep this band in my sights. Much appreciated Zess.
 
EDIT: SWEET MOTHER OF ZORDON. THIS IS AWESOME.
 
GOT DAMN.

So first of all I got to say wow. I actually liked their single quite a bit which is a pretty big deal because I don't really like anything VK these days but musically I was very entertained, good job. I will definitely be keeping an eye on them in the future.

yoshikitty is going to have a sister named toshikitty.

Artist: ア​ルルカン Album: 墓穴 Score: Okay paradoxal, you win. Finally.
I could understand if someone glanced at Arlequin, sighed, and thought to themselves "yet more standard pretty boy metalcore". Snazzy looking bands with laughable musical ability are a dime a dozen in this scene, and they all sound the same - like recycled shit sprinkled with preservatives so you won't mind the stench or notice that you've already heard that riff five times this week. It's also understandable that due to the massive waves of shit that lap on the shore constantly that Arlequin flew under your radar. They certainly flew under mine. So, as I girded my loins for part two of really bland metalcore that people adore for reasons I do not understand, I was caught off guard. Imagine my face, then imagine how it would have looked when the first track was a righteous kick in the ass.

At one point I may have even thanked VK Jesus, but don't put me on record as having ever said that.

What sets Arlequin apart from the countless other bands that play this exact type of music are that they're good at it. Or, good enough to impress me. Arlequin is the one in a thousand band that can take electronics and metalcore and construct music that doesn't make me deaf. The last visual kei band capable of that feat was D.I.D., and they've left a void in the scene that Arlequin is both ready to and capable of filling. It's not the Holy Grail of visual kei but it's better than anything I've heard this scene fart out in a while. That in itself is revolutionary. It's also sad that decent has become good and good has become great in this small, inbred scene but this is not the time to bemoan the gradual manufacturing of this type of music. All the other basement-kei no1curr aggressive metalcore bands in Japan that spend more money on make-up and wigs than guitar lessons should pull up a chair and take some notes.

Boketsu is three tracks featuring decently good production, impressive riffs from guitarists intimate with their instruments, and a vocalist who can both growl and sing. The last part alone is what really puts this band on my radar. He can clean up on the technique and watch the inhales before he ruins his voice, but the lack of modulation and the remarkable consistency he displays on all three tracks is great. He reminds me of a Kyouki who is more in control of his voice but he definitely has his own style. He's also charismatic enough to make the aggressive verse - poppy chorus formula work to their favor. There's also enough power and energy in the breakdowns to put them a notch above obligatory, although I can do without them all the time. There's amazing bass presence on both the part of the bassist and the drummer and even the electronics are placed thoughtfully and not slathered all over the place like special sauce on Big Macs. This is solid but not amazing and it's clear where there's room for improvement. As these members make more music together, I expect them to become an even tighter unit.

Arlequin did not overplay their hand here. Halfway through the first track, I had to toss my hat up to them. For a bunch of nobodies, they wrote some solid tunes here. This is confirmation that at least SOMEONE over in the land of the rising sun is playing more than brainless metalcore. Even in 2014, there's room in visual kei for stodgy old heads like me. I look forward to seeing this band move up through the ranks and become semi-influential.

That is, if they don't pull the whole disbandment shuffle before then.