Very first VK band you got into and how did you get into them?

[psychonnect_rozen 585]

I remember it like it was yesterday.

 

October 2018. I was a bored kid looking for some new Japanese music. I was already a fan of J-Rock but more in the Alternative scene with bands like Ling Tosite Sigure, nano.RIPE, Hello Sleepwalkers and The Oral Cigarettes. I was already a fan of Rammstein so finding heavy music in the Japanese scene was gonna be pretty interesting.

Wasn't after I found an AMV with "Obscure" on it. I thought to myself "Yo this is dope!" and I proceeded to check out the band. That band was Dir En Grey and I was really interested in listening to their stuff. 

 

I downloaded Gauze onto my phone and I remember the day I listened to the album at school. I'll never forget my reaction when I heard "Cage" for the first time. My reaction after listening to it was "Holy shit, what the flying fuck was that!?".

 

Been hooked on Diru ever since and VK is now my number one obsession. Dir En Grey is now one of my all time favorite bands

[Gesu 1537]

It was in 2013, I think. I was twelve, so either late 2012 or early-mid 2013. I wanna say early 2013? Anyways, it was Versailles. I was just looking for Japanese rock music because I thought it might appeal to me for whatever reason, so I just Googled it and they were one of the first bands to come up. I think the first song I heard by them was Serenade, and then I think The Revenant Choir was the second song.

[ShTon 268]

Back in 2007 I stumbled upon some PVs on Youtube and Alice Nine was one of the bands I enjoyed most back then. Still like them a lot

[nomemorial 341]

Sometime circa 2002 someone posted Gackt's "Another World" on an anime forum. I thought it was catchy and realized I had never really looked into Japanese music outside of anime OPs. 

 

Followed that trail to a message board called Jpopmusic, where I found everyone in the Jrock subforum was obsessed with something called "visual kei." I saw the pictures and ironically, my sheltered, preteen, hyper conservative self backed off immediately and started requesting "not visual" music.

 

Was recommended GLAY, jammed "Global Communication," but got some well-deserved side eyes from half the community, basically insisting I just "give it a chance." 

 

Random personal anecdote, I did think the aesthetic was "really neat," but I was raised in super religious environment and had never seen anything like this before, so my brain thought it was some kind of devil nonsense or something, I don't know.

 

Deciding to give it a proper shot, I found Dir en grey's "Cage" and that was pretty much the beginning of the end (the end of the beginning?) Went totally crazy from that point, downloaded everything I could find, started trying to trade for PVs with random people on Soulseek and IRC, the whole nine yards. Good times.

Edited May 18, 2019 by nomemorial

[Paraph 826]

malice mizer’s beast of blood in 2002 from seeing an avatar of mana on an old anime forum 

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

I was introduced to dir en grey back in 06 and its been a downhill ride ever since 

[sleepy coffee 1476]

dir en grey during my hs years (so 2008ish-2012ish). after that it was discovering other cliche vk bands everyone at the time knew about, gazette, girugamesh blah blah blah. first couple of more niche vk bands i got into were like oz, signal, unsraw 

[CAT5 9075]

I wanna say late 2004 with Rentrer En Soi. Had no idea what VK was at the time, nor had I even seen the band, but I really enjoyed their music. I've always been a super casual VK fan tho, and have found myself largely drawn to other areas of J-rock and Japanese music in general!

 

(also i'm sure a thread like this exists already, but no time to look for it atm)

[monkeybanana4 1732]

First introduction was through Nightmare from Death Note and An Cafe (from a friend). Since I had no idea what it was I perused through the Internet discovering other bands like Dir En Grey and the Gazette, although for some reason it was difficult to find and listen to their music (It was 2006, and I was ignorant in the ways of the Internet, lol) So I ended up veering towards bands like Kagerou and Merry, which began my endless journey into the void of digging through obscure sites to find one song to listen to it. Finally, I think Alice Nine was the clench pin that had me hooked onto VK forever   

[xriko 165]

1 minute ago, Shadowtear said:

First band: Maria Cross
How i got into them: i was looking for specific questionable videos online that i cant show my mom

And did you finally manage to get this specific video ?

I need it, it's for a friend...

[yurameki24 99]

Korean group  :  H.O.T

I only remember that the sixth grade of Elementary School saw my sister listening to "H.O.T-We Are The Future"

Then don't know why I found the "X Japan" band,I remember listening to "Rusty Nail"

 

 

[platy 3018]

Somehow, in 2008, I came across Taion by gazette on YouTube. I might have been searching something anime related or listening to Do As Infinity on there. Anyway, I thought it sounded too chaotic for my ears but kept giving it a try until I ended up liking it. The rest is history. 

[Neigedesmannes 70]

Sometime in 2010, a 12-year old me was already interested in asian/japanese rock music in general because of anime. Then i came across my first visual rock band called 'Silver Ash' on youtube, and i thought to myself "wow what is this style, i've never seen or heard before". 

And through that, i found out about Dir en grey, which is the first vk band i've gotten into for real. 

[Miku70 214]

2002 or 2003 with GACKT and the GazettE but un this time , I don't like because I was really young. My real first band is An Cafe since 2006 by a  French Rock Magasine of my little sister. I read a interview and a présentation of the band. I saw their MVs, I love it . In this time , I am very shy and I buy theirs albums in 2008.  Then after I discover Kagrraa, A9 (Alice Nine on 2009) and I like the Gazette in 2010, then Golden Bomber in 2011 and many others after 😊.

Edited May 18, 2019 by Miku70

[karai · ebi 505]

2004 or 2005 someone put the acoustic of Gackt's Tsuki no Uta in their deviantart flash animation ..up until then I had only listened to things like Enya and Cher, video game remixes from OCR and Utada Hikaru lol, so I thought it was so beautiful.

Led me to search on radio blog club and imeem, to where I found songs like Dybbuk etc. Then when I looked for the Plavalaguna opera song from Fifth Element it led me to Malice Mizer thanks to how RBC and imeem worked.

I think the love of gothic / chaotic sound was inborn in me.

[Neigedesmannes 70]

2 hours ago, yurameki24 said:

Korean group  :  H.O.T

I only remember that the sixth grade of Elementary School saw my sister listening to "H.O.T-We Are The Future"

Then don't know why I found the "X Japan" band,I remember listening to "Rusty Nail"

 

 

Wow, k-pop hairstyles have come a long way since back then :0 But i actually prefer this old style way more 

[Doesn'tEvenGoHere 121]

For me it was back in 2009. I was going through a metalhead kid phase and I also liked anime, so I had been following Maximum the Hormone after finding them through Death Note a few years prior. I was already aware of VK bands like Nightmare, L'arc, An Cafe, etc, but I strictly only wanted to listen to MTH because I was desperately trying to be the hardcore kid who only liked cool bands like Iron Maiden and VK looked too pretty ( MTH was certified brutal). But YT was always recommending me the Gazette, so one day I just said what the heck and gave them a listen (to silly god disco) and I was automatically on board. From there I just started listening to a shit ton of VK bands and haven't looked back. Also after about a year of listening to VK I admitted to myself that I had always really liked Nightmare and head dived into being their full time stan 

[psychonnect_rozen 585]

8 minutes ago, Doesn'tEvenGoHere said:

Also after about a year of listening to VK I admitted to myself that I had always really liked Nightmare and head dived into being their full time stan 

I assume you don’t like Nightmare? From what I heard, they get A LOT of hate 

[saiko 429]

6 hours ago, Neigedesmannes said:

Wow, k-pop hairstyles have come a long way since back then :0 But i actually prefer this old style way more 

 

9 hours ago, yurameki24 said:

Korean group  :  H.O.T

I only remember that the sixth grade of Elementary School saw my sister listening to "H.O.T-We Are The Future"

Then don't know why I found the "X Japan" band,I remember listening to "Rusty Nail"

 

 

Very interesting! Love the sound and visuals!

 

I've heard that the usage of hair and make-up in Kpop was pretty inspired into vk bands of the 90s. Is that true?

[Doesn'tEvenGoHere 121]

21 minutes ago, psychonnect_rozen said:

I assume you don’t like Nightmare? From what I heard, they get A LOT of hate 

The opposite, they're my favorite band.

 

They do get a lot of hate on here though. I think it's a mix of people not wanting to associate themselves with anime bands and also disappointment for prior fans with their last few releases before they went on hiatus starting with the SCUMS era. More than saying they get a lot of hate though, I'd say the majority of people on here just don't have an opinion on them anymore. I've personally been listening to them for almost 10 years though and have no desire to stop any time soon. But I'm so biased I even think their solo projects are good and you can't convince me otherwise. 

[Elazmus 1873]

Sometime in 2006 I heard GazettE's 7gatsu 8ka and then saw the PV for Silly God Disco. So, naturally  it was on to Dir en Grey, Alice Nine, SID, Kagrra, D'espa, Rentrer, Sadie, Oz, and whatever else happening at the time. I slowed down eventually after so many disbandments but in 2014 I just dove purposefully into new bands and had a little renaissance cuz I missed it lol...

[FOSCOR70 56]

Wanted to hear songs with screaming after enjoying that little shriek that tk of ling toshire does on Tokyo ghoul opening song 'unravel' . I was not aware of metal genre or any other music genre heck didn't even knew that music even had genres. 

 

So anyway somebody recommended me dir en grey and there you have it.

[Haniel 547]

It was in 2015 when a friend I met in a game showed me a MV from D - Der Konig der Dunkelheit

[Himeaimichu 1535]

CrowXClass. I was (and still am) big into traditional Japanese music, and I used to be a pretty big Wagakki band fan. The lead singer of CrowXClass, as well as one of their Shakuhachi players, would later play in Wagakki band, and that's how I found them. They described themselves as Visual Kei, and through them, I found the bands Kiryu, Memento Mori, ACE, and Kagerou.

[Arkady 396]

I'm not sure if it was Lareine in 2000/01 after I found on an anime fanzine a very short section (with a little photo) about their Bara wa Utsukushikuchiru cover and fallen immediately in love with the visual part (and few months later using my 56k pay-for-the-minute internet to download the whole 6/7 songs I was able to find and confirming my first positive reaction), or if I started to listen to X-Japan a short time before them, after I liked their Forever Love used as a final theme song in X-1999.