Leaderboard

It's not in English. I don't play Japanese music for my friends often, but when I do it's instrumental or with good English vocals because the minute they hear Japanese, I know 95% of them will stop listening. People want to understand what the song is about and you can't do that with Japanese music if it's all in Japanese. The vocals that are in English still have a distinctly Japanese quality to them, and that turns off a lot of native speakers. That leaves a very small group of people to make a big impression for everyone. Not a great way to start. Rock music is not mainstream in America right now. It's hip hop, pop, and r&b that runs the air waves. It's not a bad thing, but I find i digest these genres of music differently than I do rock and metal, and people that have not grown up with rock and metal may never have developed a taste for it. I've always heard that rock and metal is the closest thing to classical music in the modern era, and on the same note I don't find many people appreciate Bach and Mozart for what it is. It just doesn't "move them". Anime was considered taboo and nerdy up until recently, when now all of a sudden it became cool to watch Dragon ball Super and My Hero Academia and other big-name shounen. Anime and Japan are always seen as synonymous to the barely acquainted, so anime and rock music are also tied together by virtue of this rock music being from Japan. Stupid associations, but that's how it is. Considering just how bad a lot of anime themes are, I can see people associating the worst of J-pop themes with all Japanese music. Consider this 3.5, but the people that were first promoting the music were deep into the scene, like "appropriating parts of Japanese language and unironically dressing like a visual kei rocker" deep. They...did not make the best ambassadors for visual kei music. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese indie scene has always been a smaller group covering a wider range of music, cloistered and secluded on private servers and trackers. They wanted to preserve their culture the way it was, so they weren't exactly interested in proselytizing their music to a wider audience. Y'all gotta realize peeps like @CAT5are the exception to the rule. Japanese record companies in general do a pretty shit job of marketing themselves and their music to a wider audience, which is perplexing to me because the anime industry is absolutely KILLING IT right now. They jumped onto the digital distribution wave too late and by that time, the fad had already started diminishing. We have no equivalent to Crunchyroll to have a legal bridge between record companies and interested Western audiences. HearJapan was close, but in some ways I think it was too ahead of its time and never got the support it needed once everyone involved realized it wouldn't be a 1-2-3 smash hit. I always maintained that I would be a sensation or "the next Jimi Hendrix" if I took a bunch of my favorite J-Rock and visual kei songs and sung them in English...

R指定 (R-Shitei) new album "死海文書 (Shikaimonjo)" will be released in 2018/7.

シェルミィ (Shellmy) new mini-album "うずまき (Uzumaki)" will be released at 2018/7/19. [track list] 1.御礼参り (Oreimairi) 2.今日も後悔の血が垂れる (Kyou mo Koukai no Chi ga Tareru) 3.赤い部屋 (Akai Heya) 4.絶望産まれのセルロイド (Zetsubou Umare no Celluloid) 5.メイデイメイデイ (Mayday Mayday) 6.噂 (Uwasa)

After 8 long years, I just gave my letter of resignation to my boss. No turning back now.

Their first live will be on 2018.08.05 at 心斎橋JUZA. Members : Vo.MAR Gt.Rin Gt.tatsuya Ba.Hisa

Their first album 「絶唱謳歌」(Zesshô ôka) will be released on 2018.08.08. Limited edition : 3500 yen + taxes (1000 copies, limited jacket) CD : 01.Paradox 02.絶唱謳歌(Zesshô ôka) 03.罵詈雑言(Bari zôgen) 04.懐色花火(Futokoro iro hanabi) 05.君の臓器になりたい(Kimi ni zoki ni naritai) 06.金欠マイレージ(Kinketsu mileage) 07.MELODY(album ver.) 08.アナザーワールド(Another world) 09.RUN 10.ADVENTURE TIME Regular edition : 3000 yen + taxes CD : 01.Paradox 02.絶唱謳歌(Zesshô ôka) 03.罵詈雑言(Bari zôgen) 04.懐色花火(Futokoro iro hanabi) 05.君の臓器になりたい(Kimi ni zoki ni naritai) 06.金欠マイレージ(Kinketsu mileage) 07.MELODY(album ver.) 08.アナザーワールド(Another world) 09.RUN 10.ADVENTURE TIME http://acme-official.com/news/1698/

Zeus breaks it down pretty well. To add a smidgen of my opinion, I think that Visual Kei's western popularity (U.S from my experience) greatly paralleled the interest in emo/counterculture in the mid 2000s. They both had similar aesthetic and garnered similar fans w/ plenty of overlap. That interest has largely died out and has re-surged into -core genres and melded itself into other indie acts. Visual Kei, being a physically distant/foreign genre, in-turn became a niche interest again. Additionally, Japan is still the premier example of Galapagos Syndrome and is pretty self-reliant. K-pop, on the other hand, is dependent on a global audience and embraces Western interest which reciprocatively affects its own music industry. Also "Cool Japan" hasn't helped jack-squat with well-known figures like Gackt being critical of it (it's futile when the industry at large is isolated.) Finally, Japanese music just sounds different. I try to link to this reddit thread w/ nonotan's comment when I can b/c I've always felt there was some underlying music-theory reason why J-Music attracts and repels certain groups of people. There are a lot of people that I've met that have thought Japanese melodies were cheesy so this helps explain that a little. - As an aside, I'm a bit more on the pessimistic side about anime becoming more popular (rather than just accepted). I still think the combination of the "nostalgia factor" and internet culture have drawn more (perceived) attention to it than genuine interest... But, the $$$ points to it growing so we'll see. Maybe I'm more of a skeptic w/ the rate at which recent boom in interest has happened.

ザアザア (Xaa-Xaa) live and mail order limited single "反骨ドッグ (Hankotsu Dog)" will be released during their 火炎瓶 tour, which lasts from 2018/5/5 to 2018/6/27 for 1000 yen.

I'm not sure about that. I don't think the band has lost anything. I get the opposite impression actually, that the band is still trying to find a new sound but they are a few places removed from where they want to be. There's definitely a certain sound and aesthetic that they are chasing, but what that is I could not tell you. I also think it's really hard to come to a conclusion on one track + a re-recording + a live performance of the last single. Dir en grey are really good about keeping their cards close to their chest until they release a full album or EP, so I wouldn't lose faith until the entire next album pisses you off.

@Seimeisenvalid point, just wish they would give artists a little more time to have their creative juices flow.

I forgot this is pretty much the only place where you can say 2011-2013 were the most lackluster years for Gazette without stans getting all weird and defensive. Fuck.

Give it a rest? Focus on one song instead of four mediocre songs? On BP Records? Never gonna happen 😕

The GazettE having a vevo and putting their MV's on there is actually better tbh. Now you can watch their MV's without worrying about your country being blocked for stupid reasons.

Kawaii_minpha joins as roadie

I think I may be the only one but I miss the old Gazette. Like I think after their DIM album their music started to kinda lose its favor. I miss getting hype for them but I'm glad they are still kicking. I'm just not a fan of the new style.

Only problem I have with D.L.N. is the way they keep repeating the chorus at the end.

Following them since 2014 i know maybe 5-10 songs they played live but didnt release. But most of them dont fit their last style of "sexy vk" and go back to more of their "hard band" start so i doubt they'll ever be released. Also maybe one of the old members wrote them and they dont want to release it as their song (but also i think Cion wrote nearly all songs himself?). But still i really would love it to listen CRAMMY recorded, it was very fun live. Also, Ab initio is one of their best songs, hope they'll include it.

Don't hold your breath. Some of those songs date back to 2015 :C