Laurence02

Most of the uploads on MH have already been dead for a while, and I guess this applies to the blogspots as well. I got used to it. Now you can find all the normiecore + some more from Jpopsuki and I appreciate that they got FLACs of all the essentials. The canon will be there for everyone to have, but the ultra rarez will now once more return to those who bought them and their friends. It's probably coming from a position privilege in this matter, but I don't mind that this shit isn't available for all the noobs to consume. 

The links may be dead but with a quick PM to the original poster or the many people who downloaded it, I've found that you could often get someone generous enough to upload it again. I would say it worked for me 50% of the times here, not bad when I consider some of the downloads I asked about had been dead for years.

For the rarer/obscure releases, the dead link on these pages aren't so much of the tragedy to me, it's often the information by the original poster and the subsequent conversation that is just as important. When I'm on the hunt for the music or want to find out more about the band, all of those scraps of information help considering there's little to no information in English about a lot of the bands that have been discussed here, whether it's the download page, a news article or even someone who sold something 10 years ago here, it all made a difference in knowing what was out there.

When the average shelf life of a fan is a few years, it's almost critical the posts stay alive because the people who posted them are long gone.  With a death of a forum, most of that deeper stuff gets lost and very unlikely to be carried over by anybody to the next place. I've seen many come and go over the last 20 years and something like discords, which is seemingly the direction newer fans are taking to share information, will never really act like a good substitute to the dusty old forum platform IMO.

And I agree, as someone who trawls discogs, YJA, mercari, and Japanese webshops for a vinyl, CD or tape, I don't mind that everyone doesn't have download access to everything. If people really want it, they'll find a way to buy it but the information is the part that needs to stay alive and accessible. Again, having seen many forums and websites come and go, there's plenty of things (YJA listings, images, html files, etc) I've saved about a particular band that I could never find again.

It might shock you to learn that Mexico is firmly located on the North American continent. 

That would be my friend and pretty much all the bangya who used to go to Dimlim. lmfao
 
This is old drama and I'm way over this band so idc anymore. Here's your tea.
 
My friend tweeted about how awful Dimlim was after their live at Aoyama Rizm last November, saying how it's time for Dimlim to be taken out back.
She wrote the tweet in English and, despite Retsu being utterly terrible at English, he understood that her comment was critical and he blocked her. 
This also happened to a few people I know who don't like Dimlim, which proves that Retsu ego searches "Dimlim" on Twitter and blocks anyone that writes anything critical about the band like the edgelord that he is. 
Surprisingly he never blocked me (probably because I'm not very active on SNS), but he blocked everyone I know who used to go to Dimlim even though they supported the band for years and didn't do anything to wrong him.
 
Retsu's always been a douche but this was the nail in the coffin for me and the few bangya that gave 3-man Dimlim a try.
 
His Twitter was suspended though so the evil has (partially) been defeated.

That's what every JP vkei fan sees when filthy gaijin ask them on Twitter about a random Gesshoku flyer from 1993.
So I won't diss him. He made an effort even though he didn't have to. I can appreciate that.

I answered this question a while ago. It's neither, although it leans closer to being a scene. It may have started out as a genre at one point but it's long since surpassed those boundaries. It cannot be a genre because not every visual kei band plays the same type of music. For any genre you name, someone else can find a band that considers themselves visual kei that don't play that genre. Visual kei is simply music with a focus on visuals (hence visual style). Visual kei can't be pigeonholed into a scene or a genre without losing some of the picture.
And in case you missed my answer from before:
 

Now the history behind visual kei is something else altogether. I don't think there is one person on this forum with a vast knowledge of the history of visual kei because even by the 90s much of that was lost. If we come together as a forum we may be able to piece enough together.

WOW it's me again, this time I finally finished scanning volume 29, from 1995.
I go on and on about it on the actual blog page, but for anyone who looks through it; it's really interesting to see the beginnings of certain themes and concepts in visual kei, especially the 'cyber' visual that became popular nearer the new millennium, and also there's some nods to the more heavy visual style of kote kei that was developing. There's great graphic design from DIE-ZW3E, a very old Shazna ad (with Katsura on drums, who as we know later joined BAISER), Laputa, Penicillin, THE DEAD POP STARS, etc. etc. A long Hyde feature is there also; Tetsu-era MALICE MIZER too, Genkaku Allergy ... it's a good volume. My favourite find is a miniscule picture of SAKRUN, they're fantastic.
 
Here's some previews:
 


 
If anything's unreadable, let me know. I'll re-scan pages by page since I don't think it's worth re-scanning everything that's a little blurry.
 
Here's the blog page, the file size is 1.66 GB. enjoy!
 
 

I have 26 Japanese CDs plus a few doubles, 16 Japanese demos plus a few doubles, 6 Japanese videos, 5 Chinese albums and one Chinese tape. I don't really go for everything that moves.

The instrumentals make a song. The vocalist can break it.

Echoing what a couple of people have gotten at, the turnover of VK fans to K-pop is largely due to the accessibility of the fandom (or lack thereof, in VKs case).
 
The main difference is... the Kpop industry actually wanted the west’s engagement. Even if it’s just “share the fuck out of our music videos, and spam pictures of us on Twitter”. The VK industry’s response to this was “How did you get those music videos!? How did you get those magazine scans!? Region lock everything!!”
 
Eventually, western fans got tired of having to beg for crumbs, spend twice as much as Japanese fans for half the experience, and having any rare overseas lives still be more about flexing to their domestic fanbase than about catering to the foreign fanbase.
 
The irony here is that the “boom” of VK in the west was precisely due to the same promotion methods that Kpop acts use today (though on a smaller scale, as most of the groundwork occurred prior to the popularity of social media). The management of the bands that came over, however, were largely oblivious as to why this happened. So they just assumed they could do exactly as they did in Japan, but half-assed, and their fanbase would continue to grow.
 
This just built up hope that VK would eventually be more accessible, only for the momentum to die down once management realized that it wasn’t as simple as they thought. This discouraged many, and they lost interest after ~2010, even if they had been a fan long before 2007. Most of my friends fall into this category.

I think a lot of that feeling of people coming and going stems from the western boom years and like other people said, from the fact that it has somehow been hogtied into the same brain rot caravan with Kpop and therefore people tend to become aware of both simultaneously, allowing for lateral movement between the two. Then there's that other breed of us getting into our 30's finally coming to grips with mortality and that this is a very fruitless endeavor, so now there's also these existential crisis' going on with the older guard. This basically goes a long way to explain why everyone in this scene is so fucking stupid, you were either into a dumb fad when you got in or you were dumb enough to stay for too long. 
 
But like, about the psychology of people who come and go, being gya one day and rastafari the next — I never got that. I have, my entire life more or less, liked the same things and I never really dropped out of anything. There's some faux pas you'll find from the times when I was like exploring stuff like western metal when I was 16, but everyone goes through that one way or another when you build your frame of reference and refine your taste and ideas of what music should be about. The people who change every word in their bio on an yearly basis with only the words "I stan" remaining in place can't be counted on for anything. How do they even finish meals is beyond me let alone stick with something when everything they do is so dependent on if the weather is fair. They're the same people who'll abandon their folks into a home, but take a taxi from another city once the inheritance is on offer; just picking the carcass of cultural capital that other people worked for, that other people laboured to put out there. I'm in this shit for the long haul and this relationship will end only when one of us dies, either me or the scene. No matter how reprehensible I think the scene operates or what I think of the fucking people in it, it's still important to me. 

I've been into VK for more than 15 years now and what I find most common when it comes to people loosing their interest in the scene stems from what has drawn them to it in the first place. From my experience, people that started "listening" to vk bands mainly for the looks and - supposedly - to feel "unique" simply grew out of it, adding up to your regular "it was just a phase" stereotype. On the other hand, the ones that, instead of drooling over bandomen pics, actually did focus on the music itself, listen to visual bands to this day.
 
The other thing, that has already been mentioned, is that some people fix their taste on one particular type of music/scene, not willing to discover anything outside of this "bubble". This can often lead to getting fed up with it which later results in them trying to find an alternative stimulator... which they are most likely going to be tired of in a few years as well.
 
As for me, I see no reason why I would ever stop enjoying the music and visuals that I used to in the past. When something is good, it's just... good, it's not going to magically change over the years.

I think one of the reasons VK might have such a high turn over rate is that a lot of people who listen to VK seems to listen to VK only. That's not an healthy way to approach an "hobby", and one is bound to get tired of it. It's also hard to follow bands for a long time since the lifespan of a vk band is shorter than average, so that might be turn off for people after a while. 
 
Also the way VK is "marketed" is closer to idol music than it is to """normal""" music, and just like how people stop following idols at some point, the same happens with VK. I dont consider the visual kei > kpop passage to be moving from one thing to another, but moving to a different version of the same thing. 

For an older band: Singer Haine of Luis~Mary, who later became T.M.Revolution, has a very particular type of voice. I would say, as a listener, that he is doing well. Obviously, I am not a vocal coach so I can't comment on his actual technique.
 

The Sculla track is solid. Enjoy!

Honestly? Properly digitising stuff, especially VHSes, due to their volatile nature (calling NTSC "never the same colour" is so, so true), is a huge pain without the proper stuff. Send it off to someone who has the equipment. I happen to know that Panda has proper equipment.
And if you choose to go somewhere local, choose your establishment wisely - anyone can use a VHS/DVD burner, but not everyone has a TBC, a proper high-quality capture card, a Windows XP PC to use it on, the expertise to not fook up the deinterlacing, etc.

I sort my albums in chronological order - more specifically, by the artist's first album.
Their later albums come before the next artist comes, even though the next artist may have released their album before the later albums of the first artist.

I sort my albums in chronological order - more specifically, by the artist's first album.
Their later albums come before the next artist comes, even though the next artist may have released their album before the later albums of the first artist.

I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetic either way because of the implications (no matter how much Mein Kampf writes songs about driving fast and no matter how much Rommel writes songs about zombies), but I find Rommel to be the best band from a musical point of view because they had Shu who is an amazing technical guitarist. 
 
(Although I hope that it doesn't need to be said, I would like to say that I'm not a Nazi, nor do I sympathise with the Nazi cause. As far as I know, these bands used the Nazi image for edgy shock value, not because they supported a genocide.)

The staff has seen this topic and have decided to let it stay open. For now.

Visual kei has taken inspiration from Nazi-era symbolism time and time again, for better or for worse. To ignore that would be feigning ignorance. We see no harm in simple discussion of the bands and the (very small) scene related to that. We have had similar topics in the past with no repercussions. However, the current era and political climate is a different story. Discussion on this topic may or may not be possible.
 
We will end up locking this topic if it proves to be a breeding ground for incels on the forum.

That's an interesting point. I've seen the fact promoted that VK especially is slowly dying from natural extinction because the shock value that it once had is becoming "normal" and hence not very interesting anymore.

That's an interesting point. I've seen the fact promoted that VK especially is slowly dying from natural extinction because the shock value that it once had is becoming "normal" and hence not very interesting anymore.

Personal thing that annoys me, not all bands do this but, fucking A/B/C/D types oh my fucking god. Please just release everything on a "master cd" too because only obsessed bangyas or rich fans (aka not me and most of my VK friends) buy all cd types. I already think I'm stupid for having bought two types of one cd a little while ago because I just wanted to see the making-of, which was a little dissapointing ngl.
 
Besides I too think that the whole secretive part to VK is kinda stupid, there's nothing wrong about age, sexuality nor relationships. Seriously, in the west celebrities who are in a relationship get labelled as "goals" by their fans, but eastern celebrities like VK-artists and idols too get sooooo much hate for it??? I still really hate the Kiryu bangyas for having sent all those emails to Takemasa last year telling him to kill himself after they found out he was married.
 
Also the YouTuber thing that's kinda happening to some bands, it's kinda fun, but only for the Japanese fans. I can barely follow any video because I just don't understand. Some video's can be funny if the video is obvious in what's happening like changing instruments or smth, but when they're just talking or eating, it's just... "Okay so do I just listen or what am I supposed to do?". I haven't seen many video's that actually have English subtitles, only a few, and a few on blogs with fan-made translations. Even then it's still kinda boring if you keep having to look away from the video to read the text on the blog.

1.) Live limited release.
 
It is archaic and need to be left behind in the age of streaming. Elitism won’t work these days. Sorryboutit. 

 
 
2.) band name using all kinds of symbols and/or numbers that is not easy to pronounce.
 
For obvious reason.

A easy example about how the looks don't necessarily reflect the person of a visual kei artist is the usage of the hakenkreuz by the earliests bands. We don’t see as much nowadays, but the SS caps always appears, sooner or later.
Of course that there was some classic japanese punk nationalism in some bands here and there, but core of V系 was about shocking after all. So, the imaginary of the nazism is aesthetic, therefore should be used. 
 
As @薔薇の末裔 pointed out, understanding Kabuki is a good way to understand this theatrical musical scene. 
 
Kabuki in its first days was a female theater, a more accessible branch of Noh. But it was just too sexy for that confucian society. “A woman's place is in the kitchen”, said the Shogun (or it was my dad last night?). And then, the boys took the place of the woman, doing woman roles. But the boys turned out into fuckboys. “Notto disu shitto agen”, said the Shogun. And then, old man were doing woman roles. “Hmm”, long and deeply said the Shogun. Keep in mind that everyone was killing everyone in the past sengoku century, so the Shoguns could not fuck around (ha).
 
“Ok, ok, And so what?”. Well, since being really sexy was not an option, the onnagata dudes started doing their own shit to emulate the woman sexyness. First come the fancy wig, then they started showing some little skin and so on. Little by little there was no more “man” or “woman”, but onnagata. A woman that no other woman could be. 
 
At that point, Kabuki without man doing female roles is not Kabuki. Visual kei without man doing female roles is not visual kei? I don’t think so, exist†trace showed their shit and we digged it hard. But I would say that is highly expected to see a man doing female roles in the visual rock scene. D’s “Ouka saki some ni keri” is my pick for today. The contrast of Asagi manly vocals with his woman clothing is a perfectly example of why we love it the way it is. They do it with passion (or for money), and we love them for it, not because their sexual preference.
 
The whole pv setting is a love letter for their culture. And it is just one example, there is so many other bands with pvs with that scenary (and probably there is a “something-kei” for it too). The pompous and bold Glam Rock found it’s home in the japanese costumes and evolved into the coolest thing.
 
To be deeper into to sexuallity stuff we could talk about how Japan society potentially repress the sexual preference of their people in order to have things working “in the right way” and how the west really needs to “talk about it” and not let the individuals be themselves without pushing some agenda into your fuckin throat so it’s fuckin hard to understand these japs using lipsticks just because they like it, but that stress me too much so fuck it.