Laurence02

The last two chords that became somewhat a standard for MUCC after Gokusai came out.

Sus4 -> Major

Get's me everytime. They did wear it out a  bit though.

Man there is so much harmonic content to take from MUCC. They are without a doubt the most prominent in the use of harmonic progressions in the whole scene.
 

The use of diminished chords and wandering bass notes in this refrain is simply marvellous..

This is really nice, actually!
Original, and the musicianship is good!

This reminds me! I recently found these pictures on my old photobucket account of my hand sewn Merry shirts. It was impossible for me to get legit merch in America back then (around 2007) so I finally decided to just make my own.
 
Attempt 1 Front and back design:  
 
Yeah, not great f(^^;) I do really like how the umbrella came out though! I am much more pleased with the second one, which is cross stitch (I am way more confident with cross stitch than embroidery) and I drafted the pattern by hand over the course of a month. The long blood drip in the logo has gotten a little crooked over the years so I think I'll redo that part when I go back to the US next week.
 

dumb sis, I (and most of my clique) have been purchasing legal media (and concert tickets, if we're at it) since ~2004, when the only delivery option was DHL and it was expensive a.f. to ship shizzle alone
 
I lost interest in ~supporting the scene~ almost completely many years ago and buy less than 3 CDs per year on average and I don't care if you're trying to buff your own ego by re-telling no1curr indiefag bandomen some distorted version of western fandom you're trying to invent for whom? for what?
 
literally get a life and get off social media and let band management do their job deciding how and where to sell their products.
 
oh and learn how to make coherent points, or something, for real, before u run amok screaming about muh filesharing gaijin pigguz

I totally recommend Woods of Desolation. Both old and new, if you're into this kind of music. For the two first albums the music itself and the melodies aren't too different, but difference in the production makes them into two very different beasts. I prefer the older, more lo-fi and hazy material myself, but I am one of few as far as I know. The last album, As the Stars, was a bit more in the direction of post-black metal with a stronger shoegaze and post-rock feeling. A bit more Alcest-esque.
 
 
 
He also played bass on Austere's masterpiece "To Lay like Old Ashes".
 
 
I'll glady recommend Forest Mysticism and Grey Waters too. Forest Mysticism is very similar to Woods of Desolation and Grey Waters is more depressive rock, influenced by Katatonia's later albums and Amesoeurs.
 
Woods of Desolation's "Toward the Depths" and "Sorh" have been my go-to albums for foggy days alongside Negură Bunget's "'n crugu bradului" and "Om". I always play these albums when I'm walking around in the fog. No exception.

https://www.mediaplaynews.com/riaa-physical-record-sales-topped-digital-downloads-in-2017/
 
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/03/digital-streaming-behind-biggest-rise-in-uk-music-sales-for-two-decades
 
there're numerous reasons VK acts won't get signed and distributed through major western labels, and they are slowly catching up with the streaming trend, but this scene never relied on an equation of 1 fan purchasing 1 CD per release,
 
the moment we stop downloading shit for free you and your kind will jump ahead screaming it's imperative for the REAL fans to purchase checki and merch, covering the overseas purchasing fees.
 
are you going to imply that the other outlets in the dying scene (i.e. SHOXX) are also leaving the market due to our lack of support?
 
ironically starwave produces the cheapest, shittiest, most derivative music/looks in the scene as of now, and I want to see the receipts that bands themselves get the coin from itunes purchases.
 
you should consider a social media diet (just a suggestion.)

I really don't have much of an opinion on piracy in general.  Piracy has always been the foundation of the Western VK scene since the beginning.  I still remember trying to download Kuroyume and GLAY songs that were ripped at 128kbps on dial-up in 1999 that took over 2 hours to download per song.  I'm pretty sure most of the groups, Japanese or not, I've been into, I probably got into them due to filesharing. 
 
Anymore, I rarely download anything VK related since there's Youtube to sample newer bands.  I'm more likely to illegally download Kpop and Jpop artists's releases than VK ones.  The only things I usually download are lives since when ever I have bought one, I usually only watch it once and then it collects dust on my shelf.  Hell, I had DEG live DVDs I have bought and never even watched to only give them to a friend because I knew she would enjoy them more than I was. Most of the bands I share are either long disbanded or are active and have a large enough fanbase that the single/album was going to get shared sooner or later. 
 
When it comes to purchasing releases, I have an odd way of thinking on how I make a purchase.  I considered myself more of a collector of VK bands than a fan at times.  If I really like the band's sound, it usually translates into me buying the releases new off of Amazon.co.jp or CDJapan.  If the band catches my eye but I don't think they're going to last long, I sometimes try to snag a used copy of their releases until I'm sure the group is going to be sticking around for awhile.  If an album is considered a 'classic' in the VK fandom and I don't like the artist, I will usually try to get a used copy dirt cheap.  
 
It's a bit off topic, but I included why I buy used copies over new copies.
 
 

I'm back with the third installment of "Copy/Paste", where I roast visual kei songs under a microscope for taking an ounce or two more influence than they should from their favorite bands. This installment is focused on cases where it's incredibly obvious if you listen for more than a few seconds. Sometimes, I don't even think they tried to hide it.
 
Moran's "Lyrics of the DEAD"
stems from "Evolution" by Ayumi Hamasaki
Homage or Copy: Homage!
 
 
 
 
Viored's "君影草 (Kimikage Kusa)"
stems from "RED...[em]" by Dir en grey
"Kasumi" by Dir en grey
Homage or Copy: Copy!
 
 
 
 
 
√eight's "Illational of the people"
stems from "electric cucumber"by zilch
Homage or Copy: √eight's is a zilch cover band
 
 
 
 
Black Gene For The Next Scene's "DOOM"
stems from "INCREASE BLUE" by Dir en grey
Homage or Copy: Definitely a nod towards Dir en grey
 
 
 
 
 
Dir en grey's "Unknown...despair...a lost"
stems from "G" by Luna Sea
Homage or Copy: "Heavily" "inspired"
 
 
 
Xaa-Xaa's "ラストダンス (Last Dance)"
stems from "Dance Rock night" by girugamesh
Homage or Copy: You can play them one after the other and they line up damn near perfectly
 
 
 
 

Yeah, I am dissapointed with this documentary.

I actually read Yoshiki's biography (released in 2009), and, oh boy, was it interesting. How much he trained, situations when he was hospitilized and had around 5% of fat due to his constant training, the way they refused Sony in the beginning and so many other stories, the way they performed, drank and were touring in Japan - that was powerful, that was interesting to read.
 
This documentary - meh. There was NOTHING epic. It was absolutely plain.

Directed by Stephen Kijak
 
Starring 
 
X Japan
 
 
 
June 30th came and went, and while we may have not gotten the album, we might have gotten something arguably more interesting. To the misfortune of the initiated non-Japanese speaking fan of visual kei, there is an inarguable drought of first hand accounts outside of the handful vague magazine articles that are passable at best; and it is to this need that a film about X Japan would seem like an heaven-sent. I still think that the most interesting aspect of the whole story of visual kei is how it exactly got started, and what the people involved were feeling at the time of its inception. "We are X" would seemingly be able to fit the bill, seemingly. I was able to see that it definitely wasn't going to live up to expectations based on its short runtime alone, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy a good A&E music documentary so either, and the X story is definitely very interesting. So how does it fare? 
 
We Are X” is a moderately entertaining and a rather brief 90 minute promotional package for Yoshiki’s upcoming world conquest ( it’s still coming you guys. ) that is simply not what it could be. The basic gist of the film is Yoshiki reminiscing about everything that happened in his life leading up to their long awaited [citation needed] debut at the Madison Square Garden, encompassing his thoughts on life, death and all things Yoshiki with bits of historical retrospective sequenced in between. You know what you’re in for right from the start, when the film opens with such grand spectacle that’s only befitting of a man of Yoshiki’s stature ( if you ask him, that is ); dramatic piano music wailing under a Yoshiki monologue lead up to the graphic designer and pyrotechnics ejaculating all over video deck all at once, and after the initial shock of the grand spectacle of it all, it becomes apparent that the film starts to work in two different ways; the slick albeit dripping with cheese rockumentary with interesting historical footage on the one end, and the absolutely stunning character worship of Yoshiki on the other. Although there’s something to be said about the devil reading the bible, I think a cynical reading of this glossy piece of PR is if not perfectly warranted, then at least an amusing exercise for the viewer.
 
The way the story is told is through Yoshiki’s own biography and musings and, the film’s story arch spans X’s career from the beginning to the show at the MSG largely from his perspective, and from here we are beset with the greatest structural problems of the film that completely slaughters it from being of great interest. X and the other band members are established only as they come into his story and information about them is related only in a manner as it specifically relates to him. A central feature of X’s story, which is the Toshi’s cult debacle, gets so much time only because it plays a role in the breakup and reformation, and the way hide is presented is that his greatest asset along with strange magnetism and philanthropy was being Yoshiki’s “producer,” as it was told. Heath and Pata each hardly get word in; is it because they didn’t want to, or that their input is inconsequential to the narrative? Who’s narrative by the way, X’s or Yoshiki’s? Or is Yoshiki X? These characters are attached to the spine of Yoshiki’s project through which they are even allowed exist in this film. You can probably already see what’s going on here.
 
The lost opportunity of having comprehensive member bios becomes perfectly evident when Yoshiki’s own childhood and early bijuaru years are reflected on, and what little was shown of it was easily the highlight of the film. Their lives at this point were danger, death, excessive drinking and the most thrashing cockrock around, so what caused it? What were the motivations, influences and the rest of it? Yoshiki’s dad dying and him getting a drum set. After this he conjured willing and able session members from the nether realm - & Saver Tiger - and he invented X in the vacuum of his own persona! Poor fucking Pata gets literally nothing, probably ending up sharing the same total screen time with Yoshikitty or the hide doll. A proper biography of hide is unjustly totally omitted, and while the whole Toshi cult debacle does occupy a central position the last third of the film, it is terribly vague the way it goes about; he married an unspecified woman and joined an unspecified cult that brainwashed him in a rather unspecific manner for unspecific ends. The film also goes over no songs or albums in any detail, and I mean there is hardly word said about any single note of music they’ve done in specific, nor about their influences and creative process for that matter. For a music documentary it’s exceptionally light on anything musical, except when it’s something that particularly relates to the story of the visual kei grand wizard Yoshiki.
 
Another aspect of the story that is completely absent is a proper survey of visual kei. The culture is hardly explored in any way, nor does X get drawn into the larger context of things and is merely portrayed as a hugely popular rock band that was quite influential in the domestic market. I have a theory on why this is so: the film is aimed at an all-American market as a promotional piece: the 90-minute mark cannot be exceeded under any circumstance, and visual kei may only be brought up as an object to prop up the band. One segment of the film has a few lines by members of bands such as Dir en grey, Luna Sea, Mucc etc. and the total of what they were allowed to say was: “ekkusu kakkoi sugoi desu ne.” One might have been able to set this aside if it weren’t for the fact that a couple of minutes later Yoshiki’s American entourage gets MINUTES of screen time, including Gene Simmons who even gets to have a personal anecdote on how X would be huge in the west if it weren’t for the Anglo-centrism of the American audiences. 
With these direction choices in mind, I feel that X was portrayed more in the way that the American public would like to digest the band: a big insular arena rock sensation that’d be the biggest band in the world if it weren’t for unfortunate circumstance. This doesn't kill the film exactly, but it makes it of lesser importance and interest. 
 
Now why the film is like this is because all this is after all, it is a promotional package for X’s long delayed triumphant conquest of the western music market. Its structure is built around the MSG show, with the original attempt at the west sequined in the latter middle part of the run time so it could be later brought up as a setup for their return. After going through the disbandment and the tragic deaths set to an image of Yoshiki being outrageously portrayed with wings behind him, it’s right at the end of the film where he is still standing defiant and fully convinced that he still has to do it, he has to besiege the billboard and he must do it for hide and Taiji; and then cue to an awesome cringe inducing montage of weeaboos wearing bootleg shirts and an assorted collection of Yoshiki’s cool celebrity “friends,” as they were called. It depends on your point of view whether this is amusing or just simply enraging. At this point, I admit to subscribing to the former school of thought. 
 
So, for people who are interested in visual kei and X, it falls short of expectation. What does it have for the outsider? Well, it’s a mixed bag. First of all, it is a cheesy TV documentary level production made by a guy who’s previous documentary was about the hardcore musical renegades The Backstreet Boys, so the emphasis is on the word production; and still despite all this it occasionally appears to assume general knowledge from the viewer while totally catering to people who’d be exposed to X for the first time. The music isn’t spoken of and only clips of it are played, so you either must know it beforehand or take the word of everyone in the film that X is this great band from Japan you haven’t heard of. Obviously, my memory isn’t 100% but I’m fairly confident that the only song mentioned by name in the film was Art of Life.
I’ll have to say that it’s not boring though, because the bare bones of the saga are interesting and all the early X stuff is awesome. So considering that anyone with the misfortune of having read this is most likely quite well versed in the bijuarus, I can say there's worse ways of spending your time. I'd watch a Japanese record store employee telling about the best selling vk records for two hours ( probably rather than this, actually ) so I'm definitely biased towards everything even remotely related to visual kei. You’re should be good as well if you go into it with the same mindset you would have watching some Vice documentary on a Sunday morning while eating breakfast.
 
                                                                               

Yeah, the guitarist was a Zi:Kill Roadie and their vocalist was also a part of Kneuklid Romance.
They were also known as Quasi D'Orsay and one of their demos is on Niconico Douga. 

It was a band made up of Zi:Kill roadies if my memory serves me right.
 
Also, Dir en grey got their name from Kamijo according to most sources, he made them believe that Dir en grey meant silver coin. If I remember correctly someone (Shinya?) revealed this a while back conclusively. They played gigs together back in the La:Sadie's days and were good friends at the time. 
 
Also, this is kind of off topic, so please get back on track with regards to unusual and unnecessary symbols in band names. 

Here's some live footage from our gig in January together with VII Arc and Kerbera:
 

Only about 20,000 on Yahoo right now..  Plus about 205 yen in domestic postage.

I got these little cuties from @hyura. All of them are really nice, actually!

I've never thought Toshi will come back to metal stuff like the early X classics and even as a guitarist, very nice to see it.

One thing with Yoshiki, he may often be pompous and self absorbed, but I don't think he's an idiot by any means, and it would take a complete idiot to actually throw out/dispose of/lose such priceless master tapes as any of the X tapes are at this point, whether he likes the music still or not, so I've still got hope he's got those old X masters at least tucked away somewhere safe and is just simply ignoring them, which I'd be cool with. I just don't think he'd be dumb enough to throw that kind of history out, some of it's not famous, sure, but it's irreplaceable at the same time.

Ah, too bad it's a live version...
 
They had some pretty awesome tracks that they never officially released, and the few they did never were reissued at any point, Break the Darkness (they had two versions back in the day, both pretty good), Only Way, Tuneup Baby, Right Now, Stop Bloody Rain, Feel Me Tonight, Steal Your Heart, Lady in Tears, Install and even more than that. It's not likely to happen, just saying it would be incredibly cool if he even considered any of the above, since he's got so many old X songs laying around.

Yoshiki is actually insane. He's got a backlog of incredible and rare demo tracks, yet he keeps reissuing the same stuff on a yearly basis. Was saying on another site, the only appealing thing about this at all is the potential fresh remaster of Standing Sex, but even that might just be a live version, I can't even tell  what is or isn't a live recording on this messy compilation.

haha lol. I was just kidding. Yoshiki is the most ridiculous person I know.
 
 
I've actually been listening a lot to their older live stuff recently. And Taiji was such a huge part of the band. I didn't realize it before, but he seems to be really down-to-earth-kinda guy and gave X the rock n roll vibe I'm so badly missing these days. After he left, hide was still fighting against Yoshiki the band, but since then it's gotten out of control.

He worked 90 hours for what?!?
Sure, La Venus is a new recording but Without You was probably in the can for quite a while now. The rest are just the same-old same-old.

I've thrown out these numbers before but here's X Japan's output through what I've grouped as their major recording / releasing moments:

1987-1991: 25-30 songs: Vanishing Vision, Blue Blood, Jealousy, Art of Life (The last one was written / recorded in 90 and 91 but released later of course)
1992 -1997: 11 songs or so: Dahlia + The Last Song
1998-2017: 10 songs or so. I've included their hiatus years since Yoshiki recycled a few Violet UK songs for X Japan

Depending on how you look at it, releases and songs are getting less and less as more time goes on. If and when this new album comes out, that's it. X Japan as we know it will just be a live act milking the fan's wallet's dry.

And if you really want to look at it, their most productive period was when X was a band with everyone contributing (87-91). Basically as soon Taiji got kicked out, they became X Japan and Yoshiki became a mega diva, the band as a whole stopped functioning properly as a recording artist.
 

Can't wait to hear that new song kurenai! What's that all about huh!! Heard from ppl who attended their gigs in Japan that it's amazing

Oh wow X JAPAN is releasing a new album!

That documentary was pretty shit, too. People like Taiji and Jun got shafted in favor of Yoshiki's special snowflake story.
 
X Japan is just a big nostalgia act, and acting like they're going to release another Blue Blood or even Jealousy would be barking up the wrong tree.
 
What a joke. Is this even X Japan? I just see it as Yoshiki and pals. Probably always been the case.

I agree early era X is great and would love to hear proper studio versions but I actually wouldn't fault him for not releasing those. For starters, most were never recorded in a studio. A few of those (Right Now, Tuneup Baby, Only Way) were directly done by guitarist Jun / Hisashi Takai and once he left, none of those songs were really played again afterwards, IFAIK.

SBR, Feel Me Tonight and Lady in Tears had demos but nothing they could remaster by any means, even if those master tapes existed they would possible sound not great since they didn't have a budget to properly record, and you know Yoshiki and his recording habits now!, not to mention they all scream of 80's Iron Maiden influenced metal which the band has long moved past.

Install never made it far and it's probably for the best. It wouldn't have fit well with VV, I think. I doubt a proper studio version exists for the same usually no time / no budget  scenario most bands suffered through early in their careers.

I'm more annoyed that alot of those demos on Rose and Blood didn't get picked for Jealousy. 'Shadows' , 'Light Breeze' and 'Rose and Blood', while being somewhat typical of the time period and the latter being Xclamation 2.0, would've rounded out the album better. I don't hate many X / X Japan's songs but that album has two of my most hated, Desperate Angel and Joker (Celebration 2.0!) that I would've gladly traded out for the aforementioned demos. Those demos were clearly better songs and with proper recording polish would've sounded even better. But of course, we know the story, Yoshiki didn't like the demos, the band got annoyed the songs didn't get used and Taiji ultimately got kicked out.

I've always dreamed and hoped that the early Violet UK tracks would get released one day. The ones from 1996-2001 or so. It's a crime that they never did.  White poem I is a great example that escaped obscurity by being used as a X song, the rest were snippits used in the 7-11 commercials, the Sane movie, and in a few other odd promotional places. They had an old school trip hop feel or like Massive Attack which had broken big around the same time before the VUK project became mush-filled electronic songs like a protools sample project screaming about the infinite number of layers it could support which is what those songs in 2005 on myspace and Itunes felt like . I imagine there being no chance of those every being released now, if they were, they'd be reworked into dreck.

Here's one VUK early song which legend goes was played at a press event by Yoshiki.  Amazing to my ears!