lichtlune

YEEEEE BOIIII
 
Back when this album was released I was still a vk babby, so you know I sucked all of that sweet sweet mother's milk from...uhhh...Hizumi & co? Okay, this started out weird. But the fact still stands that these guys caught me in my most impressionable phase and left their mark on me with this full-length.
 
Before this was released, I wasn't paying too much attention to them, only knew a small handful of tracks, and even though those tracks were cool, it still floored me how amazing this album sounded and how tight the songs were. Everyone here was at the top of their game and you could hear the excitement, passion and the energy they put into the music, that can only come from such a young band.
 
When I've put it on in recent years it still holds up quite well, but there are some more average/mediocre moments... anyway, it is still my top favorite album of theirs and always will be a minor classic imo.
 
Favorites: tracks 1-4, 6-9 (and the rest are fine/decent)

Good

浅葱 (ASAGI) (D) new single "アマビヱ" (Amabie) will be released at 2020/08/29
 
 

Me and my 15 yr old nephew (on the left) at one of my homeboy's weddings a few days ago
 

Will we miss it (???)

all of them x
 
Namely Megaromania when 3/5 of them went to do a quick rehash of Lin before getting fucked over.

I ain't saying anything... but pictures don't lie.

People are seriously oblivious, man. They act like they ain't never seen androgynous Nihon shock rockers bein spicy. 

Very pretty ! I'm tired of their over the top messy compositions so a ballad is a nice change for once. Btw Mahiro's nose... if he likes it that's great and I'm happy for him but I really dislike the way he looks now

Hi everyone, some of you may already know me but for those that don't, my name is Cinny.
I've been into visual kei for almost five years now, I was introduced through Miyavi, but the first band I listened to was SULFURIC ACID.
My background is punk, so by nature most of my favorite bands are from the beginnings or proto (Extasy, Free-Will, Anarchist Records). This is my favorite period because I feel like it contained the most soul and creativity, I'm generally not into many modern bands but I still enjoy listening, I like seeing a newer band with innovation because it feels fresh for the scene.
I've always felt that I've had a personal relation and connection to Visual Kei since I learned about it and heard some great old school bands for the first time. Making an introduction here is long overdue for me, I hope I can get along well with everyone and have nice talks!
 
These are some bands I like the most, I also love a lot of more obscure music, I can be put into a 90s or Kote fan category.
Dué le quartz
COLOR
妃阿甦
X/X JAPAN
SEX-ANDROID
THE DEAD P☆P STARS
SISTER'S NO FUTURE
かまいたち
MALICE MIZER
SEX VIRGIN KILLER
AION
ect.
 
Nice to meet you all  🐸

This man's cringe-ass behavior is offensive, he really deserves to be cancelled. 
 
Jokes aside, I have come to terms with the album never happening years ago. It's best not to give Yoshiki any attention for being a douche, because that's the only thing that keeps him relevant. Also good for Toshi and what's left of the band for throwing in the towel and splitting, if true. It's clear as night and day that Yoshiki doesn't give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He's truly the poster child of dad-kei

oh ... hell
 

I used a manji sign with the swastika to the left as opposed to the right which the Nazis used, but the question still stands. I personally can't pick between ROSENFELD, MEIN KAMPF and DANGERZONE.

I have seen people mentioning this ITT already but I want to stress how your age when you started listening is really important. When you like something, you ask the question to yourself, "why do I like this?"
 
The answer will be vague when you are young, because this is a point where you are a fickle being, because you are discovering a lot of things in a short spam of time, you kinda want to try it out and also depending in a lot of other factors in your life (social circle and even your OWN appearance influences this) you will be more fickle than most for that young part of your life.
 
But there will come a point in your life where you will finally set you own "tier-list" of things that are important because you will have experienced enough things to know what you really like more. Of course this doesn't mean you are set for life in never discovering new things, but these things will not be that much different from what value the most by now.
 
When you get to this point in life, you will be able to answer the question "why do I like this?" more precisely. Great topic btw, always like seeing discussion about this

I don't really like modern visual kei bands that much even the so called "good" bands like kizu or DIMLIM so I've already sort of turned over a bit. I noticed that my listening habits were getting stale and that my last.fm scrobbles were getting lower and lower every year so something had to change. Then I found 80s jpop and my interest in Japanese music has risen quite substantially again I think. I hope we see another western boom again in the scene soon but who knows if I will even enjoy the music if and when that occurs. 

I grew up in the era of nu-metal, then through anime discovered J-Rock and through J-Rock happened upon J-Metal and VK. I was into VK for a good 5 years before the world of Japanese hip hop ensnared me and I stayed with that for probably 5 more years until I came back to VK. My musical tastes are cyclical, I'll listen to something for a while, then onto the next thing, but it's always Japanese, never American or Kpop or anything like that. These days I find myself into the goth and nuwave Japan has to offer and VK is the last thing on my mind as I've replaced the VK on my phone with the likes of Auto-Mod, Roses of Dead Essences, SPEECIES, XA-VAT, ZIZ, Etc. VK is in my blood however and all it will take is a band I care about to bring me back in and the cycle will start all over again. I've never understood the appeal of KPOP, and it's not a language barrier because I loved TRAX and I used to be a big fan of Se7en and Rain, but KPOP is just way too fucking popular, from what I've seen on Twitter it's a fan base of gen Z trolls and it's cringe as fuck and it seems to be based on pushing merch even more than VK and who the hell can keep up with all of these giant groups members anyway? That guy stole the blue hair idea from KOHH first as well.
*Old man rant over*

Lots of great insights in this thread, I don't even think I have anything new to add...  
 
I would like to echo this so much though, my own experience is/was very much the same:
 
 
 
I was one of those guys who dove head-first into vk once I discovered it, and would pretty much listen to it non-stop for years (leaving only veeeery little room for other stuff), and then I kinda burned out on it, but found my way back after a year or so with a cleared mind and more of a musical equilibrium. Although even when I wasn't listening to it I'd still keep visiting MH, lol. Now that I found this balance it's all good, I can enjoy whatever when the mood strikes.
 
I think this "vk or nothing" mentality that's sparked by the discovery of something foreign and exciting might be one of the major factors that later lead people to "fill up" on vk to the point of wanting to move on to other things eventually (ofc there are those special die-hards who never leave thankfully).

As you get older you change and so do the things you like. Once upon a time I used to watch harem/ecchi anime and listen to the gazette after. Now there’s one of those things I wouldn’t touch if my life depended on it. So I think it’s only normal for people to let go of something they got into as teenagers. I also think that being unwillingly to explore other music will make you go off vk faster.
 
In my later teen years I went off vk completely for about a year or two, I was just too busy to be involved with the scene, even after I came back to it I still had a year where I went in a deep search to expand my musical horizons. Now things have levelled off and I can move between western music, pop, Kpop, Vkei and everything in between. Another factor that makes people drop off: this scene requires time investment and the older you get the harder it is to make that investment. As your favourite bands die, the only way to keep interest going is by discovering new things in the scene, be it older bands you didn’t know or newer bands. Don’t forget, nowadays the average teen’s attention span is less than a goldfish’s so they’ll move to the next thing that makes them horny without a second thought and considering kpop merch is not only cheaper, but constantly being pumped out and more readily available than vk chekkis will ever be I can’t blame people for not sticking with vk for long. Kpop community is more active and widespread which does a lot to stimulate the senses.
 
What keeps me coming back to vkei is the angst and artistic side of it all. You just can’t find it anywhere else, even if it is fake lol. I don’t know if I’ll ever let go of it completely, like Dispo said I’m in it for the long haul.
 
 

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. 

This has already been kinda touched upon earlier ITT, but one thing I've noticed within the VK fandom more than within basically ANY of the other music spheres I've dipped my toes into is that a ton of people who get into VK seem to act as if the only bands that exist are the ones that are currently active, and any group that's disbanded/on hiatus/whatever just vanishes into oblivion as soon as the new looks and singles stop popping up. There's this tendency for people to basically treat the scene the same way tons of anime fans treat anime - "if it's not part of the current season then i pretend not to see it". Considering the ridiculous turnover rate that most VK bands themselves tend to have, this can easily lead to situations where people suddenly find themselves left without their faves even within the span of just months. 

I'll suggest one of the many contributing factors for a high turnover rate is because VK is quite a 'gimmick' genre/subculture and generally gimmicks will only keep people entertained for so long, genre's like the new phase of emo music with groups like MCR and glam/hair metal had their time in the sun and spawned huge subcultures but died out as people grew up and got tired of it and I'd consider both of those as gimmick genre's where if you stripped back the clothing and tone of the groups, it wouldn't have had as much excitement around it. I think as people grow older things like the clothing and look of a band don't matter as much but they were certainly one of the elements that drew me in when I was younger and probably what draws in people nowadays.
 
As well as people tiring of the gimmick of VK, I imagine people move over to K-pop because it's easier to find communities and like-minded people both online and in reality, I live in a very small city and work in a slightly larger town, I've maybe met three people that liked Dir En Grey but I've meant countless people that like BTS, Shinee, NCT etc.

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 agree that the rate is really high. I've had a lot of friends who turned away from vk and went into kpop or something else. Few eventually returned to vk while the rest didnt. I've wondered about this before too because its sad to see, but meh happens.

As for myself, i personally dont like watching full live dvds alone and i've stopped reading interviews a few years ago. I've been a fan for... roughly 11 years now???? Anyway, i want to think i will always be a fan but theres probably??? going to be a time where i have to move on. But in a way i'm already doing that. I dont really bother with much in vk anymore, i only focus on two bands. I know OF a lot of bands but i either dont care or am too busy to bother with it. I feel like this happens in general with a lot of fans overseas and domestic? But just my opinion.

I've pulled myself away from a lot of vk fans since i used to always know the drama or be involved in the drama. And imma say its been so damn NICE avoiding all that now and just sticking to a few people. I feel this and just the dark vibes in general might be apart of the turn over rate. While the kpop fandom is bad too, the music is at least more upbeat and if you dont understand korean then youre safe from the lyrics. 

A lot of good stuff has happened in my years and thankfully i never turned to something else fully. At some point i will have to prioritize vk less (i wanna settle down and have a family) but i'm (hopefully) still going to keep an eye on my two favorite bands.... if....they dont break up..... Usually I leave a certain band after 3-5 years but since I found vk and GazettE I've been stuck ever since. Hopefully i continue to stay even longer.

Sorry if my post was hella messy and unorganized lmao