#resurrectVK

[efuru 255]

7 hours ago, Ikna said:

interesting how in this discussion about gaijins imitatiing trve VKei no one has mentioned this guy before (who seems to split people's opinions just as much):

 

 

Tbh, his look come a lot more closer to actual VK than most of the swede kei bands

I don't care for Insanity Injection but I really really loved Glamscure's newest album and I had no idea he wasn't Japanese, also cause I don't look that deep into the members.

[efuru 255]

2 hours ago, Endigo said:

Bless <3

 

[Pretsy 1343]

1 hour ago, lichtlune said:

I know but I think Japanese is his native language no? 

No (AFAIK his family is Italian and he was born there too, so no natural born ties to Japan whatsoever - mostly interest-based)

 

I see a whole lot of noise about languages and whether they matter in VK and elsewhere - pro-tip: it's all about the context.

 

Genres often endorsed by Mejibray and alikes as a case in point are no different whether you convert them into piglatin or Russian or pretty much any other language off your Asian endorsement charts: these are the so-called "normalized/neutral household genres". However, musical touches often favored by Kayoukyoku/actually Japanese-oriented music-loving collectives akin to D=OUT or MERRY pretty much require Japanese lexicon to be present in your singing or else you would be met with tons of justified criticism towards dissonance you caused between accompaniment and  stereotypical, "oppressive vocal delivery". The latter is rather frequent but there are ofc means how to change opinions for better though - as long as you assess exactly what is going on with Royal Road-progressions, syllabic specifics, lyrical conventions, rhyming, "good ol' practices" etc.

 

Aforementioned VK acts have done their homework for sure and realize what might be the "no. 1 Nippon best practices" - the question is, have these western Tokyo-stanning weeaboos done the same homework?

 

Different cultural milieus were present during their musical development, "good practices" were understood differently and their bandwagoning is far more reckless. So call it simply "NO".

 

Therefore, linguistic issues won't matter that much - as long as you don't blindly keep cockriding on tacky lexical and musical cliches blasted in your VK household favs, which is what YOHIO keeps doing with DISREIGN. If you are far more versatile in your own spoken AND musical language, perhaps that's the exact language you have "much better ear" in instead of your biases' bandwagon languages. For the sake of relevance, Bataar and especially Patrik have no idea of what kind of "musical language" suits them well - nor do their adopted conventions convince that much because it reeks of fuccboi bandwagoning...

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Alroy

[Zeus 7997]

1 hour ago, Carmelzors said:

Therefore, linguistic issues won't matter that much - as long as you don't blindly keep cockriding on tacky lexical and musical cliches blasted in your VK household favs, which is what YOHIO keeps doing with DISREIGN. If you are far more versatile in your own spoken AND musical language, perhaps that's the exact language you have "much better ear" in instead of your biases' bandwagon languages. For the sake of relevance, Bataar and especially Patrik have no idea of what kind of "musical language" suits them well - nor do their adopted conventions convince that much because it reeks of fuccboi bandwagoning...

 

 

I hadn't put much stock into the thought of language being a particularly visual kei thing that makes it special, but you guys put up a really convincing argument. I would even go as far to say that the language(s) we learn growing up cause us to think and approach music a certain way, so that trying to make visual kei music the straightforward way is much more difficult.  I have to think about this some more because its a deep revelation. While I agree with this in theory, I honestly can't imagine what a western sounding visual kei band should sound like. I think a good start would be to take a vocal melody from a visual kei band, replace the words with English phrases that aren't too broken and make sense, and then put that over a guitar and drum track in the tuning of your choice, and go from there. 

 

For me, it's the awkward inclusion of Japanese that's the kicker. I don't care what language you sing in, as long as it's not a naked appeal to visualizm. Not singing Japanese doesn't make them "less legit" and singing in broken Japanese doesn't give any legitimacy at all. Despite me just saying language may be an important factor in the style, it stops where the melodies begin. If you can nail the melodies behind what gives VK its spin, the language should cease to matter. Visual kei artists sing in exclusively English from time to time and that doesn't rob the visual from the kei. Right now, every single WVK band outside DISREIGN fails terribly at this...and look how long it took YOHIO to get it right! AND I believe he stumbled upon a sound that works for him by reverse engineering late-era The GazettE.

[Ro plz 1290]

This is funny because its seems as if BatAAr is no longer "so different" than the rest of the other Western VK bands. Even the Tekken 7 feature and how much they tried to make themselves standout from the other niche of bands couldn't save em from this drought that's the dwindling Western VK scene.  During the end run of when I followed them, i noticed that they don't even have that many shows in Sweden/EU these days. Japan is the only place they really tour and its once a year. Correct me if I'm wrong but you ain't eatin with just one "major" tour per year. Prob means that niggas ain't checkin for BatAAr (and the other bands) back home like they were before. Also, in BatAAr's case its very interesting to watch because based on some of the responses here, Patrik apparently used to down talk some of the aspects of these lame ass Western VK bands and now BatAAr has become the SAME thing. They aren't even calling themselves an "Art Metal" band anymore and The inclusion of the apparent king of Weeaboo's/how generic their music has gotten since then is the epitome of degradation.  As much as we don't like YOHIO here,  we gotta give the nigga credit where credit is due. He's prob caught on to the fact that the Western scene is dead which is why he took DISREIGN and moved them to Japan where they at least have a chance (?) at some relevancy. He's probably looking at this hashtag and saying "YIKES CANT RELATE!!!!" This hashtag will go no where. Search it up on twitter and besides Patrik's posts and probably Endigo's, NO ONE IS FUCKING TALKING ABOUT IT.  What sucks here is that I actually did like these guys up to when they lost their last vocalist and Bassist. They've become an embarrassment. 

[diryangrey 121]

honest question - bc BatAAr & Disreign are brought up a lot here, what do y'all think of Die/May's latest track?
i thought the vocal melody of the chorus was pretty impressive & wouldn't sound out of place from some recent indiez band from japan, but am i the only one who thinks that?

i'm really not /as/ into the heavier side of vk so a lot of these western bands aren't aiming for the kind of sound that's my fav to begin with, but i thought that track's chorus at least is moving the band in a good direction.

[Biopanda 2675]

9 hours ago, Zeus said:

 I honestly can't imagine what a western sounding visual kei band should sound like.

 

[Pretsy 1343]

3 hours ago, diryangrey said:

honest question - bc BatAAr & Disreign are brought up a lot here, what do y'all think of Die/May's latest track?
i thought the vocal melody of the chorus was pretty impressive & wouldn't sound out of place from some recent indiez band from japan, but am i the only one who thinks that?

i'm really not /as/ into the heavier side of vk so a lot of these western bands aren't aiming for the kind of sound that's my fav to begin with, but i thought that track's chorus at least is moving the band in a good direction.

The vocal melody did not deviate at all from  nordic (especially Finnish) indie rock/pop conventions - whether there were *actually* good growls or so.

 

And Riotcolor is pretty much just another love metal-tier vocalist from our genericville. Sad!

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

Chaos is born and raised in Italy btw, not Japan. 

[Ikna 1225]

2 hours ago, Biopanda said:

 

 

Also this:

 

 

It's basically western (old) X Japan. 

[Lestat 2167]

The west has had its answer to visual kei, long before visual kei even took that moniker; glam and sleaze rock. 

 

And especially Scandinavia plays a large role in the revival of glam rock. Any person like Yohio or Patrick would be smart to play under this guise instead of using the Japanese bastardisation of glam rock called visual kei because it would likely garner them a lot more positive attention instead without them trying too hard to be emo. There is essentially only a small difference (however the new generation of visual kei has of course, changed tremendously) as visual kei originated straight out of the west. You really do not have to look all that far.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2017 by Lestat

[Pretsy 1343]

^Or they could as well contribute to revivals of other glam bastardizing scenes, e.g. "love metal " which were sorta tailored to be played by their ilk:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Two first embeds (Lovex and Negative) used to be Japanese favorites btw.

 

 

Edited May 1, 2017 by Alroy

[Ikna 1225]

Maybe it's just me, but imo  that whole sleaze rock and love"metal" thing was kinda lukewarm and suffered from the exact same symptoms as gaijin bands (lulzy make up, lame outfits and repetitive music). Funnily enough, a band who parodies that stuff as well as hair metal , Steel panther, is very enjoyable. Also Crashdiet were (or are? No longer following their activities, tbh) okay. I am however glad that that fad has already died out. 

 

When it comes to glam (and its relations to old VK), stuff á la Lou Reed, David Bowie, The Sweet, Roxy Music, T.Rex, Hanoi Rocks or (especially) the New York Dolls come to my mind. But that shite's already way too old and most people do not care about 60/70ss pre-punk glitter rock. People want their  modern pop rock hooks (see sleaze rock) or metulcore (see contemporary VK). There is a reason why Bowie jumped the glam ship in the late 70s and why there are no true, classic glam bands around these days. It died out like many other styles of music.

 

VK is rooted there, but imo it has evolved beyond being just "japanese glam". Especially considering how many other, different scenes have influenced it, such as New Wave, hardrock, (Hardcore) Punk, etc. The fault of most of these swede kei bands is actually that they look and sound more like Lovex & Co. or like mid 00s Myspace scene bands rather than VK bands.

 

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

All that stuff linked above is not an option if you hate it like I do, lol.

 

Visual kei might as well have originated from two drunk Greeks twiddling around with a lyra after making love to other one's niece. I don't give a fuck. Visual kei is to a large extent my essence and being, but I would rather burn in hell for all eternity than listen to 30 seconds worth of any nu glam/sleaze cockrock, or even all their Kissy forefathers for that matter. I'd rather play 2010's The GazettE covers for a millennia in purgatory than subject myself to any of the bands linked above for a single solitary second. The guys from Bataar and Seremedy may not share my opinion to the same extent, but it's a likely scenario that they'd rather sound like VEXENT/Killaneth/GenericnuVK than OldlyCrew. Most likely these dudes grew up with mid 2000's nu metal kei as well, so whatever the gentleman from X Japan were listening to back in the day has no bearing on their lives. They're white and they want to play Vortex and Remember the urge, and that's kind of it. Wearing a Poison cumrag on your receding hairline is no less hack than rocking a 15$ emo fringe, so if they're dead set on jacking an aesthetic wholesale, then both of these options are just as socio-culturally irrelevant as the other. The concept is not the biggest factor holding them back from being up to the Japanese standard though: it's the execution. 

 

The problem here is that they're really bad and can't even do the little that they do without being embarrassingly bad, so they're forever doomed to play handout gigs at battle of the bands held in youth community centers; begging for Japanese tours from a drug-addled, rapidly aging Kenzi whom Yohio presumably blew to get his start there; or just kneel and pray for the rapid advancement of future technologies that will allow scientist to resurrect the other guy from ADAMS so they can warm up for them at their subsequent tours in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics; remaining forever unsigned, forever stuck in shitty local band limbo.

 

I try to follow these bands to the best of my ability not only out of morbid curiosity, but because if I could find 4-5 able vk fans then I'd start a weeaboo kei band myself. So while I'm sympathetic, I'm also twice as angered by their poor music, their poor taste and seemingly narrow frame of reference in visual kei, based on what I've heard and seen from ~sources~. 

 

I believe not many people have watched the original carting out the corpse of weeaboo kei video, so here's some cliffs (as far as I can remember them):

 

Back in the day there used to be a dozen vk bands in Scandinavia, now there's practically none and the ones that exist are woefully inactive. Finland used to have quite a few, although ranks of the members were very incestuous. If you can believe it, they were actually even worse than the Swedish bands and the two most long-standing ones even tried rebooting before fading into complete irrelevance. The one that I last recall having a proper concert, called "FAEK", has not updated their Facebook since Autumn of 2016. One curious aspect of the scene was also that a lot of the participants didn't really seem to be active visual kei fans, and yet despite that they used JAME to promote themselves and performed largely at cons and warming up for Satsuki/Plunklock tier bands that happened to be touring and performing at a venue called Gloria that receives some strange government money to minimise the L's the organisers take booking these shitty bands. The most longstanding band of the "scene" called "Karmia" appears to have dropped any pretensions towards vk and has settled for being a shitty local rock band. Here are the results: ( fyi the youtube superstar's former troupe that stole their name from Uverworld have also seemingly left vk behind in favor of a more western approach. Unsurprisingly their social media stature plummeted as dropping the Japanese rock shtick just unveils what they really are: one in the rank of millions of shitty local rock bands )

 

 

DIE/MAY is now the only one left and while shitcanning Seike will definitely help, they'll eventually do the routine of downshifting until turning to radio silence and then the eventual disbandment post on facebook, if they'll even bother. Aside from Tuomas and Heikki they also have afaik have one or two guys from the best Finnish vk band in HISTORY that larped TOXIC/DIVISION period The Gazette called "Desier," whom while very bad, managed to sound like an actual visual kei band on a shoestring budget and minimal ability. Conceptually they had a good thing going though. How DIE/MAY performs in their current iteration I will find out this weekend, unless I prefer trying to get cancer outside instead. Any Bataar fans sharing the hashtag can come say hi!

 

edit: This post is already a mess so it won't hurt any that I'll add something that I just thought: conceptual coherency is a problem. When I got to thinking about the last.fm's of these guys that I've seen, or the fates of Overworld and Karmia, I'm not surprised that people seemingly can't make heads or tails of what they exactly sound like. DESIER used to sound like The Gazette because afaik the composer was a huge fan, but then bands like Jenlayn and Karmia straddled a strange territory of sounding like just shitty rock music, in all its terminological ambiguity. It's not entirely farfetched that the amount of band members in the entire history of the scandinavian scene who are as vk savvy as the average member on this board, is as low as 3 or less. I actually briefly trolled a Crestillion live stream two weeks back asking what their favorite Madeth Gray'll tape was and whether they prefer Key Party or Matina. Not replying to me was a perfectly understandable response, but I have no doubt that they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about either. Visual kei in the west is being represented by Yohio ( who's old last.fm you can easily find ), and guys who literally only know Filth in the Beauty and The Final. That's tragic. 

Edited May 2, 2017 by Disposable
typo galore

[tetsu_sama69 1119]

Bless you @Disposable fucking bless you

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

@Disposablehow shook would you be if they answered with something like "Neither: I really liked Enamel"

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

The only thing that can save the DIE/MAY show @Disposableis attending is if the guy from Kilaneth joins them on stage and then openly roasts Yohio in-front of the crowd like he did on twitter.

[emmny 4139]

im going to quote tweet the part about yohio sucking off kenji but im too lazy to find it again and delete the rest

[emmny 4139]

3 minutes ago, Takadanobabaalien said:

The only thing that can save the DIE/MAY show @Disposableis attending is if the guy from Kilaneth joins them on stage and then openly roasts Yohio in-front of the crowd like he did on twitter.

i thought they were boys and it was for #sarcastic lulz

[nekkichi 6042]

mouthbreathing bae from karmia is cute I'll give them that!!!

[herpes 1597]

5 hours ago, Disposable said:

I'd rather play 2010's The GazettE covers for a millennia in purgatory than subject myself to any of the bands linked above for a single solitary second.

 

GO INNNNNNNNNNNNN

[seikun 317]

On 27/4/2017 at 2:41 PM, saishuu said:

Renaissance in the west? Was it ever alive? Does anyone want it to be?

 

Well, during last decade it received a lot of attention and popularity in the west, in subcutural terms of course. It cannot be compared to KPOP, for example, because Visual Kei even in its most maintrean form it is not the majority's taste, but it was kind of popular and that popularity allowed bands to start playing outside Japan.

 

In my country TV stations tried to squeeze money out of followers of Visual Kei in talk shows. "My mother doesn't accept oshare" was one of the recurrent titles for different cases where teens followed Oshare Kei but parents hated their children dressing like that. XD

 

I think Visual Kei's popularity in the west was especially evident in Europe and Latin America.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2017 by seikun

[efuru 255]

21 hours ago, Disposable said:

All that stuff linked above is not an option if you hate it like I do, lol.

 

Visual kei might as well have originated from two drunk Greeks twiddling around with a lyra after making love to other one's niece. I don't give a fuck. Visual kei is to a large extent my essence and being, but I would rather burn in hell for all eternity than listen to 30 seconds worth of any nu glam/sleaze cockrock, or even all their Kissy forefathers for that matter. I'd rather play 2010's The GazettE covers for a millennia in purgatory than subject myself to any of the bands linked above for a single solitary second. The guys from Bataar and Seremedy may not share my opinion to the same extent, but it's a likely scenario that they'd rather sound like VEXENT/Killaneth/GenericnuVK than OldlyCrew. Most likely these dudes grew up with mid 2000's nu metal kei as well, so whatever the gentleman from X Japan were listening to back in the day has no bearing on their lives. They're white and they want to play Vortex and Remember the urge, and that's kind of it. Wearing a Poison cumrag on your receding hairline is no less hack than rocking a 15$ emo fringe, so if they're dead set on jacking an aesthetic wholesale, then both of these options are just as socio-culturally irrelevant as the other. The concept is not the biggest factor holding them back from being up to the Japanese standard though: it's the execution. 

 

The problem here is that they're really bad and can't even do the little that they do without being embarrassingly bad, so they're forever doomed to play handout gigs at battle of the bands held in youth community centers; begging for Japanese tours from a drug-addled, rapidly aging Kenzi whom Yohio presumably blew to get his start there; or just kneel and pray for the rapid advancement of future technologies that will allow scientist to resurrect the other guy from ADAMS so they can warm up for them at their subsequent tours in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics; remaining forever unsigned, forever stuck in shitty local band limbo.

 

I try to follow these bands to the best of my ability not only out of morbid curiosity, but because if I could find 4-5 able vk fans then I'd start a weeaboo kei band myself. So while I'm sympathetic, I'm also twice as angered by their poor music, their poor taste and seemingly narrow frame of reference in visual kei, based on what I've heard and seen from ~sources~. 

 

I believe not many people have watched the original carting out the corpse of weeaboo kei video, so here's some cliffs (as far as I can remember them):

 

Back in the day there used to be a dozen vk bands in Scandinavia, now there's practically none and the ones that exist are woefully inactive. Finland used to have quite a few, although ranks of the members were very incestuous. If you can believe it, they were actually even worse than the Swedish bands and the two most long-standing ones even tried rebooting before fading into complete irrelevance. The one that I last recall having a proper concert, called "FAEK", has not updated their Facebook since Autumn of 2016. One curious aspect of the scene was also that a lot of the participants didn't really seem to be active visual kei fans, and yet despite that they used JAME to promote themselves and performed largely at cons and warming up for Satsuki/Plunklock tier bands that happened to be touring and performing at a venue called Gloria that receives some strange government money to minimise the L's the organisers take booking these shitty bands. The most longstanding band of the "scene" called "Karmia" appears to have dropped any pretensions towards vk and has settled for being a shitty local rock band. Here are the results: ( fyi the youtube superstar's former troupe that stole their name from Uverworld have also seemingly left vk behind in favor of a more western approach. Unsurprisingly their social media stature plummeted as dropping the Japanese rock shtick just unveils what they really are: one in the rank of millions of shitty local rock bands )

 

 

DIE/MAY is now the only one left and while shitcanning Seike will definitely help, they'll eventually do the routine of downshifting until turning to radio silence and then the eventual disbandment post on facebook, if they'll even bother. Aside from Tuomas and Heikki they also have afaik have one or two guys from the best Finnish vk band in HISTORY that larped TOXIC/DIVISION period The Gazette called "Desier," whom while very bad, managed to sound like an actual visual kei band on a shoestring budget and minimal ability. Conceptually they had a good thing going though. How DIE/MAY performs in their current iteration I will find out this weekend, unless I prefer trying to get cancer outside instead. Any Bataar fans sharing the hashtag can come say hi!

 

edit: This post is already a mess so it won't hurt any that I'll add something that I just thought: conceptual coherency is a problem. When I got to thinking about the last.fm's of these guys that I've seen, or the fates of Overworld and Karmia, I'm not surprised that people seemingly can't make heads or tails of what they exactly sound like. DESIER used to sound like The Gazette because afaik the composer was a huge fan, but then bands like Jenlayn and Karmia straddled a strange territory of sounding like just shitty rock music, in all its terminological ambiguity. It's not entirely farfetched that the amount of band members in the entire history of the scandinavian scene who are as vk savvy as the average member on this board, is as low as 3 or less. I actually briefly trolled a Crestillion live stream two weeks back asking what their favorite Madeth Gray'll tape was and whether they prefer Key Party or Matina. Not replying to me was a perfectly understandable response, but I have no doubt that they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about either. Visual kei in the west is being represented by Yohio ( who's old last.fm you can easily find ), and guys who literally only know Filth in the Beauty and The Final. That's tragic. 

 

Edited May 3, 2017 by efuru

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

found this at reddit lmao

 

[Zeus 7997]

That doesn't even look good. If they actually were true to their name, having a steampunk theme could actually play into the visual aspect quite nicely and would work with their facial structure. Their name should be "Classical" considering how they decided to dress.