Gaze.

Today I would like to bring up a band that has been impressing the hell out of me for a while. Deathgaze. Having been around for a respectable 2003, Deathgaze is one of the heaviest, visual bands that is still active. And no joke, they are heavy, catchy and badass.

Originally formed by Ai, Kanna, Naoki and Hazuki, but has had frequent member changes. Hazuki left after the first single to form Lynch., and Sou replaced him as the vocalist. Sou then vanished off the face of the earth for a few weeks and created somewhat of an uproar in Japanese rock music circles, finally Ai (who had been writing the music and also played bass) got fed up with replacing vocalists all the time and started singing for the band.

Hazuki, Sou and Ai, as vocals go are all very talented and really sound very similar to one another. If someone played any given Deathgaze song, I could pick out which vocalist it was due to the time period the song was released, but that's pretty much the only reason.

I've pretty much been listening to Deathgaze since they formed, maybe a few months after their first release. Honestly? They've done nothing but get better! Their sound has changed a little from more of a darker Nagoya sound to a more standard hardcore metal sound, but I feel their songs have gotten more catchy and distinguishable from one another.

Deathgaze is really a band that stands apart from the Japanese rock crowd, with their amazing vocalists, catchy, super-hard guitars and pretty much one of the best lineups I have seen in J-Music recently.. I hope they continue to put out really sick music ;D

I'm sure you can tell that today's BAND OF THE DAY! is Deathgaze, with their song Miscarriage off the Genocide and Mass Murder album from 2006 (Sou is the singer here).

Enjoy~

Get a brain!

So I've been thinking a lot about the direction that Japanese rock music is going in. I feel that there is, as always, a huge number of disposable rock bands, even ones that get fairly popular. I won't go into detail about it, because everyone has their own personal 'I-hate-that-band'. A few times I've really disliked a band, REALLY disliked.. and ultimately became a fan. A great example of this for me is Plastic Tree.. I don't know if I had never heard them, and still disliked them or I had previously been introduced to them by a scrub, or heard a song I thought was really lame. In any case, I was listening to shuffle on iTunes and I heard this vocal-less track that I really enjoyed, but had NO IDEA what band was playing it. Later I looked and it was Plastic Tree, so naturally I downloaded their discography to see if it was any good, and ended up liking the crap out of their music. (Actually thinking about it, I think I was more responsive to Plastic Tree after I began listening to Coaltar of the Deepers)

Anyway that was off topic. There are many bands putting out music that is thoroughly useless, and this is what turned me off from writing for a while, but as I always somehow do, I dug through the crap and found the shining gems of recent releases. Right now whats really catching my ear, is new bands that have evolved from, or have the band members from older bands. Namely 9GOATS BLACK OUT, Moran, Kain and somewhat less recently Angelo.

For those who aren't familiar with these bands, 9GOATS BLACK OUT is the singer from GULLET with an otherwise brand new lineup. Somewhat more laid back than GULLET and have less of the Nagoya region flavor, they have been active since 2007.

Moran was introduced to me recently by a good friend, he referred to the band as something like 'Fatima light' which I would say is pretty accurate. I find listening to Moran is a lot easier than Fatima, not saying either one is better, but Moran is decidedly less intense. Moran has 2 members who used to be in Fatima and have also been active since 2007.

Kain, *I believe (I can't find the source now..) announced a hiatus a few weeks ago, but basically there are 2 ex-members of JILS and one member of their pre-JILS band D=Sire (not 100% on this either). Kain and JILS sound very similar to me, I do enjoy both bands, but do not claim to be an expert on either of them. Maybe with JILS being slightly more atmospheric and free form, and Kain being a little more on the heavier rock side. Kain also formed in 2007. (trend?)

*I apologize for writing about what I heard as opposed to what is fact, but in this case I wasn't able to find sources to check my facts.

Finally Angelo, is made from 3/5 members of PIERROT, and a support guitarist. This band is in fact more of an evolution of PIERROT, while most of the other bands I have mentioned are not nearly as connected to their members' older projects. Angelo sounds, looks and feels very similar to PIERROT and as such is quite enjoyable, but not quite as filling. Angelo has been active since late 2006. (pretty much since PIERROT disbanded)

Today's BAND OF THE DAY is Moran with their song 'Tonight, at the seaside without the moon' I do believe if you haven't heard either Fatima or Moran, you will quite enjoy it. And if you know Fatima, you will definitely hear some similarities between the two bands :D

Please turn off your cellular phones and enjoy the show.

P.S. Kain is spelled wrong because I don't know how to type the 'alpha' character.

And I probably messed up all the capitalization's on all of the bands, but I really don't care atm.

See you in a day or two<3

J-Punk, D.A and Droogs.

OK, so this is a post that almost has nothing to do with Seikima II. In any case, tonight I discovered that people on certain substances really enjoy songs written by Daisuke Asakura (He is a solo artist, in addition to writing the music for T.M. Revolution and Abingdon Boy's School, in addition to being one of the core members of ICEMAN).

Honestly I am not particularly surprised by this, as it seems like many of his compositions are written either being aimed towards the techno/industrial crowd. I was greatly amused by this however, seeing as I have recieved comments that said 'I would so love to listen to this when I was doing xxxxxx *drug*.'

Since my last post, I haven't experienced anything new that was actually worthwile, except many listenings to that new Cali=Gari pv's song :D

I did have a nice conversation with a youth, earlier this evening, about Japanese punk bands, which honestly.. I have no idea about, aside from Balzac (the Japanese Misfits), a few obscure 90's bands like The Blue Hearts and The Star Club. There are a few bands that I could loosely calssify as punk in the Visual scene, like the Piass for instance, but ultimately the Japanese punks would likely scoff at my taste.

My observation of "real" Japanese punks, of whom I have had plenty of exposure to, is that they listen to many super underground (unpleasantly noisy and underproduced) bands that I have never heard of, and seem to be MUCH cleaner and hygenic than American punk fans. Which is kind of ridiculous because I saw one of my Japanese punk friends lay a police officer the fuck out in Harajuku. (they are pretty hardcore when they're wasted!)

I guess my point is, that I see Japanese and American punk as very similar. I have a feeling that some kind of language barrier exists, keeping the Japanese punks from grasping what the true fundementals of punk music/culture is really like.

Regardless of how awesome these J-Punk bands might be, I cant get into the spirit, or relate to it in the way that I can about some of the old American punk I used to listen to frequently.

Often I find that the Japanese will emulate a foreign trend, and ultimately improve what it is that they are emulating...

Japanes punk is an exception to that rule.

Today's BAND OF THE DAY! is Seikima II (translated to 'end of the century') and their song El Dorado. Seikima II was a Japanese heavy metal band, active december of 1989 and actually broke up on 12/31/99 at minight on new years eve, informing fans that it was the end of the world. That was actually the premise of the entire band. But lead singer Demon Kogure still lives on..

P.S. I would like to apologize in advance for any rambling I may have done this evening :D

Enjoy your weekend, everyone~

I reform, along with Cali=Gari~

OK, so I am officially back.

I was really un-inspired to write about Japanese music for a while. Seemingly nothing new or interesting was coming out.. I ended up creating 2 podcasts and distributed them to people I know personally, ultimately I got positive reviews from everyone, but got lazy and didn't upload it anywhere. I don't think the files exist anymore though.

I don't know for sure if that is still the case, there are a few things from mid-late 2008 that were pretty good, but not in a high enough volume for me to care that much.

HOWEVER!

Freakin' Cali=Gari has reformed.* (a month or two ago officially) They put out 'Cali=Gari no Sekai' (Cali=Gari World) which is a sort of best-of album with an update to Oto-Sex lol. But next month they are putting out a new single, coming in 2 forms '9 - To - Hen' and '9 School Zone Hen' I suppose these singles are a ~sequel~ to the actual '9' (Kyuu) Dvd which was of their "last" live performance.

But the icing on the cake is, they are releasing a full album '10' on August 26th.

*I would like to point out that my last blog entry, over a year ago made this prediction :3

cali≠gari／－踏－【PV】

To make up for my being away for so long, I will be uploading a song every time I post (which should be a few times a week) I will be choosing a BAND OF THE DAY! and sharing whatever song grabs me that day. So please enjoy and if you like it, check the band out more!

Today's BAND OF THE DAY! is Lynch.

They are releasing a new album called Shadows on July 8th.

Beautiful.

The real.

Wow this post is LOADED..

I have a few things I would like to discuss with you, internets. I have recently come to the conclusion that Syu from Galneryus, Aushvitz and Animetal is the best guitarist in Japanese rock music. I don't particularly like Animetal or Galneryus but I respect them both for having great musicians. Aushvitz on the other hand is actually considered a visual band, and I love it.. It's like just as intense as Galneryus but really damn dark and about subsequently much more unhappy subjects (this is a video of Syu playing at a Galneryus gig).

In other news, I mentioned something earlier in this blog (not this post tho) about D would become really big if they went major.. And just a few weeks ago D went major~ HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!

Also Lynch. put out a PV finally, it's called 'Adore' and only watch it in high quality otherwise it looks awful. I really like the song and the PV is freakin cool too. (Sorry I can't find it in higher quality ;_;)

My last order of business is to make a PREDICTION.

I have been informed that both Goatbed and Lab. The basement are disbanding, these bands holding the majority of Cali=Gari's band members. Kenjirou (the bassist) is the only one who is not in a disbanding group.. He's playing support bass for Coaltar of the Deepers XD!!

Anyhow following some kind of logic, all these former Cali=Gari members going back into circulation PROBABLY = reformation of Cali=Gari. Which I would like to see nothing more than. For me this is like a ZOMG thing. <3

Next post you get the first 2 episodes of my Podcast :D

Neo-Visual!?

Well I can't say I have anything to do with the Japanese writing about 'Neo-Visual' bands, but I started using this term about 3 years ago specifically for the bands Girugamesh and Sadie which at the time were very new. While not exactly a genre, its more of a generation of bands. I'd say as a general rule of thumb (though not 100% of the time) Neo-Visual bands were formed after 2001.

If that is a bit vague, I will explain what Neo-Visual is REALLY supposed to mean: A generation of visual band, usually out of Tokyo, directly influenced by visual bands (indie and major) that came directly before them ~1996-1999. One quality many of these bands share is having more substance, full-bodied sound and often more bass driven than their predecessors. My favorite examples are bands like Dio and -Oz- and SKULL, but also refer to bands as far back as Kagerou, the Gazette and even Kagrra. Many people refer to Neo-Visual as 'New School Visual Kei"

For example think of the difference (or similarities) between Dir en grey from Kisou and Sadie. Of course half of the Japanese bands around today roadie'd for Dir en grey.. I think a great many of these bands were also took notes from whatever American hardcore and metal bands, trying to sound much more western than older visual bands.

Sorry I can't give you a simple answer for 'what is NeoVK?' but.. it's a very complex and amorphous place. ;D

Still kicking.

What's up internets? Long time no see.. I don't have a whole lot to say, but there have been some really noteworthy releases appearing from various bands..



Recently these bands have been on my mind and playlists a lot.



The Studs



UnsraW



Sadie



Deadman



BUG



BLAST



Coaltar of the Deepers



CROWS



D



Deathgaze



Sel'm



Meth.



Dio



GULLET (and now 9GOATS BLACK OUT)



and always MUCC



Check these out.. you won't be unhappy. As long as you like it hard ;D



I was recently given the opportunity to do some work on a radio show, playing Jrock and this gave me the idea to make a Podcast weekly so people can check out whats new, whats good and whats hella classic.



I will have more information on this shortly.

Bear with me my lovely readers~