taiban.live

Drums The Band.

I miss the guitarist from Rands, he was a talent. The songs from this project have the right idea, but the production values need to match

Interesting textures in places, Kyo isn't grating at all and a few sukekiyo-esque curveballs that I'm thrilled to hear. It's still unfortunate that they're married to this particular alternative/nu-metal riffing that makes the backbone for most of their material. Nostalgically longing for the time when their albums had incredible diverse riffing across the board.

The bassline reminds me of Swans' Screen Shot

Just like all the other bands of his, they're serving looks and I really want to like them, but I'm unconvinced with the music itself. I was hoping he'd stick around after that fiasco the last time around to keep growing as a musician

he does drugs but then he also does this

@SATAN-GOTH-ZONE said:

It's kinda wild to look back on the bands that were active during the decade, Mejibray was active for a good chunk of the 2010s. I used to be a humongous hater until I picked up that they are actually kinda like a metalcore Penicillin and then I got hooked. I think they're a good example of that shift towards metalcore in the scene along with others like DELUHI, D.I.D. and another core band I can't remember.

I remember Mejibray were levied the accusations of being "generic" for almost their entire run when that couldn't have been further from the truth. Especially MiA's guitar playing was this rather unusual amalgamation of the same metalcore and power metal influences someone like Deluhi was working with, but in addition to that they'd be hip to the vk tradition and lift from bands like Silver Rose, Sads... There's no one that sounds like them, even if there were a few attempts at it. The kind of flamboyance and extravagance they put into everything was remarkable, always straddling the line of good taste with just most things they did (especially when it came to Tsuzuku's performances).

I think with the sheer volume of releases they put out in about 6 years makes them one of the most prolific and significant bands of the decade. You're not going to be artistically batting a 100 when you've put out over a 100 songs in 6 years.

The decade came and went, but perhaps due to the fact that a lot of us had been there and that many of the currents flowing through the decade have continued to flow into the present¹, I don't think we've yet rounded up the decade as we have the previous decades, 80s, 90s and the 2000s, and assigned it a specific character.

So I started this thread to just gather some observations of how the 2010s were. What happened in visual kei? Which trends came and went and what has left a lasting impact –- what characterizes the music of this period.

Something that was very significant to me was the conscious pivot back to the styles of the 2000s as a reaction to industry plant bands like ViViD, flagrant attempts of selling out of bigger acts and the "americanization" of aesthetics. This often led to a kind of a fusion of early nu-metal visual kei and kote kei (best exemplified by a band like Grieva, who'd steal from Girugamesh one moment and from Gauze-era Dir en grey the next) and also arguably taking a step further in aestheticizing the themes of depression and self-harm which led to menhera's establishment as a specific term and an aesthetic.² Although early Under Code and Sherow Artist Society maintained a direct lineage from kote, labels like Ains and projects like Dezert might've been the first self-consciously retro wave in vk.

Another is art kei's establishment as a "thing". I'm kind of ambivalent on this term as it simultaneously draws the right connections between some predecessors of western alternative and progressive rock influenced acts like early Luna Sea and L'arc, but also obscures their connections to the wider scene. But either which way, bands like Moran, Amber Gris and later 9Goats were some of the highlights of the decade and a kind of a bulwark against the complete metalcoreization of the scene's DNA.

There's plenty of other stuff to go over, like the strange and untimely end of significant labels such as Peace and Smile Company and Under Code, tracing metalcore's slow ascendancy over nu metal and etc. and also the best records of this period. All in all, I don't think there's enough conversation online about assessing this period in visual kei as whole yet

¹Additionally, the change in the media landscape and sheer overabundance of news and stimulus have created a fragmentary cultural landscape despite the fact there's more archival information available than ever before.

²R-shitei is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Starting out as effectively a 00s nu-metal vkei band, a genre which in itself emphasizes personal vulnerability and exhibition from KoRn onwards, and combining this with aesthetics from early Gazette and Kagerou, honed a style of kitchen sink imagery of juvenile angst and rebellion whilst flip-flopping on musical genre on a regular basis.

Enjoyed their comeback stuff. It’s not bue but its leagues above the music they put out prior to the initial hiatus/disbandment

They've been cancelled I guess but I've found this era of theirs to be their best since Paranoia

@Jigsaw said:

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026): My mind keeps wandering back to the previous movie ever since I watched it, there was just something about its plot, characters and execution that resonated well with me. This one is a direct continuation, with once again a delightfully "non-typical horror-like" plot set in an absolutely horrific world. Ralph Fiennes was the best, I really appreciate that we got to spend more time with his character as his scenes were some of my favorites in the preceding flick (all I'll say is that Dr. Kelson is my new favorite black metal frontman, lmao ). Once again a very nice watch, these two recent "28..." movies are a good pair imo.

Been meaning to watch these. I missed the chance to see them in the theater and I'm slightly paranoid about pirating these very new films in case I get some kind of a letter from some lawyer, lol. I enjoyed the previous films and heard good things about the new ones

Kaoru's look is like

Expected as much as soon as Dir en grey's album was slated for the same day.
I hope and pray it'll be worth the wait: new songs, an unique aesthetic in the context of the rest of their discography etc.

A strong, fresh contender from 2026.

A man in a KKK hood is standing inside frames that make up a box-like shape in a desert. He's not getting out of the box, despite that there's nothing stopping him, he's just standing there and reflecting. What's he thinking about? What's does the box symbolize: society, ideology, mortality, about something being a downer, big thoughts as indicated by the overlay of insects, goats and galactic shapes kind of like the big science brain POV shots from Oppenheimer.

Abysmal and tacky cover. They've had some shit before but this is just beyond the pale for me personally

Absolutely horrendous slop cover art. Even if not made by AI, it has the distinction of looking as if it was.

So if there exists a live rendition of Oni no men, presumably from the Judgement Day show or the same tour (I didn't compare the venues yet, but it's shot with multiple cameras), that means there's a live of Kore Yokattan Desu floating somewhere as well? Someone alludes to a VHS release of this live, so maybe that's uncut and this song was indeed filmed at some point in time. There aren't that many Gazette songs left that haven't been recorded and made publically available somewhere, but that's the one I want to see the most.

Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. Read around 50 pages for school but I reckon I'll pick up the rest of it as well. I'm tempted to read it in the original to enjoy the quality of Anderson's prose, but I'm susceptible to influence and reading in English affects my Finnish in a bad way (and vice versa, I'm completely incapable of juggling between languages), and I've got to do all my assignments in Finnish. The translation's quite good though. I supported the Finnish publishing industry and picked up Kafka's diaries for an exorbitant 44 EUR while vacationing there the other month, and I had to put it down halfway due to the translation, which while I'm sure was fine in relating the author's intent, suffered from the same stylistic poverty most of our translations do these days. I found it to have been a better time when the translators were full-fledged authors who made their own versions of the original in their own voice (Saarikoski, Kianto etc.)

Expected result at the Oscars. They'd been showing One Battle After Another here in the cinema for close to 4 months. I saw it three months in and the theater was still packed. Sinners bowed out in about a month and I got to see it at a discount for about 3 EUR. I enjoyed both, but I would've gone for OBFA as well (although I guess my favorite Hollywood film of the year was Eddington, that wasn't acknowledged with as much as a nomination)

I have an opportunity to see Tormentor in about two months at Steelfest if I decide to go. The lineup is stacked with names I'm kind of interested in seeing but wouldn't necessarily travel to, so I'm a bit vary about dropping 189,00 EUR on it. My personal headliner, Beherit, I could see in my mom's village in about a month anyways, lol.

I spontaneously went to see Elias Rønnenfelt of the Iceage fame the other week and I've been on a big Iceage kick, especially the Nick Cave-sounding material form Plowing Into The Field of Love and his solo career EP with Dean Blunt, ever since. To be honest the decision to go came unexpectedly. I haven't been all that interested in music as of late in favor of cinema and literature, but now with school taking up most of my free time, my art hours are restricted to listening to music during work and that's kind of driven me back into it. They played the show with Elias on guitar and a bassist and drummer, and it was great. Basically alternative renditions of everything that was played to suit the band setup. It's always a pleasure to hear musicians jam together and just play really, really well. They'd play through the monitors blowing out and sound falling off in the beginning, and once the sound came together it got a big pop from the crowd. It's wild to think that he's around my age but has been playing since 2008, and it shows in the stage show, which was almost vk-esque in how performative all the posing was, but I fuck with it.

In general I had a great time, and the show being just about north of the one hour mark was appropriate for me. The next show I guess will either be Xasthur's acoustic show on Thursday if I feel like forking the cash for it, or Demoncy or Beherit in about a month depending on which country I'm in.

If you've got an itch for this kind of stuff, they might scratch it. I still enjoy them, but I wonder if they'll ever kick into second gear that break out of that formula

Not really blown away by this. I wasn't very familiar with Nicolas though so I can't really contextualize the song in any meaningful way. I guess I'll try the release once its out.