I gave up. TBH I never cared for Jupiter, and barely cared for Versailles. I strongly dislike that silly “Visual metal" (as Kamijo coined it) mashup trend. That’s while being a huge fan of HGP, Hizaki project before that, and Lareine. If I want to listen to metal, I’ll listen to European bands.
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Note: semi-long rant incoming
If Hizaki hasn’t been power metal for his entire career (although maybe he leaned more towards rock in his early bands’ days), then I guess I just don’t know what power metal is, or maybe I just don’t actually stan him as much as I thought I did. Neoclassical, even if a genre in its own right, I personally find more a description of a musician’s playing style than anything else, and power metal and neoclassical metal are heavily intertwined anyways; likewise, symphonic rock/metal does describe Hizaki’s orchestral backing tracks, but it’s also heavily connected to power metal and neoclassical, arguably to the point of expectation, so that point is also moot.
And regardless of what genre Hizaki actually is, I think calling VK an actual music genre is ridiculous since:
- So many bands call themselves VK despite not sharing a genre at all (e.g. compare Dir En Grey to Lareine). Not to mention all the bands that actually encompass multiple genres.
- I just really don’t think most VK music is totally unique compared to western bands that have played a similar or nearly exact style of music. There are some diamonds in the rough such as, again, DEG, Lareine and Malice Mizer, but generally I don’t believe most VK music is so experimental or unique as probably most fans would like to believe.
If your actual point is that you dislike how Hizaki has taken a more “western” direction with his music, then that’s still extremely questionable in my opinion. First of all, I simply have never heard or understood the proposed songwriting/general musical differences between the West and East - I’m not enough of an idiot to say that, for example, Iron Maiden, Helloween, Versailles and Galneryus all sound exactly similar just because they play some kind of metal, but I don’t think the difference in sound has anything to do with what part of the world they come from, especially when, let’s be honest, they all have essentially the same influences as one another (even if the Japanese ones also respect Loudness and X Japan and whatnot). Perhaps preferring the sound of different languages can be one thing, especially in this modern world where most people don’t really give a shit about anything except vocals, but other than the vocals I just don’t think J-Rock and Everywhere Else-Rock are so different that they deserve to be divided by their country of origin. Not to mention, as far as I’m aware, this phenomenon never happens elsewhere in the world; has anyone honestly ever heard of Black Sabbath or Metallica described as Euro Metal and US Metal respectively besides for merely noting the band’s country of origin? And I’ll die on this hill that neither get a separate genre of music because they either sing in the same language or are from the West; Rammstein and Aria, two prominent rock/metal bands, are not called German Rock/Metal and Russian Metal, they’re just Metal. Sorry, but J-Rock needs to get off its high horse; you don’t deserve your own genre of music for merely singing in a different language.
As for whether or not fans prefer the Zin or Kuze eras, let alone if the band even lost fans after changing vocalists, that’s a matter of opinion that I’m honestly not sure can be properly measured. I will say, however, that Jupiter having pretty much completely shedding all reasons to be called a “Versailles copycat” (which I personally never believed they were, to be honest) with the departures of Masashi, Yuki and Kamijo lookalike Zin were probably an overall positive for the band. And while the sound/quality of a singer’s vocals is subjective, I will say that Jupiter is arguably the best thing Zin has done in his entire career (not to mention how he sounded like total shit before being picked up by Hizaki) whereas Kuze’s tenure with Concerto Moon, a (previously) popular metal band give him some actual legitimacy as a musician and arguably opens the door between regular rock/metal and VK no matter the bands’ nationalities, which is always a good thing, of course.
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First of all, I don’t want to offend anyone, and I’ll emphasize that mine is simply a personal opinion.
I’m the least able to differentiate musical genres. I Googled how they currently defined Jupiter, and they classified it as power metal. What I mean is that Jupiter underwent a musical genre change, from what I’ve mistakenly called VK, which I assume was symphonic metal, or what Versailles is classified as, to power metal.
I also don’t value who the better vocalist is, Zin or the current one, but I liked Zin more, I suppose because it coincided with the “musical genre” I liked the most. I’ve never heard of him outside of Jupiter, so that’s all.
What I’d like is a band in which Hizaki did what he did in Versailles or Jupiter at the beginning, or even with Grace.
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an orchestral version of the mini-album will be included if preordered from Disc Union
trailer:
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It wasn’t as boring as I expected, and in some moments quite good. But really feels like an JRPG soundtrack, and not a collection of songs that should stand by themselves
Different musical sensibilities that come to be on the grounds of differing cultural circumstances have been around forever. I hear vast differences when listening to baroque era music from germany, compared to italy, compared to france so I do not know what you’re on about.
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