dexcore – deviloof – jiluka, I guess? idk
idt dexcore is in any way similar to them they’re more or less like the talented rival band for damlam;
jiluka and deviloof would be much closer to nazare in terms of style
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Is it a hot take to say that 99% of all new VK-bands are trash?
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Not here, but in some other circles most definitely.
I’m gonna build on your thought because it’s been bouncing around in my head for a few months now, and since you brought up now is as good as ever to share it. Visual kei bands exist in three tiers in my mind: solidly indies bands (Group 1), major label bands (group 3), and then between them exists a space where the top indies bands of the scene are competing to go major (group 2). I can name bands in group one and three, but finding bands that exist in the middle today has been surprisingly difficult.
I have never personally witnessed the scene in such a sorry shape. When I started, there were so many bands in that category and everyone seemed hungry to make it. There was D’espairsRay, BORN, -OZ-, SCREW, exist†trace, Kiryu, Matenrou Opera, girugamesh, 12012, Gackt, Versailles, NEGA, even NoGoD just to name a few. All but three of these artists didn’t implode or completely stop activities between 2012 and 2016. There are no equivalents to these acts today in terms of stature.
DEXCORE might be number one, no lie. Visual kei needs DEXCORE, but DEXCORE doesn’t need visual kei. The same stands for JILUKA. DEVILOOF just went major, so they don’t count anymore. DEZERT went major a while ago. NAZARE can’t release a CD in a store to save their lives, so they’re solidly in the lower-middle. Ai has been content rehashing the same DEATHGAZE riffs for two decades, so DARRELL is also treading water where he wants them to be. XANVALA and KIZU deserve some consideration. After that, I draw blanks, but if people are gonna hype shit like DazzlingBAD, then I guess that’s it.
I am way more excited for old bands to come back. VANESSA reformed outta nowhere and that is lit. Versailles seems to intend on doing something, they just have had one setback after another delaying their return. Maco teamed up with Aie again and deadman is a thing. Anonymous Confederate Ensemble has basically reformed under a new name without Rookie Fiddler. girugamesh is back…I mean they did release a song but that’s about it. I heard rumors about 12012 reforming with the original guitarist. NEGA is doing a one-off revival and a release, so that could lead to something more. We got a redux of S.K.I.N. in the form of THE LAST ROCKSTARS, and like them or not they are hella entertaining to follow. Gackt might be coming back. All this sounds infinitely more hype than poking the scene with a stick and asking for something fresh.
Or put another way, if I Thanos snap Dir en grey and the GazettE out of the equation, who is third?
So yeah, your original point is definitely valid.
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You’re leaving out SKS-ZigZag- who played in the Budokan a while ago (was it last year, i forgot)
Yeah, sure they got a huge boost from thei vocalist singing for WANDS too. But another thing that gives them a easy way to popularity is the amount of child friendly material they sstarted to have.
I remember seeing tons of videos of kids dancing to their song kitsune no yomeiri.
Surprisingly i feel that they are not really popular with foreign fans.
Lynch?
But allover i do agree with you, it feels like the scene has less ambitions and that has a influence on the music
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I like Zigzag a lot, I made the artist page for them on here. It’s been really interesting seeing them get more and more popular, and WANDS definitely has a good bit to do with that, but I think that them being a lot more talented than the average Vkei musician should not go ignored either. I’m starting to half-jokingly think that in the modern world of music, if a talented Japanese musician wants to become successful in Vkei, parody-kei might be the way to go. We have GOLDEN BOMBER as an example (although talented might be a strong word), and now I think we have Zigzag to kind of prove that point a little more.
DEVILOOF isn’t a parody band, but they themselves don’t seem to act seriously whenever they do interviews, so I think it can also be said that you could succeed as a Vkei musician if you have some sort of weird element to your band. I feel like DEVILOOF is starting to be given the Maximum the Hormone treatment ever since they went major. In a sense, they are both weird when it comes to the type of music they write (MTH does the back and forth between pop rock and metal, DEVILOOF does the Br00tal metal thing from all over the place). Plus, DEVILOOF is starting to get a lot of hype from Western reaction channels, just like Maximum the Hormone.
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it’s more that Golden Bomber and Deviloof both have excellent viral potential, making them super marketable. The music is rather secondary to the general public. Golden Bomber was new territory of vkei plus comedy, which was easy to make viral with their goofy stuff. The Japanese mainstream loved it, which made it go big, but that novelty won’t happen again.
Deviloof went viral for Gouzingfisjsifjskfkskxjskanzoku being br00tal af, which put them on the international radar to a degree, and then make themselves even MORE viral by being goofy and not br00tal in person (Keisuke really leans into being a total doofus in general, which makes for excellent viral content: Look at scary metal man! Look at how silly he is!) That Ariyoshi Hansekai appearance was a big boost in publicity for them.
I don’t think Zigzag really has that much viral potential because they don’t have quite a natural ensemble of odd characters like Deviloof does, and their music is still in a weird spot of being generally not too popular despite being pretty universally agreed to be high quality. Maybe because of the mystery making it less easy to feel connected to the band? Idk, but Zigzag isn’t terribly palatable for a broad internet audience.
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Depends on the context of this question. I mean BT is still active and is far more popular than them.
Them (and MUCC) are far less popular than either of those two bands. I would say SID, but i don’t really think they’re that relevant anymore.
And yet Zigzag are terribly popular in Japan and sold out Budokan 
I liked them at first listen and when I delved even a little deeper into their music and message, I found them very relatable. It’s probably to each their own kinda thing.
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Popular within vkei. I believe xyzzyz_2 was talking about more mainstream popularity.
Average non vkei listener in Japan is likely to have heard of Golden Bomber if they’re in the right generation because they broke into mainstream popularity as a comedic act.
Deviloof is possible since they were on a mainstream news talkshow.
Zigzag? None of the above.
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They have been playing a lot of mainstream music festivals in Japan, actually (MetRock, RIJ, I think even FujiRock too), so I wouldn’t doubt that they have some sort of mainstream following. Maybe not in the sense of bands like MAN WITH A MISSION or OFFICIAL HIGE DANDISM, but there definitely is some sort of following from the mainstream (or outside Vkei-stream) if you’re able to play there. Like name another Vkei act that’s played a major festival in the past 10 years. I can only think of The GazettE playing Summer Sonic in like 2013.
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I disagree on this.
Just pulling out mere numbers here, Deviloofs most watched MV has 3 Million views
Zigzags most watched MV has 4.8 million.
but the difference is about what comes after the most watched one. Zigzag has currently 15 more MVs that have at least 1 million views.
Deviloof? Dusky- Vision is at 979K views currently and thats the second most popular one.
(Thats just 8 MVs out of 16 with over 1 million views, and yes 2 of them are covers)
I do have to admit thou, Deviloof have more monthly listeners on spotify than Zigzag have.
Which is Deviloof has currently around 78K listeners, meanwhile Zigzag has around 24K listeners.
Deviloof fans are noisy, thats why they feel popular. They have a bigger amount of foreign fangirls, that slap these guys everywhere out where they can.
Wasnt one of their recent songs also a opening for a TV series??
Also i remember these guys appearing on some kind of TV talk show thing, but i cant remember if it was in anything big or some small local show
@colorfuljinsei maybe you know better, because i remember you follow them since far longer
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First TV appearance for ジグザグ was for Otoemon Visual Night iirc, but that’s not why they’re as big as they are. He was brought on to Being Group (ZARD, WANDS, etc.) as a composer/arranger before debuting in WANDS and participated in a festival exhibiting their artists’ work in 2018. It’s really all the WANDS and Detective Conan fans who’ve taken a liking to Daishi, thus putting them in the spotlight.
Also, Daishi showcases more of his vocal talent in ジグザグ where his stuff in WANDS comes off as a bit more blasé.
Also, just going to toss this in just because, lol
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I should add a bit more detail. I chose them because they are The Big Two, the bands that went from obscure indie act to being able to tour internationally. If removed from the equation, what other visual kei band would be in place to become one of The Big Two? What other band could go international?
lynch. peaked a while ago and never caught any attention outside Japan.
This might be it locally as far as bands in Group 2, but I think the language barrier will prevent international recognition. Being kid-friendly doesn’t matter if kids don’t understand it, but it certainly does matter domestically.
Can’t forget about these boys, but I also think their appeal and success lie in doubling down on the domestic market.
As far as DEVILOOF goes, they’re near the top of the visual scene but just average compared to the global metal scene. Same goes for Maximum the Hormone. I know a lot of people know them because of Death Note and F, but it feels like only a few people dig deeper and enjoy other songs from them. Also fairly one-note compared to the diversity we’ve seen from Dir en grey and the GazettE, and we wanna sell visual kei on it’s diversity not it’s proximity to deathcore.
You get a point. They’re one of those bands that we don’t talk about enough. Throw in cali≠gari as well, although I could understand why it’s a harder sell.
Copy-paste lynch. argument. IMO, their moment to pop off was Homura Uta to Kuchiki no Tou and it did not happen. Impressive run, but not carrying the international flag.
I see their name in anime contexts more than visual contexts. Take that for what it’s worth, but I don’t really see JRO getting excited about SID.
See why it’s harder than it seems? Even though they’ve had a good run and I’m not sure how much longer they can continue, I’d have to also put Kiryu up for contention. The pickings are slim when it comes to bands with a decade-long track record.
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I believe they’re playing 6 major festivals this year which is pretty huge next to bands like Man with a Mission and others.
They were actually already in 3 TV variety shows (since 2020) and a hour-long interview dedicated to them on WOWOW with Daigo as an MC. Basically right now, they’re even bigger than Wands which is Mikoto’s second band that’s mainstream pop.
the opening for Debu to Love Ayamachi is the TV show, they even did an MV for the song. Curious part is how this song is already old, Mikoto even performed it in one of these talk shows and there is old (really funny) MV spot for it. So he probably composed it already based on the manga or something. (Just my guess)
Golden bomber is MORE than talented 
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Im gonna piggyback onto jinsei’s comment and say that yeah, it’s the WANDS connection that gets them a disproportionate amount of attention. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some good ole Ziggyzag goofyness and talent, but the Daishi Uehara/Mikoto thing gives them two audiences, functionally, because a Daishi Uehara fan is predisposed to become a Mikoto gya. The separation of the bands is basically a wink wink kind of situation now, since people will openly comment on Zigzag vids talking about WANDS stuff.
I’m also confident that Mikoto makes use of his WANDS connections to get Zigzag more mainstream coverage that any other vkei band can’t (and he has every right to do so, no shade there). If Mikoto from some vkei band wants to do a show or interview somewhere, people might be like “meh whatever”, but if it’s Mikoto who is actually Uehara from WANDS then “ohohoho yes please!!” I just don’t think it’s really fair to compare his situation because they absolutely have advantages in terms of gaining visibility that aren’t related to talent or effort alone, yknow?
Again, ZERO shade. I think it’s awesome that he can juggle the two bands (how tbh??) and blur scene lines but it’s a very unusual situation.
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I think the Giza studio label has some hand in this - Wands are under them and under that label is CRIMZON which is Zigzag’s indie label. Once you combine that and the fact that the CEO of Giza asked personally Daishi/Mikoto to be the Wands vocalist, it kinda gives you the idea that they want to support them fully in their path. It’s just curious that in this equation it would make more sense if Wands were the ones playing all those festivals, right? They did play Japan Jam in 21 but now it’s ZigZag instead. No matter what he does it’s clear that Mikoto’s goal is to support his band as a leader and if he took on a job at a major label to do that? Why not. All the more power to him and I’m glad he did and gave them an even bigger fighting chance.
Also, it’s not even in the comments anymore, Daigo openly listed Daishi’s bands and projects at the MC of the BREAKERZxWANDS show last year and Daishi thanked him for the praise. Daigo also did an interview with Zigzag and mentioned Wands in there as well. And then his own bandmate from Wands posted this on his IG lol
It’s more like Mikoto doesn’t really like to mix both together and wants to keep his projects separate and that’s understandable.
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It’s a small one today, but it’s been in my head since yesterday and I can’t get it out.
Thanks to the efforts of @seelentau, the DEGWiki has a lot of information I haven’t seen elsewhere. One of the things pointed out is that Track 4 is actually written “egnirys cimredopyh
+)_____an injection” with the new line cut and everything. Didn’t occur to me right away that the underline can be used to also self-censor. Seen it a few times before with some other bands:
- IIII-Ligro’s single “NOT WORTH A D__N”.
- Dir en grey’s “TOUR16-17 FROM DEPRESSION TO _______” series
So if the underline is supposed to be a word, then what is it? I think it’s “白い粉”, or cocaine. Reverse it if you want to stay with the theme, since Dir en grey used to do that a lot too.
So should the whole title be read “egnirys cimredopyH +) 粉白い an injection?” Makes more sense than a random ass line break! But the lyrics describing cocaine injection and overdose makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Thanks for the flowers, but you’re ignoring that it’s like this:
So the whole second line is underlined, not just the empty space.
The wiki should display it as well:
So it’s probably just some artsy stuff 
In the tour title on the other hand, it probably means something… maybe “future” or so, who knows