I prefer professionally recorded live performances over seeing a band in person. Obviously you can have both, but I get more excited to hear a new show is coming out on disk than about getting the opportunity to see a band in person. Part of why I’m not as excited as others when bands tour outside of Japan. Theatrics and footage in general tend to not be as good.
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That’s indeed a hot take.
Personally I am at the point that I am at peace with never getting to see my favorite bands live. I enjoy my music in my headphones.
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My personal opinion, but I can’t listen to live albums because I have no memories of seeing the liveshow 
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Oh yeah definitely agree. Maybe I should clarify I meant professionally recorded video.
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Whoa that is a hot take indeed. For me seeing a band live and watching a recording are fundamentally different experiences so I don’t know if I can really even compare the two. You definitely see more and better on the video and it is overall a more curated experience. The sound is often better too, depending on the venue and the live mixing.
I would still pick getting to go to a live show over a new live recoding in a heartbeat, any time. There is just nothing that compares to the feeling of attending a good live show. Exactly how amazing it is is of course somewhat dependent on how good a performer the band/artist is but that applies the same to a recording so 
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I would personally feel so constrained if I had to do this with my music. I named my first album something related to the emotional theme of the record, for the follow-up EP it’ll be something related to its theme. I’m pushing for my band to name our upcoming record after a specific lyric in one of the songs.
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Malice Mizer is never coming to Spotify and y’all gotta stop trying. If they would have come to Spotify, they’d be there by now. Way smaller bands have made sure their art was on that platform, but I think there’s a good reason why MM isn’t there. I think the rights are in limbo. Bara no Seidou, Memoire and Memoire DX are under Midi:Nette. merveilles and their entire major era is under Nippon Columbia.
Don’t want to speculate but there’s a lot going on right there. It could be that Mana doesn’t want to upload an incomplete catalog and NC won’t play ball. It could be that there’s a disagreement about how royalties are split. Perhaps one of the parties is not interested in Spotify at all, and prefers another service, and they can’t come to an agreement on that? Perhaps they have to rope in Gackt in order to properly compensate everyone for their contributions, and that could be another complication. Who knows? Certainly not us.
One, multiple, or perhaps some other reason is why in 2025 there is still no Malice Mizer on Spotify. I appreciate the spirit of sticking it to the man and uploading it on their behalf, but it doesn’t help the situation. Probably makes it worse. That’s one of those bands you’re gonna have to 
- and if you’re gonna ignore me and upload it anyway please do not upload shitty YouTube rips. Go get the quality rips instead.
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Well, Mana owns the full Moi Dix Mois catalogue, and it ain’t available either. MdM would be an easy add, no rights drama, so I guess mana just don’t want to
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I wrote a lot of paragraphs and then deleted it. I think being straight forward is the best way to not come across the wrong way. I say what I’m going to say because I think that it’s a good thing to do.
There is a lot of value in exploring old styles and disbanded visual kei bands and I find it hard to connect with fans that only insist on following currently active bands. I’m aware I’m an older breed of fan that resonated with a sound that no longer exists. If I take a trip to Japan, I’m not going to be able to see any of those bands. I’d have to see the bands that are currently active. Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a revival act, but that’s the exception. There are tons of great bands active right now anyway, and I don’t want to come across as “old visual kei is better than new visual kei”. It’s not that simple.
HOWEVER, there is beauty in traveling back in time and temporarily inserting ourselves into a scene we can’t otherwise be a part of. Watching old footage of 90s and 00s bands and taking in the venue, the energy, the lack of phones and the feeling of everyone truly being in the moment is something else. Listening to historical styles and being able to trace the progression of artists into their current or final form gives me a deeper appreciation for their output. There is an entire segment of visual kei that no one can visit and see live, but that we can experience through DVD, VHS, and bootlegs. And don’t even get me started on terekos - session bands are the final frontier of exploration and it’s an interesting experience to hear them!
But let me not get distracted. I think it’s a good thing as a visual kei fan to take a trip down memory lane. I’m totally aware that being a newcomer to visual kei is like drinking from a fire hose and that people (and algorithms) are throwing recommendations at you left and right. It’s already a lot of work to stay current. But I think there are benefits to it regardless. It makes one a more well-rounded and more knowledgeable fan. It provides more context for the current incarnation of the scene and why we’re all here. It prevents burnout. It preps you for when these current styles fall out of favor and new styles take over and you have a new sound to grapple with that you may not like so much (it happened to me and it will happen to you). It provides pathways to other genres so that if you leave visual kei, you can orient yourself in other waters rather easily. And to be honest, there are combinations of genres in visual kei that you can’t hear anywhere else.
Those old styles were popular for a reason - it’s because they were good! I’m not saying you must listen to everything that I listen to and that you have to like the visual kei that I like. I’m saying give okeshou a fair shot. Give kurofuku and beat rock a chance. 90’s visual kei is so much more varied than 50 Shades of La:Sadie’s - give kote a chance. So many people check out of the scene permanently without ever giving sofubi or oshare a shot. Old incarnations of loud kei and koteosa can be at worst a hilarious experience, at best really good blends of pop and metalcore. The best wafuu kei band to ever do it is Kagrra, and I will never miss an opportunity to say you should give them a listen! I guarantee the key to longevity is embracing bands both past and present. That’s what every old-timer on this forum has in common. All of us have at least one band that’s no longer active that we can nerd out over for over ten minutes easily. Humor us, please.
Because one day not too far into the future, the roster of currently active visual kei bands are going to cycle out. If you concern yourself only with active bands, I guarantee you two things. The first is that 95% of your favorite bands will fall like dominos within three to five years, some musicians will form new bands that you may or may not care for, and other favorites will retire. The second is that adapting to the new reality of the scene in 2030 is going to be a total bitch if you’ve never challenged yourself to try a style other than what’s currently active. You are going to run into new fans who think the same way you think now, who are only interested in the currently active bands, and whom you can’t share your love of XANVALA or DAMNED with because it’s “old music” and somehow that makes it worse. Or invalid. Or not worth listening to.
But I don’t want to pick on just the new fans, because this goes for us old fans too. Dir en grey will disband one day. Are you ready for post-Diru discourse? What would that even look like? Can you fathom talking to a fan that has no concept of how massive Dir en grey currently is, and has no interest in chatting about it? Can your love of the scene survive that disbandment?
We will all see, next time on Dragonball Z. If you made it to the end congratulations, have a cookie. 
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The other day scrolling through notifications
“You shouldn’t be in front row unless you know the furi dances even if your a newbie! get in second or third row”
cycle number 1 million as always vkei fan twitter
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amen 
nothing has ever come close to them, and it’s been 14 years since they disbanded. RIP Isshi, love you forever
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today’s idol kei groups are tomorrow’s oyaji-kei classic oldies
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Did you met that many people with that mind set? Even with the tiktok fans I saw stuff like Malice Mizer be popular.
I try to mostly get into active groups at this point but it is more of a time management issue. I have old stuff that I will always like and since I have the chance to go to lives, I rather try to be up to date than discover some old obscure stuff. And as you said, the stuff that I get into now will be old stuff at some point. Than I will have more old favs like Xanvala and still try to get into the new active bands 
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wait people listen to modern VK??? crazy
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True! dir en grey and all major active bands will finish one day.
Nah, Kyo will probably die on stage, aged 97.
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It’s always optics and perception bias, but according to the slice of younger vkei fandom I’ve been exposed to and interacted with through local events, social media etc. the young people are primarily listening to pre-2000s bands and the most recent ones from 2020-. Buck-Tick and Luna Sea without a doubt have a bigger share of the teen fandom now than when I came around in the mid 2000s.
If anything I would say that the lower-mid popularity bands from 2004 to 2012 are the most ignored and there is already a scarcity in available uploads. Thankfully some bands, such as Dolly for example, have made their material available on streaming.
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I agree! As a part of this group, I know my first few bands were Malice Mizer and Buck Tick, but also DADAROMA (started 2014) and kanetojuusei (started 2019). I hope to find more 2000s bands that are on Spotify, as I was not alive then and missed a lot, haha :')
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Probably the most astounding thing to people of our generation is that we’ve met people who haven’t heard of D’espairsray or Mejibray. It would’ve been unthinkable to most people who were around at the time those bands were, and the former was for the longest time mentioned in the same breath with bands like Dir en grey etc.
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I feel reassured now, haha. Mejibray was within one of my first 10 bands, and I can see its musical influence on other later vk bands (`which I love seeing!!)
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