I think this release was replaced with proof of existence
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It’s mentioned here too wtf I need to find this.
And yeah the 2nd live limited cd mentioned was proof of existence but that’s a different one from the cd with 4 tracks + DVD
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I noticed a small inconsistency that led me down a rabbit hole of research while I was ripping “Scene in the Misereal” to PC. I don’t have any concrete findings but I think it’s interesting enough to share anyway.
It started with Exact Audio Copy being unable to distinguish between this CD and another CD called “This One” by 増田俊樹 (Toshiki Masuda). While trying to figure out where the confusion comes from, I realized that this CD has a catalog number of OZCD005. It’s on the back of the case and on vk.gy. This isn’t new information, but I just realized that this is the third single. vk.gy has OZCD002, OZCD003, OZCD005. I consider the “Over again” demo to be OZCD001, and in order those are Decay・・・, and to the end, and then Scene in the Misereal. So there’s only two options here: the first is that Natsuki either skipped it or was not allowed to use OZCD004 (can’t see why).
But we’re not here for reason. We’re here for theory. The second, stretch theory is that there’s a live distributed release that’s OZCD004 that isn’t recorded anywhere. This is a huge stretch, but I went to the website listed on the obi through Wayback Machine and took this screenshot from 2006.
There’s no OZCD004 here, which could suggest Natsuki skipped it. But on the other hand, they don’t have “Over again” listed here either, so that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a CD that they distributed at a live that we don’t know about. If they were only listing items they would sell through their web shop it would make sense to not include it. Plenty of bands don’t include all of their discography on their website - there are several posts in this topic that demonstrate that too!
Here’s some additional material from wayback machine that proves that these demos were gone by 2011/09/23.
Then peep the timeline of activities from 2005 to 2007.
Let’s just assume over again came out 2005-01-01. -OZ- took a “few months” to ramp up activities and probably spent most of their time practicing and composing songs. They had one demo between 2004 and 2005-07-24. They then release two singles back to back, then go dark for a bit. It takes them almost the same amount of time between OZCD001 and OZCD002 as it takes to go between OZCD003 and OZCD005, which is technically two new songs and a re-recording of “over again”. They then sign with LOOP ASH at some point in 2006 (let’s go with October) and then start pumping out tons of material. They never really slow down in activities until their dissolution. Clearly they were sitting on material by 2006 - two songs a month is a notable amount.
So that period of no activity at the end of 2005 is specifically when I think they dropped another CD or demo, because it’s suspiciously long and it’s exactly where OZCD004 would fit. I have no idea what it could be, but I would wager that if it does exist, it’s one of two things:
- A one track demo, most likely of “CRY the Crime”.
- A three track single of tracks we don’t know about.
I think if it’s a demo, it’s “CRY the Crime” because of several factors. None of them are particularly convincing on their own, but together they might convince you too:
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The release on 2006-12-00 was available as an insert in that issue of SHOXX magazine. All songs on those three 2006 LOOP ASH releases - “Misty”, “Zenith”, “Azalea”, “End-roll”, and “CRY the crime” had to be composed around the same time. We’re assuming that -OZ- signed with LOOP ASH in 2006/10, so it’s plausible that they were sitting on these songs before they joined. In general, CRY the crime is a song that they don’t include on any easily accessible releases; it’s only on 2006 SHOXX Demo, and then the 2008 re-recording on 四面楚歌 (Shimensoka) and COMPLETE BEST ALBUM (same version).
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This is highly subjective, but the 2006 version of “CRY the crime” sounds ever so slightly thinner than “Misty”, “Zenith”, “Azalea”, and “End-roll”. Don’t get me wrong - it sounds good - but it sounds closer to the mastering job done on their pre-LOOP ASH releases. What I also noticed is that even though “CRY the crime” was released between “Eve’s apple” and “Adam’s apple”, the catalog numbers are backwards. You would expect it to go in order chronologically - LPO-000, LPO-001, LPO-002 - but it’s actually LPO-001, LPO-000, LPO-002! So even though it released after “Eve’s apple”, I think that’s due to the distribution method. It was most likely in the pipeline and sent out the door while those two singles were finishing up. It’s possible that they could have cranked out that one song fast, but the mastering job implies it was already done. The 2008 version has that signature “LOOP ASH” sound. @Kumanosuke even verified for me that the quality of what was pressed to disc on “Scene in the Misereal” equates to about 160kbps anyway, so maybe it’s not as subjective as I’m thinking.
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The order of the tracks on COMPLETE BEST ALBUM. Let’s start from the end of disc four. to CONTINUE was an exclusive track for this release. Edge of desire was a live distributed song they released around the end of their career. Disc 3 has White Pallet and Force - both live distributed as well. Disc 2 has S.I.N. and RAZE and they aren’t live distributed, but everything from 13 to 18 on that disc are either B-sides or stand-alone singles. So the pattern so far is that the end of every disc has a bunch of deep cuts. This holds for disc 1 as well - FETTERS is a re-recording of the B-side from “and to the end” (and I do mean re-recording) and 「 」is a re-recording of 未定 (Mitei) from CROSS GATE 2007 ~STRAWBERRY SEEDS~ (and 未定 isn’t the title. 未定 = “undecided”. It officially has no title.). Right above FETTERS is CRY the crime, and above that is MirroR, which is a song that was released on the “Spiral” single in 2008, months after the release of 四面楚歌. Now maybe I’m stretching a bit here too, but wouldn’t it make more sense to stick CRY the crime as either track 5 or 13 if we’re going in chronological order? It’s 17, which goes back to what I mentioned earlier about them treating this song with kid gloves for some reason. We were assuming earlier that CRY the crime was composed around 2006, but what if it was actually a smidge earlier than that? What if it was around the same time as FETTERS, which is why they’re both stuck at the end?
My last point will transition me to the other possibility, so I won’t number it. I vaguely recall reading about -OZ- changing direction early in their career. I can’t find the exact source from back then, but I was able to find a source from more recently that echoes this sentiment.
The part I want to emphasize is “originally heavily influenced by doom metal”. It seems like a crackpot take…but it’s really not. The content of those three singles lyrically, sonically, and thematically differ from almost everything that comes after. Most of those songs don’t appear on COMPLETE BEST ALBUM. I wager it’s because they don’t have the originals so they can’t remaster them, and they didn’t like most of them enough to re-record anything but FETTERS! What I read years ago matches up with this and (I’m paraphrasing here) said “they switched direction to have a more energetic live experience”, which I will also co-sign. It really sounds like they switched up after 2006.
Which is where we come back to the alternative take of “What if it’s not ‘CRY the crime’?”. Whatever it is is a title lost to time, so we’ll just call it OZCD004. They never released it again, probably only performed it a handful of times. Here’s another screenshot from generasia which indicates all the possible concerts the song(s) from OZCD004 could have been played at.
Considering they only performed 8 lives for “the rest of 2005” (that gap I was discussing earlier) but then in 2006 they played a string of 13 lives in a month, it sure seems like these guys were busy. Busy doing what? Lots of things probably, but I’m sure a lot of that time went into composing some material. Some of that probably went on OZCD004. One of those songs may have turned into CRY the crime. The two new songs from “Scene in the misereal” were also being actively worked on at this time.
And then, it’s entirely possible that they planned to release OZCD004 but unexpected circumstances forced them to cancel and move to OZCD005? I’m not really sure and there’s not much more information out there to grasp. If anyone cares enough, maybe you can reach out to Natsuki and ask. I say him specifically because I have credits for him designing the jacket, so he is a reasonable member of the band to ask. He might know.
But yeah, there may or may not be a lost -OZ- release out there somewhere. I convinced myself, and maybe I’ve convinced you too…
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That was a really deep rabbit hole, but thanks for the research.
I like to think that OZCD004 was an -OZ- x An café crossover.
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I have these, they were distributed as the post states at their one-man ‘Revolutionary IDEAL’. However, instead of a physical disc we were given a code that let us download the files instead. N.Z.R is one of their SE tracks and the other three are early demos for songs that weren’t released at the time (if there is interest I can dig them up and check which ones). I also have the video files for the two PVs and the individual member versions.
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It’d be a shame if those PVs would remain on a hard-drive 
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Not meaning to bother you or anything but would you be willing to post/share those demos whenever you have time? If so I’d be eternally grateful, I’m not sure how else to go about finding them if they weren’t on a disc or anything haha.
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I wanted to ask it before but… i’m too shy 
Thanks a lot in advance!
Not sure if this is rare/lost (It never released but I’m sure someone has the masters/footage somewhere), but DEZERT planned on releasing a live DVD for the outo no susume live tour but then Kira left and then they just scrapped the release. I guess re-editing it around Kira would have been too much work so they just let it die?
I’m still stuck on this one because the trailer was amazing (was taken down, then re-upped onto vk .com, and now I think it’s lost forever) and it was the last full DVD before they changed sound and sucked forever. The setlist for the O-West tour final that was filmed for outo no susume was batshit crazy. Hope someone from their camp leaks it one day 
Sources:
If anyone has the rip of the trailer, I would love to see it on youtube. It was on vk .com for a while, not sure if anyone ripped the rip or ripped the original but man those were the days!
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Another day, another mystery.
One of my favorite visual kei bands of yesteryear was √eight. They started out a bit rough around the edges but got really good before a series of setbacks took the wind out of their sails and they had a quiet disbandment to the surprise of none of the fans that still remembered them. Anyway, I’m writing this post because I just discovered new live distributed singles by this band that are not listed anywhere and have never been listed anywhere, not even on vk.gy! There weren’t many fans of them back then, and information was hard to come by, but I have no reason to believe these don’t exist. I also have very strong opinions about one of these releases, but we’ll tackle everything in the appropriate order.
Here are the releases that are new to me and worth noting:
- 3丁目の夕日 hard floor teck MIX (live distributed single)
- freak-under trance spin mix (live distributed single)
- RAID (one track live distributed single, presumably bearing a track of the same name)
- FAKE (one track live distributed single, maybe featured on INDIVIDUAL INSISTENCE or may be an alternate take)
- eight (3 track live distributed single, contents unknown, not the same as 必殺√eight斬り)
- 憎悪-live version-
The one I have contentious opinions about is 憎悪. This is a single that was “announced” way back in 2005 and was pegged at the end of the year, but only after the fact around 2006. The contents were not elaborated on at that time and no other information was provided. The safe assumption is that it’s a one track single featuring a track of the same name. My radical opinion is that such the single doesn’t exist in the form one would anticipate. Here’s the research I did to get to this point:
- Never seen it for sale. Never have seen a picture of it.
- The supposed cover, which is the four members with their backs towards us all with black shirts bearing the band logo around their waist, was also used as a promotional photo around the same time. There’s no saying someone tried to pass that off as the official album cover because…
- The version of 憎悪 that “leaked” to the internet is actually three songs from a collection of two omnibus (omnibi?) - relative+heart and Individual Insistence. The album artwork myth was sourced from that leak. That leak is fake and at odds with the safe assumption and my controversial opinion, so I’m pretty sure both the artwork and the contents of the leak are fake. In general, it would be weird to leak a live distributed single with no official release date, contents, mention on their member blogs or OHP at the time, but we did have official artwork of the cover (when most live distributed CDs don’t even have covers…)? Very weird.
- I checked the release 我ガ支配下ニ在リ (Ware ga Shihaika ni Zairi). This is a live recording featuring a bunch of songs of THE EIGHT, including some that were never officially recorded. Some examples include 明日亡き哀れ身 (Ashita Nake Aware Mi), 神風アタック(Kamikaze ATTACK), and チャイルドキラー (CHILD KILLER). I would love to be able to hear these. 憎悪 is not on this list.
- The Sapporo LIVE Nikki eight teki 8 channel vol.x series of releases feature various live recordings of the band and 憎悪 is not featured on any of them.
- The DVD-R Sapporo Live Diary eight teki 8 channel Bessatsu pt. 1 actually does feature 増悪, which is the proof I needed to know that this was actually a song at some point. This is the “lost” portion of the knowledge that was recovered and stored on vk.gy. This is a live recording, and in fact the only place in which this single was recorded.
The key to putting all the pieces together is that “Bessatsu pt.1” was released on 2006-10-12, but was actually a recording of a solo performance from 2006-08-15! 憎悪 was released 2005-12-31, but I don’t recall hearing about it until 2006! This all lines up because the person that I heard this rumor from was a massive fan of this band, and bought all of the DVDs, and is likely the one who entered and confirmed the majority of the information on vk.gy! This person also doesn’t have 憎悪, so they can’t confirm it’s real by snapping a picture of the case. That also implies that the track on 憎悪, if it’s the live version as my other source implies, is not the same version that’s on “Bessatsu pt.1”.
The timing between 我ガ支配下ニ在リ and 憎悪 is tight but ultimately doesn’t prove or disprove anything. It’s possible the song was in construction during or after August of this period. That was recorded on 2005-06-25. So if we take the release date at face value, as well as consider that the song doesn’t pop up on any release before that, then 憎悪 must have been composed sometime between August 2005 and August 2006.
But none of this implies that they ever pressed a single, and that’s the part that bothers me. There’s proof that this was a song. There is no proof to either confirm or deny the existence of this song on a disc. There is no date or concert associated with the distribution (not uncommon with these guys, but it doesn’t help!). It was not on their OHP. I was operating under the impression that this was a studio recorded, but I got an indication today that it’s a live version instead. It says single not demo on vk.gy, but we don’t have a catalog number, even an arbitrary one.
And we haven’t even gotten into the remixes that don’t have dates attached to them and that I don’t have more information on! Or the track RAID, which I have even less information on and isn’t listed on any release at all.
Basically knowledge is power and the waters are murky here. I found all this while looking for a cover for “No future of the sorrow” (doesn’t exist and never will as far as I’m concerned, but the track is real!) and ended coming across two different blogs which I think are lists of band releases and putting them together gets you the bullet list above. But 憎悪 is only listed on one of them, which makes things even more ambiguous!
Which is why hopefully you can understand at this point that while I believe the song to exist, I think the single is a rumor. If the biggest, most dedicated fan of this band has not seen a peep of this single in almost two decades - and he can verify what the song sounds like since he’s heard it - then I’m keen on believing it doesn’t exist. It takes military-grade copium to buy into anything else.
Now about RAID, eight, FAKE, the remixes, and that live DVD with 20 songs…I’m not too sure. I hope one day I get to watch that performance and hear some of those songs. Maybe soon that won’t be lost to time…
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So I just recently got a CD by the band called Riddick recently and realized that Track 1 “BLACK OUT” is some weird live version of the track and not the studio version. After looking many times through pages and ameblo I was unable to find the original information about this single or why the studio version of the first track was never put on the release. Act. Ichi is a Sampler cd containing a sample of song BLACK OUT was used to promote the single before it’s release which sounds different in tone and voice which is the studio version then the track on the full release. I’m currently at an impass as far as I know the full studio version of BLACK OUT was never released or is lost in some rift in time O-o
It really sucks because I was super interested to hear the rest of that track. Vocalist. GAB has some weird scream vocals which I enjoy.
Adding on to these facts. Act ichi has another track called “False Result” which is also considered lost because no other Riddick release contains a full version of this track. Only a small sample. It’s assumed that it was never release as a studio version either along side BLACK OUT.
The only thing that can be concluded is either One or two things happened:
1). BLACK OUT was accidentally sent out not mastered. Based on further inspection of the track when raising the volume of the track on my PC headphones. I noticed the instrumentals sound good but are lowered and the singer is realively high in the track especially during the screaming parts. It’s weird how the track itself plays out.
2). All original full recordings of BLACK OUT was accidently deleted and scrapped but they didn’t have time to master and mix the single again so they did a quick re-recording and sent the single out.
3). It’s just purposely a live version due to a dispute with the band or personal reasons and the studio version doesn’t exist. Also note the vocals of this song sound like GAB is straining his voice. Maybe got some vocal damage? Not sure.
Maybe one of these tracks one day it will turn up somewhere in the deep web who knows
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I’m watching the doujin scene slowly go nuts over the leaking of -Cocytus- by Kokuyasou, one of the holy grails of long lost albums. This album was recorded in 2006. It leaked in 2023. 17 years is a damn long stretch for something to not leak.
To be honest, I’ve had it for a while. Over a decade in fact. I sat on it from someone who sent it to me and I promised to never share it. I held to that agreement for over 13 years, but it’s gotta expire some time. I can’t be the only person sitting on a copy of music (I don’t even own the CD). If my hard drive wipes, that’s it. This band/circle disbanded/formed into another unit years ago, and if you go to the new band’s weebly they barely acknowledge Kokuyasou’s existence at the bottom of the discography section.
As opposed to:
I didn’t even think this man had fans anymore. I guess I was wrong. I’m glad to know that there are more of us, because when I got into him I didn’t know anyone else who liked him too. I guess this qualifies for Rare Media, since I seem to be one of the only people who have a copy. I only know of two others who potentially could have it, and I haven’t heard from them in years.
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