I can definitely understand why you would see it that way, but there’s layers of selection bias at play here. As some have mentioned earlier, the music we grow up with has a special place in our hearts. It’s comfort music. Listening to it will always bring us back to younger days.
But on a more basic level, that kind of music resonates with us because it was good. If I mumble the words “2006 visual kei”, most minds in this topic would wander to Dir en grey’s “Withering to death.”. It was a seminal album that opened international doors for them and got the Western metal scene familiar with their name. No one - and I mean absolutely no one but myself - will ever mention Seeles Klar Unend in any context (and yes, this did drop 2006-04-29 even though it sounds straight off a cassette from 1994). They were absolutely terrible, even for visual kei standards.
And even though I can be accused of cherry picking - and I might be - the point I want to make is that there were Z-tier shit-kei bands even during the most recent boom from 2006-2009. There are always Z-tier shit-kei bands lurking around every corner; we just don’t give them the time of day because none of us enjoy authentically shit music. They come and go like a fart in the wind, as indie visual kei bands are wont to do, but no one really notices or misses them because they suck. The further back we go, the less likely we are to remember some random shit band (and this goes for every scene) because only the cream of the crop will stand the test of time. That’s why from this perspective it appears that the boom was much more creative; we have very selective memories about what the “boom” actually was, and if we sit down and compare notes we’ll notice quite a few places where our experiences differ.
But I’m starting to get off topic. Music is a very competitive space, so you don’t even have to “suck” to fly under the radar. You have to just fail to garner enough interest to sustain a fan base, even if your music is theoretically sound. Hell, 95% of the bands we dropped in this topic up to this point are under the radar because they’re in Japanese. And also, the Internet is a relatively recent invention and then the development of an Internet Archive is even more recent and incomplete. So yeah, there are layers to this onion, but we’re entering an age as a society where we track a lot more things digitally, so it will be easier to find things in the future. That’s how I found the video for Seeles Klar Unend…
But I don’t want to give off the impression that “yeah things have slowed down tremendously” or “visual kei is dying” or any other bite-sized digestible quips without looking at it from many different perspectives. To me, the rate of music discovery slowing down over time is quite natural. For one, people lose interest in it over time and will prefer easier methods of music ingestion like Spotify over manual, more shady methods. For another, there is an infinite world of music out there to discover but not all of it is for everyone and once you start your journey there will always be a little less left. You will almost always consume music at a faster rate than it can be created and discovered. Visual kei is big but not that big. I really don’t feel comfortable saying things are slowing down without also recognizing that I have slowed down too, and that my attention is split here and elsewhere (musically), and that there are too many factors to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of “the scene”.
In addition, it’s also like a live-service video game. Once you reach endgame, you’re sitting in circles doing dailies until the next expac. Same shit, except there is no “expac” for us visual kei fans. We are all at “endgame” and have to wait until the next big band sparks a fire. And even when that happens, it’s just one band, not an entire scene of bands at my finger tips, so I have to temper expectations. It’s taking a minute, but COVID didn’t help any so I have to continue being patient. I have faith that it will happen though. Like @nekkichi said, bands are finally getting back on tour. The stew is simmering.
Ah…The Ship of Theseus. Philosophical debates aside, my answer to the question is that the “ship” changes with every item replaced, so that by the time it is complete it is both the ship and not the ship. Visual kei is very similar in my head. It’s always changing slowly in many directions at once, and then every once in a while there’s a big lurch in an unexpected direction. Think back to 1999, at the tail-end of the “kote” sound. The time between 1999 and 2001 was a gigantic lurch in a new direction - and a lot of fans left the scene. It “died”. It didn’t sound the same anymore. All the bands even changed visual styles! And you know what? All of those old fans who left made room for the new fans to enter. So yeah, even though visual kei is always changing if I can identify it as visual kei at every step then it hasn’t become unrecognizable. That’s the important relationship between the two to me, which is why your analogy works for me.
So yeah, visual kei may be dying for US but the scene will change to something that attracts a new wave of fans. Maybe it’s idol-kei like @Rui was hinting at and we’ll incorporate some more pop into music. Maybe we’ll continue messing around with extreme metal. Maybe some band will tune their six-string guitars to Open C, mix extreme metal and pop, and come up with Japan’s answer to Strapping Young Lad. We just don’t know, and being overly negative about the future of the scene is a sure fire way to miss out on it’s developments, so let’s collectively stop sipping on the Negative Nancy Juice and just wait for developments to occur.
If the scene dies there’s nothing we can do to revive it, so let’s not hasten it’s demise either.
I was like “WHO ARE YOU?” and then I saw an unrelated post and I was like “oh that’s Jrockdrama”. And then I read your name and I was like…do I not understand English anymore?
I’m not here to either confirm or deny what you’ve witnessed, but rather to turn it on it’s head. You’re relying on lived experiences to relay information about how things are to a group of people that don’t know. It’s an invaluable perspective. But I think that our collective lack of understanding is one of the things that ties the international scene together. Most of us know that we don’t know details. Details like this are valuable, even if they’re not necessarily painting the scene in the most positive light. But what I’m trying to say is that even though I’ve known about all the links to sex work and other, seedier underbellies of Japan, it never really got in my way of enjoying any of it. Ignorance is bliss LOL. I’m never gonna get to go to lives, collect tons of merch on the levels that you have, actually interact with fans in line for concerts, fuck a bandoman and pay his bills, etc. This site and community is the best I have. Everything I read and understand gets filtered through the lens of JRO.
So yeah, I wouldn’t get hung up on experiences that differ from yours too much. Both sides may be right depending on hypothetical circumstances and perspectives, but I always find that road not fruitful to travel down because I just…end up right back where I started.
I know you said you weren’t going to respond openly to this topic anymore so feel free to shoot me a PM if you have any thoughts!
And now I will stop typing a novel.