Does anyone want to help sort me out? I’m having a strange meditation on the grey line between vk and not-vk.
Randomly watched the PV for Galneryus’ Silent revelation and thought “Damn, if I had no other context of the band, I’d think this is some type of vk based on the video”. It’s certainly more “visual” than some soft visual acts and just as “visual” as Mucc or Plastic Tree.
And it brings me back to similar bands where at different points an ambiguous line can be drawn. I always think of Sex Machineguns and 陰陽座 (Onmyouza). You’ll find adverts in old Shoxx magazines for 陰陽座 releases, alongside GazettE, Mucc, Rentrer en Soi, Phantasmagoria, and other “typical vk” acts. And the band will say in interviews that they have been inspired in ways by VK, but that they will leave it to the fans to decide what kind of band they are. And for some reason the (western) fans seem to have decided that an act like 陰陽座 are definitely not VK? (at least as far as I’ve discerned)
I understand Galneryus particularly not being considered VK because they dropped their intense costume look after their first album or two… and I know a lot of this has to do with what kind of acts they share lives with, what kind of magazines they are featured in, etc…
Maybe I’m just rambling and don’t have an actual question, but I’d like to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.