[taipeileviathan]

haha, i seriously doubt i'll get the response that was in "punk rockers where are u" here in my thread, but J-ROCKERS WHERE ARE Y'ALL?! hehe... i'm also a n00b on these forums, but to follow up on my thread on japanese jazz, i wanna dedicate one to pretty much my favorite genre of music: j-rock.

examples:
- l'arc en ciel (my favorite band... ever... through every period and all the changes in style)
- sheena ringo (i need to get warmer cables for her music... her engineers for some reason always make her music sound really harsh... is this just me?)
- x japan (the grandfather-band of them all...)
- luna sea (early/mid-period... and sugizo's solo stuff is AWESOME!)
- the brilliant green (tho tommy's solo stuff really sux... *sigh*...)
- malice mizer (i like the later period, after gackt joined them...)
- bonnie pink (she sang "it's gonna rain", one of the opening songs for rurouni kenshin's tv series)
- b'z (a damn good guitarist there...)
- oblivion dust (obscure new band)
- and much more...

btw, has anyone ever heard of this latvian band called "brainstorm"? i caught a song of theirs called "maybe" on the plane ride from taipei to nyc and fell in love with it immediately... if anyone can recommend a groove like theirs, i'd much appreciate it...

 

[dhwilkin]

I'm more into J-Pop than J-Rock, but I've got a few comments to throw out.

Out of your list, I really like The Brilliant Green, and what little I've heard from X-Japan is very good. Didn't care for Sheena Ringo (too dissonant) or L'Arc En Ciel.

I'll add two suggestions for now: Nanase Aikawa and Hitomi, very fast and driven but still very musical.

 

[ArChaos]

X Japan were great...I know they don't exist any more - the soloist is dead?...Forever Love, Tears, Rose of Pain - beautiful songs indeed. It's hard to find their disks today...

 

[lan]

J-Rock has the most play time for me but I like other music also. My favorite bands are:

Buck-Tick
Kuroyume
L'arc~en~Ciel (don't like stuff much after Sakura left)
Luna Sea (my super fav IMAGE is playing now)
Malice Mizer
X-Japan
Deshabillz

Laputa (the old stuff)
Rouage (the old stuff)
Penicillin (the old stuff)

and some other indies.

 

[taipeileviathan]

nice nice, glad to see we're all coming together...

lan, u listen to some pretty hard stuff!

care to make some recommendations as to what indie stuff u're talking about? also some song recs for deshabillz? i haven't heard them before, and have only heard of them in passing...

dhwilkin, yeah, sheena ringo does sound a lil dissonant/harsh sometimes (her voice can take on a real piercing edge at times), but sometimes her groove is so smooooth... like in "honno", or some ppl spell "honnou"... check it out, i dig that song, and it's much softer than her normal style... and "gips" is a great song too... it's got one of the best transitions from a semi-mellow verse to a rocking chorus and back imho...

oh, and i forgot to mention glay (earlier stuff)...

l'arc en ciel's "ibara no namida" is playing now... great, great song, especially with the quartal harmony in the chorus that works so well with the melody that doesn't even so much as nod in the general direction of conventional western composition... okay, i'm blabbering, i'll shut up.

rock on.

 

[lan]

Thing about the indies bands I like is that all of them are disbanded so they don't exist anymore. They maybe hard to acquire now. A lot of indies stuff has not so great recording or the singing is rather.... "different" LOL. I mean this is raw stuff.

Deshabillz is indies. Their lead guitarist died on a trip to hide of X-Japan's funeral. Some songs I like, Kagee no naka de, kaihoukinenbi, Carry, zanzoumu, Legend of Fiction, uragiri no chibutai, In the time goes by, ten no boukai, hakai no utage. Uh. there are so many.

Another guy from another band Madeth gray'll died also going to this funeral. Sad. Some other bands I like (so many), Aion, Aliene Ma'riage, Das Vasser, Due le quartz, Eliphas Levi, Je Reviens, JILS, Kagrra, Lamiel, La'Mule, L'yse Nore, Mirage, NeiL, Noi'X, Phobia, S, Vasalla.

 

[myself, aka me]

I like X, and a band called Melt-Banana. Anyone heard of them?
I don't mind some of Glay, from the little i've heard of them.
Some other bands I like are: Snail Ramp, very good J-punk, Softball, shonen knife.

 

[leon]

Someone made me a (Type-R recorded) MD with Sheena Ringo songs... "koko de kisu *****" played a major part in my finally sucking up to Sony's UI in exchange for Type-R encoding

I'm not a rock person otherwise, though, so that's all I can say

 

[TimSchirmer]

Do you ever listen to anything by Malice Mizer? (pronounced meezer)

I have a few mp3's from them, and i must say, they are awesome.

Try out:

Beast of Blood

Transylvania

Illuminati

 

[mezzman]

I'm Latvian!!
I must check this band Brainstorm out...

 

[dhwilkin]

After further review, Glay is going on my to-buy list.

 

[millerdog]

i got some glay...
my sister spent some time in japan...turned me on to dreams come true..
whatever happened to chiba matto?
I also got a blue hearts(saw them live locally) cd that I really like...j punk!
as far as glay...too polished...
md

 

[taipeileviathan]

true dawg (miller, that is...), i second that glay is too polished. however, i do like some of their earlier works, before they started trying too hard (how many times do we see that happening? *sigh*)...

timschirmer: yeah, malice mizer rocks! dun really like too many songs from their earliest period (tetsu period) even tho i must admit i don't know too much about that period, but i really like the merveilles (gackt) period and the klaha period... songs like au revoir, and le ciel are really great songs, and also songs that gackt does on his own like regret and mizerable... note to ppl looking for song recs: these aren't like, hard rock songs at all, and are kinda soft... but they're really great... and of course, illuminati, beast of blood, and transylvania are all great tracks..

lan, i heard ken and sakura are starting a new band called SOAP or something? i haven't heard much about this... was wondering if u mite have more info?

also, i forgot to mention and also am surprised no one brought up dir en grey... great band, they can get a little too hardcore for me, but they do have some great songs... yokan and cage come to mind...

 

[lan]

My fav Glay album is their 1st one, Hai to Diamond. Raw. Next album I like and the one which made them popular is Beloved.

I havn't heard too much of SOAP. I'm not really following the scene as much as before.

yokan and cage from dir en grey were made with Yoshiki of X-Japan's help. that's probably why they come to your mind first LOL

 

[Guyferd]

My favs are L'arc~en~ciel and The Brilliant Green.
L'arc has that typical j-pop but also abit of rock style, plus they do write very catchy lyrics. The brilliant green.. I love their style. The vocalist imo, is also great.
Luna Sea is alright but I like ryuichi kawamura's solo work better.
I am quite into X Japan also, but not their heavier stuffs. More like ballads ( forever love, tears, and stuffs). I do like rusty nail though