I've been awaiting this day: I've finally found an article about a Grime scene that exists in Japan (not just that German Whip karaoke shit I posted a while back). Japan I wish your fledgling Grime scene well!
Just stumbled across this randomly, and ended up loving the sound of it all. Wanted to look up more from the band, but apparently they're pretty new. They only just released this one song at the beginning of the month, and don't even have any cds yet. Kind of a bummer, because I was really hankering for more after hearing this. I'll definitely be keeping an ear out for them though. Me likes so far. Hopefully their next stuff doesn't suck (I've certainly had that experience before when finding new bands to get into).
Had a very happy day last week, where I suddenly realized that Dir en Grey had just recently come out with a new album. Snuck right up on me. And to make things even better, I still hadn't gotten their frontman Kyo's solo album yet, which was released earlier this year. So in a single day, I ended up with almost 30 new songs I hadn't heard before from one of my all-time favorite vocalists and what I consider to be one of the greatest metal bands in the world. Great day, that was.
First is Dir en Grey, and this track nicely shows off Kyo's sort of new "thing." It seems like he progressively always has a new thing he starts to dive into more; in the past he slowly transitioned into low-pitch growls, then super-high-pitch screams, then his actual singing range expanded to an insane degree. In this case, it seems like he's really taken to singing in falsetto. He'd done that plenty before, of course, but he's really taken to it a lot with his new projects this year. And I love how theatrically it's used in this one. Adds so damn much to the track. Not to mention how badass the guitar riffage is (the instrumentals are actually a lot catchier with this album than they have been for the past few years).
And the next one is from his solo side-project, Sukekiyo, which is a little more "artsy" than Dir en Grey. Total 180. Actually, I'm apprehensive to even call it a solo project, as the guitarist, formerly of 9Goats Black Out, another favorite band of mine, is a part of the project, and his signature style is laced over every single track. I'd say it's just as much his project as it is Kyo's. Great tune either way.
And both albums are absolutely worth listening to in their entirety. I'd post more from them, but I don't want to be obnoxious about it. Just have to say that Kyo is absolutely one of the only legitimate vocal "artists" I ever hear anymore. Most singers don't bother with being creative with their voices and attempting new things, but that's what he does constantly. His repertoire of sounds is more extensive now than most people could ever achieve, and I can't stress how much I love that about his work. Total genius.
I like listening to various touhou metal remixes on Youtube. I think practically all the music I listen to is Japanese given it's split between video game music (mostly from Japanese games) and anime music, though.