In a recent interview with Teamrock, Miku Kobato from Bandmaid explained rather succinctly “we play our own instruments”.
Of course, depending on how one views BABYMETAL this isn’t strictly true: BABYMETAL’s Kami band has some of the best metal musicians on the planet right now (FACT). Is Miku being a little disingenuous?
Anyway, Band-Maid tour Europe this autumn and headline The Underworld, London, UK on October 12.
Japanese Visual-Kei rock music has captured the hearts of rock fans worldwide.
Amidst the glut of festivals across the country comes the announcement of an enormous event to top them all: VISUAL JAPAN SUMMIT 2016 Powered by Rakuten.
The first artists to be announced are X JAPAN, LUNA SEA, GLAY, hide with Spread Beaver, and Golden Bomber. Dozens more will be announced soon.
It’s been nearly thirty years since the birth of Visual-Kei in Japan, and the event will be Japan’s biggest-ever Visual-Kei festival, bringing together bands from across the country for an estimated audience of 100,000 people.
X JAPAN, who have been on hiatus since the sudden hospitalization of their guitarist PATA, will make a full return at the festival. The festival will also incorporate a revival 24 years later of Extasy Summit, the legendary event that began in 1988, and was last held in 1992 at the Osaka Castle Hall and Nippon Budokan. And plans are being made for live viewing abroad, with details to be announced later.
VISUAL JAPAN SUMMIT 2016 Powered by Rakuten October 14th (Fri), 15th (Sat), and 16th (Sun), 2016 at the Makuhari Messe Hall halls 9-11
Brilliant new vocal hero Amatsuki will unleash his second major album Hakoniwa Dramatic in Europe from 29 July courtesy of JPU Records. The Japanese star, who first began posting cover songs on video sharing websites a few years, has now accumulated more than half a million followers on Twitter, was awarded “Breakthrough Artist 2015” by NHK World’s English language music show J-MELO, and has already topped the charts of Japan with his first live DVD and original songs.
Outside of Japan, Amatsuki fever is already hotting up with millions of hits and comments flooding his YouTube channel from overseas. Due to popular demand, earlier this year Amatsuki was invited to perform in front of thousands of people at MCM London Comic Con, the biggest event of its kind in Europe, and third biggest globally. There, he gained many new fans and sold hundreds of CDs before running out of stock entirely.
Highly influenced by Japanese pop culture, particularly anime, video game and vocaloid – a music phenomenon that has swept Japan involving synthetic vocals and virtual pop icons – Amatsuki’s music packs a powerful dose of energy, charm and imagination that’s resulted in him winning fans the world over, regardless of language barriers.
Hakoniwa Dramatic is Amatsuki’s second full length album since joining Japan’s massive King Records, and consists of 13 original tracks. Several videos from the album have also been uploaded to YouTube and experienced more than a million hits, including latest video Nagareboshi.
BAND-MAID went viral all over the world when their music video for “Thrill” was uploaded on Facebook, the video hitting over 2,000,000 plays in only two weeks. Ever since the band has been receiving offers from events all over the world, including SAKURA-CON in Seattle, America, and MCM LONDON COMIC CON in the UK.
BAND-MAID’s cute authentic maid looks combined with their hardcore rock sound with kick-ass guitar solos and double-bass drums has gathered fans all over the world, and the band is now proud to announce their first ever Europe Tour this October! Combined with their already announced headlining show in Mexico, “BAND MAID “Brand New MAID” Release Tour World Series” includes 6 shows in 5 countries.
Don’t miss this chance to see the one-of-a-kind sensation from Japan live!
BAND-MAID “Brand New MAID” Release Tour World Series: 9 October: SALA – Mexico City, Mexico 🇲🇽 12 October: The Underworld – London, UK 🇬🇧 13 October: MTC – Cologne, Germany 🇩🇪 15 October: Headcrash – Hamburg, Germany 🇩🇪 16 October: La Boule Noire – Paris, France 🇫🇷 19 October: Hydrozagadka – Warsaw, Poland 🇵🇱
BABYMETAL broke heavy metal once and for all when they played the APMAs on Monday night, Ohio.
Awkward, bizarre, hilarious, joyful, messy, adorable all at once and in your face, the wee scamps tore through latest single Karate and joined what can only be described as an inflatable version of Rob Halford for ‘Priest classics Painkiller and Breakin’ The Law.
Mow and Yee Metal (as they shall forever be styled from this point) even played guitar towards the end of the batshit insane mini-set; a sight which will no doubt depress law abiding (hahhaha erm, lol) trv kvlt metal fans everywhere. But so what? BABYMETAL are utterly unstoppable now.
Momoiro Clover Z will return to America for a 3-city “Trans-America Ultra Live Tour” November 15th-19th, with stops in Hawaii, New York, and Los Angeles. The 5-girl Japanese pop idol unit made their last appearance on U.S. shores at Anime Expo 2015, joined on stage by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS celebrating their hit single “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saitemina”, which topped the Oricon Japanese Singles chart and Amazon’s Japanese Pop chart, the highest-charting single ever by a Japanese artist and international artist.
I asked my contact in gun-toting USA if he’d ever heard of Doll$box and he sent me the following advisory:
“Doll$Boxx was a one-time-only unit with members of Gacharic Spin + the lead singer of LIGHTBRINGER.
This was result of Gacharic Spin touring with different lead singers after their own singer suddenly quit the band before a scheduled tour. They liked [F]uki best and created an album & videos to capitalize on the momentary popularity. No plans for reunion or tour so far. Lot of different labels/management involved”
Bugger. I really liked the singer; she’s got one hell of a voice.
Mr Contact continues:
“Fuki is great — recommend checking out the LIGHT BRINGER videos for her best work (epic keyboards too)”
He’s not wrong. The keyboards really are epic!
Yeah yeah I know the formatting is totally screwed on this post. Sometimes WordPress likes to be a douche bag.
Doll$ Box have been around for ages and ages (2012) but I’ve never paid them much attention until researching interview questions for Broken Doll. And I hate to admit it: this band is fucking awesome.
Merrily High Go Round (above) is a case in point; a super well crafted song with solid instrumentals (yes, that guitar solo modulates all over the place) and world class vocals courtesy of classically trained Fuki.
Maybe not as heavy as BandMaid, but with -I think – better song writing, I wish I’d listened to more of Doll$ Box a bit sooner.
Album Doll$ Apartment is on my playlist ‘natch along with BiS, BABYMETAL, BandMaid and er, Cliff Richard.
Rising international star Amatsuki rocked MCM London Comic Con recently, as the three-day pop culture event experienced record numbers of more than 133,000 people attending, making it Europe’s biggest comic con and the third biggest event of its kind globally.
Amatsuki, who originally became popular through recording cover songs online, has since topped Japan’s national charts with his original work and I was lucky enough to catch up with him back stage at the convention for a quick chat!
Maybe it’s a combination of the skewed camera angle and the sheer “we don’t give a fuck” performance that makes this track great. And the fact you can’t really see the screeching singer frame-left only adds to the deliciously unhinged nature of the music.
Now…if only BABYMETAL could do something this rough…
Najinsan!!!!!!!!! 