I wouldn't be surprised if there was a plot or something. It's not unusual.


Elvenking might have invented “powercore” . I agree though, Minstrelix's melodeath tracks are among the album's highlights for me.


That was pretty solid. I'm always scared of album trailers without at least one full track. I've mastered the art of judging albums off of one track, but not off of trailers


Oh, I can assure you that Gargoyle's discography is absolutely terrifying. The good news, though, is that they made their own independent label latter on in their career, so it should be possible for me to just mail order anything they released there (Sagawa Express apparently operates in the United States, yay). CDJapan claims to have their “Junreiin” EP, but I'm expecting my order to be canceled any minute now since the EP was released on a label that's been dead for a long time now. I'll happily be wrong though. The worst of it is over for me, although I don't think I'll ever find the “complete version” of “Future Drug” which is a bummer.

But yeah, if you try to get every single thing Gargoyle has ever released, you might as well book a flight to Japan and go hunt down copies in backalleys somewhere.


Hehe, gotta love those keytars. I'll definitely keep my eye on these guys.


Yeah, I saw that Yousei Teikoku has a bunch of stuff released indie. Good luck finding those, haha.

Funnily enough, I'm probably the other way around. I've watched a fair amount of anime, but I almost never listen to its music. I'm not sure why or how exactly it happened, but my taste is Japanese music somehow is mostly separate from my taste in cartoons.


Well, I had a good chuckle imagining that. I just checked out one of Pathfinder's tracks and I thought it was okay. Not really anything I'd listen to though.


I've already heard a few songs from "Re:Generation" from past singles, but there's still a few new songs on there for me. Their other singles have to be ordered from Disk Union via a shopping service (and supply is usually pretty erratic). 3 of them are pro-printed CDrs, just as a warning. Actually, official CDrs are pretty common in Japan. Initially I avoided them, but its a good thing I started getting those, because stuff on them often remains exclusive.


No, I didn't actually. That's a pretty great track; I guess I should pick it up sometime soon.


Huh, I didn't even notice that. But yeah, that album reminds a lot of Light Bringer at times.


That was pretty good. I always enjoy bass slapping stuff.

One thing that's kinda frustrating is figuring out which CD is which. Of course, all my Dragon Guardian CDs are tagged as "Dragon Guardian", not the technical bandname. I need better organizational/labelling skills. Doujin taxidermy is a royal pain in the ass.


You know, I'm actually surprised that Chronostrings wasn't more melodeath-ish. There's only two songs like that. I guess they surprised me - not a bad thing actually. Bands tend to suck when they get too predictable.


I'm usually not bad with trailers. I usually quickly highlight important things like vocals and redeeming qualities. And whether it has the potential to grow or not (and if there's any dealbreakers). Also, I have a super-high success rate with Japanese bands. I think I have been really reckless with buying stuff lately. Normally with western bands, I'll download and play an album 3-5 times in advance before buying it. I've bought Japanese albums based on 30 second samples.


And over there, they don't seem to reissue collectable items and whatnot. They have a thing for "exclusives" and they stay exclusive. Concert release CDs are the bane of my existence.

Oh, it looks like MinstreliX is repressing their old MCD "Lost Renaissance". Good, because I saw that on yahoo auctions for like $1000 (mind you, that was morbidly inflated). That gives me hope they may repress "Memoirs".


I own "Stigma", but their really old stuff would indeed be impossible to get. And chances are, its probably not that good either.


For some reason, a lot of this stuff is scratching the same itch that power metal used to (well, some of this stuff pretty much is power metal).


I'm still baffled that Campanula is getting pretty low reviews at Amazon.jp. Unless there's some staunch Rino-loyalists or something. I guess they did change sound/direction a bit...


I think Saki's stuff is moodier/weirder/progressive whereas Rino is more power metally. Track 4 was actually a Saki composition (there was a misprint). I'm very curious to see what they do next (I don't think these bands ever stop composing).


I kinda wish their bassist would find a new band. She's in a girl-band called Noah's Ark (they describe themselves as "dramatic heavy metal", but they haven't recorded anything yet. She is also a co-host on a podcast that I listen to. That's actually a good resource for finding new bands if you can handle the bad sound and don't mind not understanding a word.

Yuri, Tengusakura's bassist and drummer, Saki (Mary's Blood) and Hanako (Albion) also performed in an Onmyo-Za tribute band. The soloing was a bit off, but I think the vocals and bass were pretty good (plus these things are done for fun and I don't know how much time they had to actually rehearse).

Yeah, I try to keep my music tagged nice and consistently, but some stuff is just a pain. Nothing is worse than tagging Classical music. That is the bane of my existence right there.


God, waiting for this album is killing me. Part of my order is still on backorder. Hopefully, it'll ship this week, but we'll see.


“Gambling” on an album you know nothing about is always good fun when it works out. When it doesn't, well damn. It usually works out for me though.


Oh god, I'd absolutely love to have Memoirs. I really hope they repress it or something. Hell even rerecording it with Leo Figaro on vocals would be fine by me. I did like the version “Light Casts a Shadow” on Reflections more than on Through The Gates of Death, but that had more to do with the mix than the vocals. Although I'd give Lola the edge on the parts where the growls and cleans sing together. It sounds better to me when she did it than Figaro.


Yeah, Jojo's 3rd opening is power metal. A lot of the more metallic stuff in Anime OSTs have a tendency to lean towards power metal.


I saw that too. If google translate is somewhat accurate, I guess people are just not over the drum sound.


I'm don't even know who wrote what. My booklet doesn't say anything or if it does, it's in characters I can't read. I guess it's on their website or something somewhere, but I haven't bothered to look.


I'm not really sure if I'm anywhere near the point to start listening to foreign podcasts just to find some bands, but I'll let you know in a few months.


Hehe, the vocalist even looks a bit like Kuroneko. I guess it's kind of sloppy, but it's a live setting, so who really cares that much?