I've never gone full Jpop either, but there are plenty of poppy Jrock bands that I've liked.


I don't even remember how or why I started listening to Japanese music. I think it was because I clicked cool-looking cover art of some obscure prog rock band on youtube (Mr. Sirius). Then it just progressed from there. Anyways, I normally have sort of a balance in what I acquire. Usually about half Japanese and half Western music.


I liked that quite a bit. Maybe my ears are just bad, but I really can barely hear the bass-drum so I'm not really hearing your complaint too well.


Even that djent-sounding track they did (I think it's called “Alastia” or something like that) sounds good.


Yeah, most of the visual kei bands' vocalists sound like that. That nasally voice is usually the default (I don't mind it though) on these bands for whatever reason. I listen to a few visual kei bands although they really can vary in sound. I power metal bands like to be visual kei a lot. I've also noticed that there's usually at least one member who looks significantly more girly than the rest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_amp7Z-rRF0

Cool cover, by the way. Angra is, of course, another quality band.


There's really not many straight-up progressive metal or shredding stuff I like either. I always like it blended with other stuff whether it's power, thrash, death metal or whatever it may be.


The music is just too advanced for them .

I find that music usually has to be in the traditional rock format (vocals / guitars / bass/ drums) for me to like it (not always though, of course). Supreme catchiness coupled with great musician ship is something I appreciate. Probably why Light Bringer is my second favorite band at the moment.


It started for me when I randomly downloaded some Yousei Teikoku (was looking for female-fronted electrogoth). Come to think of it, at that time I was looking to take a break from metal, so maybe looking to Japan wasn't my most stellar idea Exist Trace was another semi-random download - "all-female visual kei" seemed too weird to pass up on, I ended up liking them a lot. Onmyo-Za I discovered by accident. I reached a point where I'd check out anything in Japanese lettering that would show up in Metal-Archives recently updated bands. I was actually looking for Ningen-Isu (they've been hyped around here for awhile), but I completely forgot their name and was clicking on any Japanese name to see if it was them. Clicked on Onmyo-Za instead, liked the band-picture and found the concept of the band interesting... liked Kishi Bojin's album cover and checked that one out. The rest is history. Essentially, I discovered my favorite band by sheer randomness I still haven't checked out Ningen-Isu yet (I was off by one Japanese letter ), I probably should remedy that sometime.


Ah, you're lucky then. Maybe my ears are going nuts on me. Here's the album crossfade in case you didn't check it out. Its pretty much torture for me waiting for this to arrive in the mail.


I like that song as well - actually, that's one of the better EPs I own, all of it is great. I'd like to see Galneryus do a tech-death song as an experiment sometime. We all know Syu can do harsh vocals.


It seems common for a lot of male vocalists over there period. I was listening to a Spinchord song last night and Syu's vocals sounded similar to that as well.


That song wasn't bad at all - better than a lot of pm I've heard over the last 5 years. I'm sure the imagery would put off 99% of all power metal fans though. Hell, this stuff is pretty far outside my comfort zone too. I guess this is pretty much a culture-clash and I'm assuming cross-dressing/androgynous appearances isn't a big deal over there. I guess music trumps all and if I like something enough, I'll overcome any imagery bias. Its funny, all-female visual kei bands like exist trace have members who look masculine (but one of their guitarists dresses hyper-feminine to contrast the other guitarist). Danger Gang is another all-girl one, but they're colorful as all hell. You know, the more I get into this stuff, they don't look that unusual anymore The contrast between their image and music is pretty funny because they're pretty abrasive and raw sounding.


Cool, glad you liked it. If you haven't checked out MinstreliX yet, I definitely recommend them. They're one of the better power metal bands over there at the moment. It took some time for them to grow on me, but they're definitely worth it. I guess they have some similarities to Galneryus (neoclassical guitarwork and fairly technical), but are more in the Euro fantasy/sympho vein. They have some melodeath influences as well and they aren't afraid to mix things up stylistically.

The Goddess~La Liberte Guidant Le Peuple~ - straightforward power metal fare, but pretty good (it didn't blow me away initially though). Its strange how I didn't notice how good the solo was until like the 10th play or so.

Venus and Adonis - one of my favorite instrumental power metal songs ever, really nice guitarwork and guitar/keyboard interplay on this. Catchy as hell too.

Eternal Death Rave - one of their melodeath-ish ones, one of my faves by them too.


Power/prog I like a lot because it takes the complexity and great musicianship of progressive metal and tightens up the songwriting & makes it catchy. Probably why Galneryus is one of my favorite bands at the moment - they're probably catchier than most power metal bands, yet they mop the floor with most prog-metal bands. One of the best live bands around too.