Without going to specifics of any particular band, today's topic will be Visual Kei Metal.
Now you have to realze that the Japanese culture is very different from North American culture. Just as British tastes (Oasis, Muse) is much different from American tastes (Van Halen, Bon Jovi). So a big reason why bands become the way they are. What may seem strange to us, isn't so strange to them and vice versa. This is akin to the early days of The Beatles (around that time). This is a time where full albums were not made, this was the day of singles. 2 tracks on the A side, 2 tracks on the B side, maybe not even. If you look at the scope of 70s to 00s and artist that just released singles would have been seemed as odd. Much of this is due to industry reasons, I know, but a standard was put in place that expected an artist to have full album, 16 track releases. It seems these days, we're slowly trending back to those olden times, but that is a seperate topic. The main point of this is that bands (with their industry) cater to an audience. The majority of bands will do what is expected of them.
Now with that in mind Visual Kei Metal hails from Japan. A certain type of metal that takes what hair metal did and puts it to the extreme (no allusion intended). The better your band looks, the better your band is. Quite literally. It's similar to the Black Metal Argument, where the more evil you are the better your band is. Which obviously doesn't make sense, but whatever this is norm. Visual Kei is all about dressing in crazy costumes, putting on crazy makeup, crazy anime hair, etc. Styles in Visual Kei in itself are quite varied. They sound like anything from Dimmu to Mr. Big. But the nice thing about Visual Kei metal is that they're not afraid to be heavy. You have to understand that Visual Kei metal is a mainstream form of music, much a kin to Iron Maiden-esque crowd draws, but only within the country of Japan. That's a lot of people. They are part of the pop culture there... just imagine if Slayer was a part of our pop culture. Kerry King will be so pissed all day. So it's interesting that, as a personal hater of hair metal, that such a form of metal is able to exist in such a legitimate metal environment. I think their redeeming quality is due to their music. Not afraid to throw in death growls, not afraid to put in black metal shrieks, not afraid to be heavy. Yet a lot of it stinks of formulas.
I think the bottom line is, Visual Kei metal isn't really all that bad as individual bands. As a whole it is just another cookie cutter. But really and truely there are awesome Visual kei bands. You cannot disregard the meaning or passion that some of these musician's have for the visual arts. Because a lot of these bands the music is a part of the costumes as much as the costumes are a part of the music. Just because these musicians don't look like the musicians we usually see around here, doesn't mean they aren't real musicians. For a different culture a musician just doesn't make music, they combine music with visual presentations. Because at the end of the day this is enteratinment, people come to be entertained. And there is nothing entertaining about Eddie Veddar in a flannel shirt.
