Pleasure Principled

Revealingly Articulate Idol Worship

Looking back, the first thing that occurs to me as defining 2008 was X Japan’s reunion gigs, that rusty old thresher of a band mowing down the waiting corn husks that is their fan base, dried and hollow.

In January, Kagrra moved to King Records and put out “Core,” and who’s listened to that recently? Viored broke up and aren’t missed much, but a little. X Japan released a so-so song, foreshadowing a year of circus-like goings-on.

And Elec was in that Honda robot commercial.

In February, we got a cool new PV from Sex Machineguns, with Anchang looking a bit dilapidated but musically fit, in fine classic form.

And Elec’s band (Laverite) performed at Narciss and became an entry on Visunavi.

March saw Mucc’s awesome album “Shion,” the cancellation of Rentrer en Soi’s NYC show (with 12012 and The Studs), the aforementioned X Japan concert/disaster, the classier Hide Memorial Summit, Hot Topic started carrying D’espairs Ray discs at reasonable U.S. prices, and Exist Trace took a “break” that, at the time, felt like it could’ve been permanent.

Also, in March & April, whoever’s behind the commercialization of Hide’s corpse released a couple of completely unnecessary live CDs.

In May, a so-so D’espairs Ray single, Marty Friedman advertised for the Japanese steel industry, we remembered the tenth anniversary of Hide’s death, and I discovered HearJapan (purveyor of fine j-rock MP3s) and Matenrou Opera, who breathed new life into VK with their killer metal muscianship.

In June, Rentrer en Soi made it to New York (actually northern New Jersey, but whos counting?) for a show, and Toshi announced the recruitment of Hide-copycat (homage-ist?) Jun into T-Earth, a project which no one suspected would suck as abhorrently as it has. The X Japan World Tour got postponed, shocking the world. D & 12012 released some mediocre singles, and Maki killed High & Mighty Color by getting married to some music industry guy twice her age.

And Elec’s band got Q&A’d in “Rock Star.”

In July we got Danger Gang’s “St Beast,” the naturalness of which I dug but everyone else seemed to hate it; while Versailles put out “Noble,” which others dug but I disliked. An official VK PV site called J-Rock.tv came out but I haven’t checked in with it since. Yoshiki pimped his ass out to Rockstar Energy Drink instead of working on not cancelling concerts.

In August, Exist Trace got back together, and pretty much every male VK fan (all twelve of us) breathed a collective sigh of relief. Deluhi put out an EP called “Surveillance” that blew my doors off. I hung some “Kisou” artwork on my bedroom wall, the decrepit “Earth Spirit” came out and wilted the X Japan fans that had somehow survived the first embarassing six months of the year, Nanase & Marty put out a shitty anime theme song, Dio ~Distraught Overlord~ continued to be awesome, Onmyouza continued to repeat themselves with “Kureha,” an album that sounds like every other album they’ve done, I won Best Blog over at Askew Magazine, Dir en grey’s “The Roadkillers” (songs by Roadrunner Records bands, selected by the members of Dir en grey) proved laughable, and Uroboros was announced.

And Elec’s hangin’ out backstage with Versailles.

In September, Rentrer en Soi announced their splitting upness. Kagrra put out a weak single, and “Glass Skin” earned the title of Worst Deg Single Ever.

In October, NoGod did some great work with “Ao no Daichi” and so-so work with “Midori no Kaze,” Kirito put out a single that was overshadowed by ReS’s nifty “Megiddo,” Sex Machineguns released “Cameron” (which I already totally forgot about), and that Global Metal movie came out and did an incomplete job of analyzing the Japanese metal scene.

And Elec was in a cool Tommy February6 PV.

November came and we got an Exist Trace “best of” CD that wasn’t all one might’ve hoped for; Gackt’s music career was born again with “Jesus,” Deg played NYC and I didn’t go. Yoshiki cancelled Paris. Komuro got arrested. Dir en grey’s “Uroboros” leaked a little early and it was good, Gilgamesh’s “Music” came out on time and it was not. Some new Aural Vampire rounded out the month.

And Elec was in another Tommy February6 PV.

And December gave us some okay Sadie, horrible Vidoll, uninteresting Oblivion Dust, another entire album of T-Earth’s runny poo, and we lost Loudness’ drummer, Munetaka Higuchi, to liver cancer.

So that’s the past: what do we see in the future? A new crop of excellent acts – Deluhi, Matenrou, NoGod, a few others – bubbling up, inserting themselves into the on-deck, batter-up slots that Despairs Ray and Mucc and Gazette held a few years ago, before they graduated to major-label, touring-the-world, earning-enough-money-to-live-nicely land.

That’s something I’ll also dig about VK, and music in general: even in the most dismal of seasons, when promising young bands are aging and sputtering, bands like Kagrra and D and 12012, who gave you hope for the future but are now on their last legs, there’s always more great bands coming down the pike. Too young, maybe a little untested, but you’ve heard whisperings of them here and there, seen a photo, caught a PV, listened to some samples and found yourself hooked… That’s what I look forward to every new year, every time I try some new no-name band: that they’ll just fucking OWN.

And also, Elec kickin’ some j-ass and being an inspiration to us all! I mean, seriously, a year ago he was just another English teacher. Now he’s rubbing elbows with Die & Shinya, Hizaki, Miko… getting paid to play guitar in music videos, playing in front of 109 with Becca, gigging at Narciss twice a day, modellin’ and shit… Shit man, you get a love triangle between him, Hizaki, and Miko going and you got Oscar noms up the ying-yang!