Here we are, half way into 2013. What a year it's been so far for fans of visual kei and Japanese rock. Here's my top five albums of the year from January to June. Special mentions for singles and mini albums this year go to GALEYD, Signal and UNDIVIDE.

( Top 5 Albums )

Since I finally finished the entire single, you can now view the lyrics and translations under the Signal tag.


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The only track from this single that I had yet to translate. I'm pretty pleased with this one, though it's a bit more grim than I expected. Yes, a red river sounds like blood, but how many of you realised it was written from the perspective of a child being given birth to? Nice work Yuri, that's suffering, labour and isolation in one single xD

( Japanese )

Just like last December, GALEYD and Signal have gone and announced releases at the same time again! This single 『FLEE FROM REALITY』 will come in two types, each with three tracks, but only the title track is on both, so it looks like I'm going to have to get both. Type A (red cover) also includes 「future world」 and 「PANDORA」, while Type B (blue) ( Read more... )

Another new single announced by Signal! 『Deadly...』 will be released on 10th July for 1260 yen, including two tracks, 「Deadly...」 and 「10F」. Their releases have been pretty consistently awesome, I wish they'd release a full album for once!


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So here's an idea. If there was a Rock Band type game featuring tracks from the visual kei and Japanese rock scene, what would you want to be in it? Inspired by playing Guitar Hero III again, I came up with a rough selection based on the idea that each act of the "story" contains five songs and then an encore for completing the required number of ( Read more... )

This song has been in my head pretty much ever since I got the single at Christmas. Whenever that opening riff begins I feel a surge of adrenalin, and ride it to the end. Now I finally have the lyrics romanized I can stop agonizing over what Yuri's singing! I'm really pleased with this translation, it's probably my best effort yet, and brought me a ( Read more... )

Exams are over! The listening exam was OK, and my Society module exam was great, but the written one... was horrible. We haven't even done half the kanji that came up in the translation, and the reading was passable at best. I felt my composition wasn't bad though - the topic was もったいない ("wasteful"), so I wrote about people wasting food and water ( Read more... )

Next week I have three of the most important exams of my life, one day after the other. On Wednesday is a one hour listening exam, for which I can only hope for the best. On Thursday I have a three hour writing exam consisting of reading comprehension, Japanese->English translation, and composition on an unknown topic. Then on Friday I have another ( Read more... )

Not much point posting this here but I'm getting pretty desperate. According to their OHP, this was a live-distributed CD from "DIVE TO BLOOD -scars away-" at Shibuya Ruido K4 on 15th December 2011. But according to the rest of the internet, it doesn't exist >.< I just really want to hear it. If anyone knows where I can get hold of it or someone ( Read more... )