TORA, TORA, TORA! NIHON-JIN RAISHU! - 日本人来襲!!!

X-Japan are a rad Japanese band from the 80's. They are like the Nitro of the Land of the Rising Sun. I really like them and I rediscovered them in the last 2 months. They've been blasting in my office since. Anyway, I saw an awesome post on an Indonesian blog about a year ago and I thought you'd enjoy it. Nothing makes me laugh more than badly written English, which is funny 'cuz English is like my third language and I'm sure others laugh at my sad attempts to write it correctly.

This post may seem like MI staffers are becoming lazy. Afterall, it's nothing more than a repost from another blog. But it wasn't as easy as it sounds. First of all I had to find it again. I had seen this post months and months ago and it took me about 10 minutes to find it. That's like 4 years in Google time, you see? Second of all, I had to edit it for content. Finally I had to research all the facts, make sure all the information within was reliable and factual. I'm kidding, I didn't really do any of that.

Enjoy...

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This band was occur since 1982 as the same year I born. I get to knew them in the year of 2003. I still remeber one of my colleague borrow me the Mp3 of X-Japan CD. It was quite awful when I starting to hear thier music but no choicelah coz my work place PC crash so have to format all over again and my mp3 all gone. I am so addicted to Japanese song although I dunno what the hell they are singing. So this were the first Japanese Heavy Metal band I have heard.

There were the 1st Japanese Heavy Metal Band in Japan. Very classical band with Benimaru(KOF) hair style, I am still wondering how they made thier hair stand so high like that.


I dunno what is the reason they make me so addicted to thier musics and yet thier music have been already 20 years already. Maybe is because the fast rythm of the musics make me crazy about it song such as Blue Blood, rusty nails, jealousy and Dahlia. And they also have ballad such as Endless rain, Forever Love and Longing.

From Left to right: Hide(Eguitar), Toshi(vocal), Yoshiki(drum and piano), Pata(Eguitar) and Heath(bass)

Thier History:

X-Japan were one of first visual band in Japan and also most popular. They start in teh middle 80’s with the union of school friends Yoshiki (drums and piano) and Toshi (vocals). After that the joined with a couple other guys and formed band X.
They release two singles ‘I Will Kill You’ and ‘Orgasm’ and made to two compilacions albums with other Japanese new comer bands. At this time Pata (guitar) and Taiji (bass) is joined the band.
In 1988 they make their effort first album ‘Vanishing Vision’ and hire second guitarists, Hide. The album was released on Yoshiki news record label Extasy. It was a great success and they change to Sony records. More albums (’Blue Blood’ and ‘Jealousy’) and more touring hapend.
With Jealousy tour they tried to come out in America, but no one there wanted this visual bands like this. They renamed the band in X-Japan because in America there was already punks band called X. The band hads great success in Japan and the members also makes solo projects.
At this time Taiji (bass) left the band and was replace with Heath. Yoshiki wrote the 23 minutes long song ‘Art Of Life’ which was the first records on the new label Atlantic Records.
In 1996 finally came their last album ‘Dahlia’. In the spring of 1997 Toshi (vocals) decided to quit the band for ‘artistic and religous reasons’, so they announced their disbanding in September 1997. They make a final Goodbye concert in December in this year. Members made diferent solo projects. In 1998 a terible tragedy happen. Hide commit suicide for very unknown reason. The fans were shocked and sadend with melacholy and memory. Yoshiki draw back from public. In 2000 he starte a comeback with his project Violet UK.

Here come thier video:




These guys are the godfather of jrock, so even if you don’t like their musics style, they still demand your respect for sure. Without X, there would be NO jrock and Americans musics would certainly be affected in more ways than one.


It was so sad one of thier member has pass away(Hide) and so thier band also break of as well . Bye …..Legend of J-rock.

Lonn Friend Explains The Intricacies Of Death Metal To The Masses

Yesterday's post regarding Lonn Friend (editor of Rip Magazine, and douchebag extraordainare) made me have to go reach deep within my video vaults to pull footage to add to the discourse. When I say I reached deep in the vaults, I mean deep...I had to plug in the Betamax machine (and no, I'm not kidding).

Below you will find the much talked about "Friend At Large" segment for Headbanger's Ball in which he basically breaks down what death metal is all about...and gets most of it terribly wrong. The guy is so insanely annoying too, that you just want to die a million times over while watching this clip. Morbid Angel = Kiss, Helmet is a death metal band from Seattle, Death are the Led Zeppelin of death metal....Oy.

Our friend Lonn does credit Mike Gitter, with having helped him figure out the complex world of death metal. Mike Gitter, by the way, is another genius mostly known as an A&R for labels who signed many third rate punk and hardcore-ish bands in the 90's, helping them all decline into nothingness. Today he signs terrible bands for Roadrunner. Watch and learn. And then eat your cyanide capsule.

Lonn Friend: a wretched human being

I used to watch a lot of Headbanger's Ball when I was a kid. Although many of us look back on it fondly, the truth is that it was 95% Soundgarden, Trixter and Jackyl videos and maybe if you were lucky they would sneak in a Gothic Slam video at 11:58. Wow... what a payoff for sitting through two hours of bullshit.

If there was a god, everybody in this photo would be dead

Perhaps the worst of that two hours of bullshit was the "Friend At Large" segment, featuring RIP editor Lonn Friend's inane record reviews. For example, the one I remember as particularly aggravating was the segment from 1992 or so where he talked about Entombed and Helmet, and described Helmet as "Seattle death metal." Lucho Metales has this on VHS, maybe he will post it for us.

I have no idea who this old, fat fuck is but apparently Lonn thinks he's cool

These days Lonn is still trying to impress people with pictures of himself and washed up rockers from the 80s and 90s, as you can see from some of the images here. Essentially he is like an annoying teenage groupie, only he doesn't have a vagina so he is even less welcome backstage.

Which is worse, Axl's Oakleys, or Lonn forcing his way into this picture? I leave it to you, the reader, to decide.

Most people grow out of this stage by their early 20s when they realize that people in bands are morons, but not Lonn. He's still totally stoked on hanging out with dumb guys that play guitar. In fact, he's written a book that documents it all, dropping every single name in his arsenal. His description of the book is incredibly grating, like nails on a chalkboard while your mom nags you and a baby screams in your ear from six inches away:

The stories, lessons-- I hope the book resonates with the fans because without fans, there is no rock n'roll. My journey started at Grant High, San Fernando Valley, early 70s. First musician I ever called 'friend' was Steve Lukather. Our school band became Toto. Thirty years later, Luke and I are still pals. You dig the 444? Sign of the angels? Yeah. Me and Luke on the streets of Chicago, November 06. Horns and Halos, all the way up, eh? Click the cover to order from Amazon.

Visit Lonn on MySpace