Old school visual kei

[Charles Rogers]

Anyone else listens to this stuff? It's really good and completely different from nu-VK of today.
Just found out ROUAGE, can't stop listening. Pic related.

[Kevin Harris]

I'm kind of hoping for a fashionable revival eventually like what's happening right now with city pop

[Connor Sullivan]

It might happen, but at the same time there's so many good shit from back then that I think I have stuff to listen for years to come.
Any recommendation? I've already listened to most Nagoya kei, and the 80s classic bands, but I'm really interested in finding out more 90s indies bands

[Michael Foster]

Luna Sea are overshadowed in popularity by X Japan but they probably contributed more to shaping up the VK sound than any other band. You can skip them but it's good to get familiar with them for genre history purposes.

Check out bands on the Soleil label. Mirage come off as a "generic" band but I think they epitomize what a typical VK band in the 90s sounded like better than anyone else. This is one of their signature songs : youtube.com/watch?v=tOIc9BUyOA8

Key Party can give you a good idea of what was being done by the end of the decade. They have lots of unique bands and lots of fans got serious about the genre through them.

Matina are an iconic label too but they kind of mark the cut into the 2000s and to be honest, I think most of the stuff they put out for small bands is cheap trash.

[Aiden Bell]

Agreed with you 100%. I love Luna Sea, one of my favorites. But I could never get into any Kisaki bands. And I only liked a select handful of Matina bands, and some Under Code ones (the more "outsider" ones). But in general I also thought majority was cheap trash. It can be cheap, but if it's also trash then I don't bother.
I'm listening to that Mirage track and, it sounds like your typical 90s vk, but mediocre and average as can be.
Key party is amazing, been getting into them. Eliphas Levi and Deflower/Noir fleurir are seriously great. Their flagship band seems to be Aliene Ma'riage, but to me they are one of the least interesting KP bands.
Here's one of my favorite 90s vk bangers
youtube.com/watch?v=Opvgy5tDqXg

[Landon White]

I just listened to that album for the first time last week and I instantly marked down that song and Shades as favorites.

This is pretty much the only thing this band put out but Shuuji from cali gari sang for them and his post punk influences rub off really well on their music: youtube.com/watch?v=tsHx2A6oAH0

[Ayden Diaz]

youtube.com/watch?v=CTUDZd8AjEU
Eliphas Levi is fucking awesome

[Andrew Jackson]

Kill=slayd are pretty great
youtube.com/watch?v=uK8_ebPZhdM

[Levi Taylor]

If a mall goth revival ever happens you could definitely work stuff like this into its visual identity

[Angel Bennett]

Cool, I also got into D=SIRE recently. Incredibly underrated band.
Cali gari is a big deal. They're like one of the favorites in Japan's underground scene. I listened to some of their albums and are indeed fantastic, but I need to listen to their side projects too. I'm already loving Sakrun, will look more of them.
By the way this might be of interest
web.archive.org/web/20040604201144/http://proxemics.net:80/honyaku/history.html
It's a sort of essay about visual kei, writen by a western vk fan in the early 00s. I think it's very accurate. It's more in-depth than your usual "vk is about theatres and kabuki" stuff you'd read everywhere else.
He also did some interesting album reviews
web.archive.org/web/20040604125332/http://proxemics.net:80/honyaku/reviews.html