HISTORY OF VISUAL KEI

Visual Kei started back in the 1980s underground scene in Japan. The movement designated a new form of Japanese rock music influenced by Western hard rock and glam metal as well Punk-gothic rock influence. The Music of Visual Kei is called „J-Rock“ – not Visual Kei. The Lifestyle of Visual Kei ist easy to understand: Against the standart system. Members of the scene are often evaluated in terms of the authenticity of their commitment to the values or philosophies of the scene, which may range from political beliefs to lifestyle practices. Visual Kei Musician lives & feel their music & their style is unique & individual. Most oft he Members oft he scene are sewing their Outfit by themself, the Make-Up was doing by themself & everything was very chaotic.

Visual Kei gained mainstream awareness, although they were not as commercially successful, except for L'Arc-en-Ciel and Glay whose later huge success was also accompanied by a drastic change in their appearance and were often not associated with Visual Kei. Around 1995 the visual kei bands experienced a booming success in the general population.

By the late 1990s, the mainstream popularity of visual kei was declining; in 1997 Luna Sea was on a yearly hiatus, X Japan had disbanded and one year later their lead guitarist hide died, in 1999 died Malice Mizer's drummer Kami after departure of singer Gackt. In 1998, Billboard's Steve McClure commented that "To a certain extent, hide's death means the end of an era, X were the first generation of Visual Kei bands, but the novelty has worn off. For the next generation of bands, it's like: That's it. The torch has been passed to us". As other bands could not meet financial expectations most major companies backed out of the genre and it became an underground style often associated with rebellious generation, non-conforming to proper society.

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Neo-Visual Kei – Start: 2001

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Notable newer Visual Kei Bands performed overseas & VK became popular outside of Japan. From this generation emerged subgenre Oshare Kei which changed the sound and look of the genre, producing pop-rock type with bright attire.

The difference between the first and second generation is that the second; has no straightforward music style, ranging from metal to pop, but still seemingly focused on heavy rock genres; the fashion and gender ambiguities are of central importance.

There has been criticism directed at newer visual kei bands for having lost the spirit of their forefathers, copying each other in design and sound, becoming all the same. Several older musicians expressed their discontent; Kirito (Pierrot, Angelo) said "now it's more like people are dressing up a certain way because they want to be visual kei or look visual kei. They are doing it to look like others instead of doing it to look different. This is obviously very different from when we started out more than ten years ago.",while Sugizo (Luna Sea) that "they cannot make good sounds and music is more like a hobby for them. I cannot feel their soul in the music.“

Kenzi (Kamaitachi, The Dead Pop Stars, Anti Feminism) commented in 2009 that "back in the day, there were bands, but people would try to do things differently. Nowadays, there's one band, and everyone copies off of them", with Free-Will founder and Color frontman Tommy concluding with "I don't think our breed of visual kei exists anymore".