Japanese metal
 

OK, in my quest to find good Japanese metal a couple months ago, I stumbled across some really great bands. I found everything from progressive power metal to grind, and I love every one of them. Some of the best are Galneryus (awesome power metal), Concerto Moon (more awesome power-y metal), Masterpiece (again, power metal), Sex Machineguns (speed metal), Swarrrm (AWESOME punky grind), Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation (all female grindcore which kicks my ass), Shadow (Arch Enemy-ish melodic power metal), Maximum the Hormone (not "true" metal perse, but still hard enough for me), Intestine Baalism (melodic death metal), and of course X-Japan, Moi Dix Mois and Malice Mizer (the last two which I consider more gothic metal, but still metal). It just goes to show that the Europeans aren't the only ones making great metal. I also stumbled across this one band called Wizard's Hymn and I was actually able to get copies of two of their demos. They were free and I just sent them an e-mail and they sent them to me all the way from Japan. Awesome stuff. My favorite of the ones I found is Swarrrm, which is absolutely amazing. I don't think that anybody else here would be able to tolerate it, but if you can handle some hard music, it should blow you away. In the next couple of days I can upload some stuff from these bands. Anybody else know of any others?

I just know hardcore bands, sorry - and sadly there's a lot of crap hardcore bands in Japan. You should check out bands like Envy, Face Of Change, and basically anything on the HG Fact label though, good stuff.

You forgot miyavi. :)

I also like Nightmare and Dué le quartz but I'm not sure with their metalness.

D'oh. I forgot about Envy. I have All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expected on my computer and I love it.

Oh, and I forgot about Maggut. I doubt anyone on here would like them, but I consider them to be awesome goregrind.

Have you ever heard of Balzac? Don't know if that band would be considered metal...but my friend loves them a lot. I honestly do not know too much about them though ^^;;

Well, one of my friends likes them, and I think they cover a lot of Misfits songs, so I think they're more punk than metal.