This happens to be my favorite genre of music ever since I first heard of the band Buck Tick. I looked this band up and I was introduced to this genre where the bands all dress up in make-up, elaborate outfits, interesting hair styles and have incrediable music to match it.
It is called, Visual Kei.
Visual Kei is something of a sub-genre to J-rock (Japanese rock) but with it's own style of glam rock, metal, punk and the like. Now, if anyone is a fan of glam rock, especially from England, you will know the leader and revolutionary David Bowie started and led the glam rock era during the late 1960s to early 1970s, in which Ziggy Stardust came from. There were also other personas Daivd Bowie took on but that in itself is another discussion. Visual Kei started in the 1980s with such bands as X Japan becoming the leaders for future bands to form in the 80s, such as Buck Tick and Luna Sea. From then on bands like Malice Mizer formed in the early 1990s and became quite influencial like X Japan. Now if you see a patten in some of the groups, is there style that they present, like Malice Mizer. They have a gothic lolita of a victorian mix that you can't deny is, one word, beautiful. Now do not confuse the members but they are genernally all men dressed up. In my opinion I think that it is awesome that they can pull the amount of make-up and elaborate clothing that shows off the music. It really is a self-explainitory genre.
After a few years of trying to show the world the genre of this incrediable sounding music, it is lead by the now generation of bands like Versailles, who formed in 2007 and have this Amazing style of 18th Century Victorian and the music of Symphonic metal, Power metal, and Neo-Classical metal. Another band to come out of 2007 is Antic Cafe or An Cafe as it's usually said are really cute and very bright with colors that are beyond neon but there sound is really good as well as Alice Nine who are also in the genre. There sound is kind of like a bouncy-punk. Then there is Nightmare. You might remember them from doing the first opening and ending for the anime Death Note. They are somewhat of a gothic-punk that are melodic yet edgy.
For any more information on this genres in terms of what bands to recommand and the genre itself then either ask me or go to wikipedia.com. They have a brief but interesting history on the genre.
