disband

And Thus Goes Ladybaby Gentle into That Good Night

/ Homicidol Maniac

The other night, as you know unless you do in fact currently live under a rock or perhaps spend your energies elsewhere, LADYBABY had their final live. Folks have been responding to it and reacting to it and writing about it and doing that whole thing, as is appropriate, but I felt like the whole thing really was best summed up in a few official photos:

It wasn’t enough to just go out with a farewell one-man, though; they gave us one final parting MV, and while it’s usually trite to even think the phrase “saving the best for last,” you’ll be hard-pressed to convince me that it isn’t exactly the case here: Continue reading →

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This Is How LADYBABY Ends

/ Homicidol Maniac

I won’t get into how this MV landing yesterday set off a wild few minutes of me only half-remembering any of the details related to LADYBABY’s upcoming dismantling except to say that it’s funny in retrospect, but also, man, their end-of-life period caught up to us pretty quickly, didn’t it? We still have a month and change until the final live and farewell re-recording album, but yeah, it’s time to start to wind things down. And what an oddly appropriate song to do it with!

If this is the last thing we ever get from Ladybaby*, isn’t it interesting how it’s the least Ladybaby thing they’ve ever done and the most conventionally idol? I kept waiting for something — anything — more in tune with how the group has all but always functioned, and ne’er was there a whiff of a growl or chant or anything. This is not to say that it’s LADYBABY going out with a whimper or anything (it’s a very nice song), just that it was not the foot forward that I expected at this point.

There’s almost no way this is the very last thing from them, though, and I expect that we’ll be treated to one more true-to-form LADYBABY video that more clearly explicates the content of that farewell record, and leaves a more conventional aftertaste.

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Death Comes Even for Q’ulle

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

There’s nothing funny about this anymore, guys.

At least it won’t be in 2019 — Q’ulle, who got avexed as hard as anybody ever got avexed and have been drifting off toward solo and personal projects for a good long while, and who had already lost one member, are going to wind things down over the rest of the year and into next summer, when they’ll finally break up. Their unlikely career and long string of high points makes this one a little less sad than some — you want to congratulate them and give them high-fives, rather than rend your garments — but still. I’m pretty much out of groups from original Homicidols left to cover!

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BILLIE IDLE Is Done

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

Damn.

Goddamn. Continue reading →

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The Demise of Candye Syrup Is upon Us

/ Homicidol Maniac

This may not be news for you at this point, but now the second iteration of Candye Syrup will be disbanding next month, their last show at IKU’s birthday party:

Homicidols Dot Com reached out for comment and has, as of press time, received none. For what it’s worth, the members have likewise been all but silent on the issue (safe for RTing the above); the only other topic on any of their channels is the show on Saturday. I won’t speculate as to the reasons why this is happening, but one does wonder if this will be the actual end of the project. It didn’t take long to get this version up and running after the original disbanded immediately after their U.S. appearance last year, so odds are that we’ll know future plans (if any) sooner rather than later.

Update! IKU posted quite a bit on this right around the time that I was scheduling:

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So, BiS Disbanded, Again

/ Kerrie / 3 Comments

Welp, so BiS just disbanded for a second time.

The initial announcement of their disbandment back in March wasn’t really given much coverage on Homicidols, since it also happened to collide with a gazillion other things both in idol and our personal lives, but I think the general reaction of the announcement was certainly one of anger, confusion, and betrayal. It came straight off the heels of the annual shitstorm that is the WACK audition, in which multiple members (and Trivago, back for more) were fired on the spot for what was ultimately a frustrating sideshow. The remaining members had finally had enough and called it quits, with Watanabe immediately holding casting calls for a third incarnation of BiS mere minutes after the previous audition had even ended. Looking back, it was probably a good thing that none of us were able to write about WACK EXHiBiTiON in the end as the resulting article would probably have just been a mess of all-caps angrish and thinly-veiled threats of revenge towards Watanabe. Continue reading →

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The Cycle of Life in Aqbi Idols, Part Deux

/ Homicidol Maniac

It feels like we just did this

In keeping with today’s apparent theme, let’s take a few minutes to acknowledge the death of one of the true giants of our scene and the life that’s springing forth from that destruction.

The other day, THERE THERE THERES held their final performance, a joint show with their longtime besties in You’ll Melt More!(.) You can and should watch the literal whole thing:

Heck, here’s a bunch of photos, too: Continue reading →

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And HAMIDASYSTEM’s Dissolving Too

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

And as if to add insult to injury (though in fact announced first in actual chronology), HAMIDASYSTEM, the people behind this, whose growth and development over the last year in particular has been nothing short of astonishing, will be disbanded in April, pending a complete reboot of the membership:

Nothing lasts forever, certainly not in idol, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t think that this was a group that had a good stretch left ahead of them. FFS, they were my personal Idol of the Year for 2018! After the huge artistic achievement that was putting together prose and song and video and live performance in a single cohesive story, it was easy to see that other, maybe even more ambitious, steps lay ahead. Continue reading →

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Vanilla Beans, An Appreciation

/ supremenothing

After just over 10 years of delightful Shibuya-kei inspired pop mixed with electro excursions, Vanilla Beans officially announced that their disbandment will take place this October, ending with one final concert.

While I’d admit it’s not a terribly shocking turn of events, (They’ve mentioned the possibility previously.) it’s still a sad loss to those of us who always adored their harmonies and retro-cool aesthetic. They were, in a sea of idols, a very special group marching to their own drum.

I was first charmed by Vanibe way back in 2008, after seeing the MV for their second single “Nicola”. (Lisa was actually not part of the very early duo, but a girl named Rika.) I was instantly obsessed with the song, and it remains to this day among my very favorite pop tunes of all time. And MV was also sublime with it’s brilliant design and subtle humor. In short, it gently delivered what I consider to be a perfect capsule of pop. Vanilla Beans let me in on something exciting: “Idols” weren’t contained to the carefully constructed tropes I had pegged to the genre. 

Continue reading →

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So Mistress Ain’t Dead, Huh?

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well hell’s bells, friends. What is dead, truly, may never die, at least not as long as idol is a thing. Mistress, hot off of disbanding, is back — in a sense! Yes, the members are all gone, and the group had its farewell live, but “the mistress” lives and has a real-deal MV to prove it:


It’s clearly time to update that ranking of PassCode songs!

There’s obviously not a whole lot to go on from here, except that the debut is on the 11th and there are members: Continue reading →

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