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Look at BiS out Here Saving the Best for Last

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It’s December, gang, and in fact we’re inside of two weeks til Christmas and three til the new year, and the Homicidols Best of 2019 has drawn to a close, the year is basically done let’s all just pack it in and enjoy all the photos of idols in their Santa outfits and — oh, right, BiS3 has a record on the way, and they’d like to remind us of that fact and get us excited about it by giving it away for free in little pieces. This is from yesterday:

Got ’em? Good. Let’s play them together! Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Weekender #160

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Good morning! Did you all have a good week? It was … an interesting one, I think. Up and down, good and bad in certain ways. Everybody’s favorite at-least-partly-completely-attenuated villain visited with fans. Nothing makes sense anymore. And I’ll tell you, because I was putting together the final ballots for the Best Of 2019, it feels like quite a bit doesn’t make sense! I’ll save the real comments on that for the intro post a little later, but: Wew.

Now is not the time to worry about that, though. The time to worry about such weighty subjects is at the appointed time; now is the time to worry about nothing but, hey, it’s Saturday! It’s getting pretty wintry out there! Idols are dressing up in Santa outfits! It’s a wonderful time of the year! And okay sure, this isn’t the heaviest Weekender ever, but it has some nice moments. So go play the Fun, check out the below, and then get your December on.

You’re Running out of Ideas

If you’re reading this and you’re in this photo, call me:

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When You’re Watanabe, Your Week Has a Theme

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WACK never sleeps, apparently, and nor does its somewhat eponymous founder have time for your shenanigans or judgment. In fact, he stacked up extremely Watanabe moments for the week and delivered like has never seemed possible — and it’s only Wednesday, good lord.

This is a music website, so the most important news is that the latest flavor of BiS (to which I do refer derisively but actually find myself more in love with all the time) is releasing a new album, and here’s the first track, which you can download until the 10th on the link here, and also listen to in perpetuity:

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Enjoy More New NEO JAPONISM, Get the Visual of a Grown Man Crying Tears of Joy

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When the Best of 2019 opens up this week, friends, I fully expect that you’re all going to join me in smashing that vote button for NEO JAPONISM as Best Reboot. They are clearly the best and also recency bias is a brutal fact of our lives, so brutal that you are helpless against it, not to mention helpless before my very persuasive arguments. In fact, the great crime being perpetuated by this year’s voting is that none of these new NEO JAPONISM pieces are in the running for other awards despite their clear superiority to everything. Including this new one that’s technically eligible for all awards because it’s still November for a few hours!

Fight for the Right to what, though

Lyrics!

Just listen to that. That’s basically everything good and right in loudol — creative structure, aggressive, pop hook that somehow doesn’t take anything away from the sheer volume, another dang breakdown — and I’m absolutely beside myself that something so good and right exists in my world, a reminder of the peak of what idol can do.

Your Homicidols Weekender #159

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Good morning! I don’t know about my fellow Americans, but I’m personally still recovering from going a little too ham on Thanksgiving, and I still have family obligations to gut out while my body feels like it’s stuffed with just the tiniest bit too much sausage filling. I really do wonder how our ancestors handled the periodic feast days that all but required people to eat until they physically couldn’t anymore, seeing as how there are all manner of over-the-counter medications that I can take for some relief, and all they had was booze.

Anyway, enough real and metaphorical bellyaching: As if you hadn’t noticed, idol has been going into full-time year-end mode, with new material and announcements of new material to come flying around like mad. It’s all very good and very exciting. And while I did my personal most posting in a long-ass while as a result, it’s still a very packed Weekender for you. Enjoy.

And for real, do me a favor and play the Fun. I don’t always get to fill in for Kerrie, but when I do, I like to get personal, and in this case I took advantage of the holiday to go with a theme, and I think that anybody reading this has a very good reason to be thankful for idol, in one way or another. Tell us about it!

You’re a Sentimental Nerd

Prepare yourself for the string of promos to support the new album from Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da:

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Every New NEO JAPONISM Track Restores My Faith in Powers Greater Than Myself (for instance: NEO JAPONISM)

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I’ll tell you, if 2019 is remembered as being as bad as it usually feels in real time, I want to be the person who’s all “yeah but did you hear some of the really awesome music that happened anyway AND ESPECIALLY THE NEO JAPONISM THAT SAVED CHRISTMAS?!” After returning to life just over a week ago in what’s rapidly emerging as my favorite event of this otherwise godsforsaken year, NEO JAPONISM has even more jaw-kicking idolcore for us, and friends, I don’t know where they’re going with this, but I’m officially along for the ride:

God damn. God DAMN. I’m not completely sold on marrying that chorus to the verses, but this is the kind of hook to the face that I used to delight in finding back when idol was so new and exciting and nobody had yet invented the word “Codomocore”. FFS, it has a goddamn breakdown in it, albeit one that fits the material more than the occasional wedged-in instances that are often more laughable than laudable.

Lyrics!

A week ago, I was loudly demanding that NEO JAPONISM be worked into the Best Of mechanisms and then waving last week’s post in everybody’s face to make sure I was being heard; today, I feel like I’m ready to give them all of the awards (even the ones that don’t pertain!) just so for vindication’s sake. What an absolutely gorgeous return to life they’re giving us.

Your Homicidols Weekender #158

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Good morning! Sorry this is now a couple of hours late, but you know you’re gassed when you sleep for approximately twice as much as you usually would and still can barely get out of bed. I felt badly this week because I was observing quite a bit happening in the Idolverse but was pretty much helpless to respond. If I didn’t actually like my job and weren’t so handsomely compensated for it, I’d curse it to the heavens! But this (*serious Maniac voice*) is the kind of evolution in one’s life that can make one’s passions all the more important and valuable, and in fact I sometimes feel like idol is as precious to me now as it’s ever been, which is quite a contrast to when I was forcing myself to cover it intensely while grappling with various personal responsibilities.

Yeah that’s cool. Whatever. Hey! So there were a lot of good things that went down, including some stuff overnight, and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I don’t get to at least some of it this week. What we lose in timeliness, we make up for in wry observation! And isn’t that what you pay for?

Oh right, we do this for free.

Yikes. This intro has now exhausted its own concept and I think failed to communicate the point, but eat it, 11:00 is fast approaching and I have a quiche in my future! Go play the Fun and Weekender your heart out!

Yikes

When two of our greatest icons go together to see like the iconiest of them all:

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I Could Not Be More Excited about the Return of NEO JAPONISM

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Everybody’s done the heartbreak thing this year, it seems. Groups and individual idols have dropped like flies, literal icons of the business and the tiniest of unknown chika acts as well closing up shop or undergoing massive changes almost as if they all know something we don’t. I’ve personally had my share of blank-eyed staring into the distance at one bit of news or another, and one that I definitely didn’t make enough hay about when it happened was NEO JAPONISM.

For about a year, they were arguably my favorite thing in the business, this hard-rocking, all-out unit that didn’t pull any punches and seemed to make a mark every time they released something into the world. They were just a really fun group to follow, although harder in a lot of ways to love right because there was so much else going on. But did I miss a chance to lavish praise on them? Absolutely not. And so earlier this year when the ~original~ group disbanded in the kind of mass graduation that has been so typical of 2019, I was kind of floored. Unlike all of the other instances, though, manager-san immediately set the record straight and announced that NEO JAPONISM as a thing wasn’t going anywhere, and there would be a reboot on the near horizon. That gives one hope, which gives one optimism, and when little bits of info started to trickle out, it started to become real.

And that’s where we land now! Here are the members: Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Weekender #157

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Good morning!

Yeah, it’s Saturday. What a week. At least I’d been loosely following Twitter up to a point! I checked in yesterday evening and had this massive, sudden realization that not only had Friday come and effectively gone, but that I had barely even though about much of anything beyond work since, well, the weekend before. But did putting this together help to cure what ailed me? In small measure, friend, it did.

Seek Help

The last time I led off with Up Up Girls 2? Never!

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Your Homicidols Weekender #156

/ Homicidol Maniac

Good morning, ya goofs! Today is a special day. Yes, it’s Saturday, and yes, by the vagaries of the turn of the year and a few fortuitous personal circumstances, I for all intents and purposes completed my meaningful job-work for the year yesterday. Stress is down, hope is up, and while it’s true that the winter chill has arrived a little earlier than usual to Maniac Mansion, I’m looking forward to some wonderful time that begins basically now.

But that’s not what makes today special! No, today’s special because, if you math along with me, you’ll see that this is the effective third anniversary of the Weekender, which (do not try to correct me) I believe is the longest-running weekly episodic blog post about idols who scream and swear and so on. I’ve done a lot of these, and some of them have been good (this one is good) and some of them have been bad (I make no guarantees though), but all of them have been done in an effort to capture a much wider sampling of what’s happening in the hard side of idol in a given week, and maybe expose you all to some related things that might otherwise slip through the cracks. The Weekender has evolved to include more big-ticket stuff in recent months, but its core purpose and stupid format remain largely intact since the very beginning.

Anyway, I enjoy it, and I hope you do, too. Data suggest that a good number of you do! So that’s fine.

Now go play the Fun and let’s look forward to at least a few dozen more!

That’s an Odd Way of Saying “Seven”

There’s a (great so far) new project from tapestok records; give a listen to Los An Jewels:

satis faction is already my favorite idol ever

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