Author: Homicidol Maniac

On Changing Management

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

Hey guess what. I’m kind of retiring.

First, the important stuff: Longtime contributor and dedicated pal Daemetal will be taking over as boss. Team will remain intact (as far as I know). Lots of cool things are likely to happen in the future.

Less importantly, this is a very literal “kind of” retirement. The Homicidol Maniac persona will be a part of Homicidols Dot Com for as long as it’s around. I like doing this stuff even if I don’t do it as much as I used to, and I feel a dual sense of responsibility and like lifetime ownership. But D’s going to run the show from here

So that’s that. Time for a self-indulgent retrospective!

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Your Homicidols Weekender #249

/ Homicidol Maniac

Good morning! It’s a special one here at Maniac Mansion — or, more specifically, a hotel room about 100 miles from Maniac Mansion. Your faithful proprietor is getting married today. Sorry ladies! But I write from the hotel where I’m sequestered away from my extremely awesome partner until this afternoon, when we finally get to tie the knot. There are some resulting things afoot, but this is neither the time nor the place. Instead, I’ll simply reference that being around a lot of not-that-well acquaintances means explaining two things, those being my tattoos and my “J-pop website,” which in this particular group happens to include the mother of one of the mods from the Sakura Gakuin subreddit. Don’t ask me how any of that makes sense, it just always seems to.

This is an awesome weekend, and I’m really excited to get down to it. And I hope you have a blast of your own!

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Put Up Your Dukes and Fight with buGG

/ Homicidol Maniac

It finally arrived! I first listened to buGG’s new “MY FIGHT SONG” single what feels like a couple of weeks ago, on the Spotify, and figured that there’d be an MV at some point. And now there is!

Watching buGG grow from the fun sidecar PIIIIIIIN little sisters into, well, very much their own thing has been cool. They still have that signature impossible energy and outright bounce to their sound. I just can’t believe it’s only their second single ever! I mean, the discography available online isn’t exactly sparse, just that, like, you usually expect way more singles than other releases, this being idol and all. They’ve only been at this for like three years! But anyway:

Fun fact: Everything about this is hundreds of percents cooler than every American pop punk thing ever done

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If You Ever Wanted to Download DAIDAIDAI Samples, This Is Your Chance

/ Homicidol Maniac

Why is idol so quiet this week? I have energy and opportunity to post but very little to post about! Case in point would be this fun little item from DAIDAIDAI, about whom I am usually bursting with enthusiasm and always happy to post, except when the item in question is definitely something for the Weekender, except that if I don’t post now, nothing will be posted and boy is that undesirable, so.

With that in mind, if you’ve ever wanted isolated music-only clips from DAIDAIDAI’s music with no vocals at all for your own personal listening/remixing/vaporwave insanity needs, this appears to be your chance to do it the easy way:

Shit like this makes me wish I had the wherewithal to get into mixing. Sampling is always cool, but I’m a mashups kind of person, so I’d be trying out some of these beats with everything from Run-DMC to Hanako-san, just to see what worked best.

Well That Was Easy

/ Homicidol Maniac

It feels like basically yesterday that we were lamenting the departure of our dear Yuna from PassCode. I think everyone who follows them was immediately curious to see who would replace her in the group, right down to some obligatory dream casting. And yet somehow I allowed myself a moment of pleasant surprise when this tweet popped up a little while ago:

Yep, that’s ex-LADYBABY Emily, that is undeniably a very good harsh singer but one of the more oddly utilized ones in her old group. The timing of it all suggests that she was already in the wings before Yuna’s retirement announcement, sure, but frankly you probably could have had her on retainer ever since LADYBABY went under and barely missed a beat — the two singers’ styles aren’t quite the same, but honestly? Natural fit, right timing, easy thing for fans to accept. Emily officially joins in a few weeks at the kickoff of a quick Zepp tour prior to the close of the STRIVE tour pre-Budokan, so good opportunities for those who actually can to properly greet the new girl.

Good job, PassCode, and welcome, Emily!

Your Homicidols Weekender #248

/ Homicidol Maniac

Good morning! Has life treated you kindly this week? I mean, in the context of *waves hands at nothing in particular*. I’m excited, personally, because a whole bunch of things are coming to a head. Big changes afoot! And for a person who’s easily defined as “set in his ways, does not like change,” that I’m anything other than completely terrified is a genuinely nice feeling.

After the way last week ended, it’s also nice to have just kind of a straightforward, comfortable body of extra stuff to make a Weekender. Despite a bit of pre-TIF quiet, our scene is still bursting with energy and lots of (mostly) good things. Take advantage! Find the things you like, and open yourself up to liking new things. If there’s one thing idol’s good at, it’s always having lots of new things.

That’s What You Think Idol’s Good At?

Hey! We got Team all up in this feature, plus lots of other good stuff that you should read and follow:

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Get Pumped Up with Re:INCARNATION’s New Single

/ Homicidol Maniac

What was I saying the other day about units still making pretty good approaches to punk rock? In this case, Re:INCARNATION is sending us the kind of pop punk anthem that really can only exist in the context of idol, and it’s exactly what I needed to be listening to right now heading into a brutal last day to a brutal week, and I hope you get a good lift out of it too:

This sucker is out on the first, but you obviously don’t need to wait to listen to it, just to buy. So buy it.

Cursebreaker: NECROEURIDOL

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well, friends, if you haven’t heard yet, you’re about to — NECRONOMIDOL and Europe are about to get much better acquainted:

But that’s not all! In case you were unaware, the good people at ORIONlive also have themselves a record label, and: Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: PUNKY RAD PINK

/ Homicidol Maniac

This is a Let’s Discover Some Idols that has been entirely too long in the making. I don’t even remember when I first found PUNKY RAD PINK, but it was a while ago, and they just sat unremarked-upon in my dang queue not quite as long as Fiore did, for instance, but long enough to be shameful. So let’s get right to it!

Hey, have you guys ever heard of PUNKY RAD PINK (Twitter)? You will note, as if it is impossible not to, that they are extremely accurately named, and as such are pretty much bound to be a good time. They’re part of the somewhat cursed class of spring 2020, the Coronaclass if you will, and so may have flown under your radar — I was on hiatus at the time, so at least I have an excuse!

They have no official MVs that I’ve found, but they do have plenty of live video on their channel. For instance:

Membership changes, man

And here’s from their first one-man a few months back: Continue reading →

This Is a New Single from Haruno Yumu

/ Homicidol Maniac

When you’ve been at this idol game for a while, not only do you find yourself with a startling amount of otherwise useless knowledge, the amount of recall you’ve built up as a bank gets to be almost harrowing to consider. I had the privilege of talking about ye olde website and its advent a couple of weeks back with a friend who I hadn’t seen in years, for instance, and after getting through the tl;dr Homicidols Elevator Pitch, he sort of good-naturedly challenged me on just how much there would really be to talk about. I made him look through our archives on his phone while I narrated the process of discovering literally hundreds of loud-aligned idol groups over time, and following his surprise waxed nostalgic on certain acts from way back in the day, names like petit pas! and THE SPUNKY and Tsubasa Fly, names you might not recognize if you’ve only been around in the past couple of years. And then I enjoyed telling him about the long-timers that are still out there! Your You’ll Melt More! and NECRONOMIDOL and … UNDER BEASTY. And that’s when I kind of lit up, for not only do I love them all, but UB holds a very special place in my heart for having navigated their way from a truly indie origin all the way to a major label. Anybody who’s ever turned to their idiot friends and said “we should start a band!” (as I had several times with the friend mentioned here) can relate to the excitement that wells up inside in those moments — and UB lived it.

So yeah, while I did just get to post about UNDER BEASTY recently and reflect a bit on that trajectory therein, here’s another chance because Yumu just dropped her second single: Continue reading →