The ballots have been counted, the results certified, and your winners are announced below BUT before we get to that: I want to thank everyone who participated in this year’s Best of the Year activities. We had a 30% increase in voter participation over last year which I really appreciate. Ten years into this venture that is Homicidols, it only means anything because of you all, so “Thank you!” for supporting our collective mission of promoting underground and independent idols to the wider world.
BiS
For pages and posts that relate to Brand-new Idol Society (BiS).
10 Years of Homicidols By the Numbers: Top Artists
Let’s try this one again:
You may have seen a half-baked version of this article post on Tuesday. I wish that I could say it was all an illusion but, no, it was just another one of my screw ups. I could have sworn that I had calendared it to publish on Thursday but, instead, it went up on Tuesday well before it was ready and I had to scrub it from existence.
It is one of the enduring mysteries of this site: while there are any number of qualities that contribute to our status of being the longest running English language chika idol blog on the planet, competence is certainly not among them.
10 Most Disturbing Idol MVs in History
Last week, we published a piece recommending dark idol units for new alt-idol fans discovering the genre through Phantom Siita. The response to the post reminded me that not everyone has spent the last decade+ obsessing over and chronicling the alternative, independent, and underground idol scene. Especially the number of people who were hearing about JyuJyu and “Noroi Hajime” for the first time got me thinking: there may be a sizable number of people out there who aren’t aware of some of the other iconically disturbing idol MVs that can traumatize them for life.
For that reason, Team Homicidols put our collective heads together and compiled the following list of the 10 (+1) most disturbing MVs that are seared across our psyches and helped send our therapists’ kids to college. Please note that our recall (and judgment) may be less-than perfect, so let us know anything we missed or got horribly wrong over on the Homicidols Discord server.
TRIGGER WARNING: This is basically just a big list of triggering MVs.
Your Homicidols Best of 2024
And the winners are…
In our last official act before we close the books on Idol Year 2024 and bind the records over to the abandoned missile silo that serves as the Homicidols Historical Archive, I am proud to present your Best of the Year award winners!!
Thank you to everyone who participated in the nominations and voting. We fielded a very diverse crop of candidates and winners proving that the world of alternative, indie, and underground idol remains as vibrant, varied, and exciting as ever. This year’s multiple-award winners are almost evenly split between distinguished veterans (like MIGMA SHELTER and Broken By The Scream) and ambitious rookies (such as Phantom Siita and FINGER RUNS).
WASTED with WATANABE: The Junnosuke Watanabe Interview
Some enchanted evening, under a moonlit summer sky, a drag queen is performing her cabaret number at London’s Ku Bar. Watching her show with our intrepid reporter is none other than the person behind acts like BiSH, BiS and GANG PARADE: Junnosuke Watanabe. The man in question is kicking off the night with a pint of Staropramen , while Cal from Homicidols and Porin from the band Awesome City Club (who just happened to be in town) both enjoy a pornstar martini each.
Homicidols: You always get beer don’t you?
Watanabe: Oh yes (laughs). Cocktails are too sweet for me.
Idol Overseas Summer Invasion 2024
Summer is almost upon us and a bunch of our favorite idols are undertaking overseas expeditions to come and see us!! Or, perhaps, they just want to escape the heat and humidity of Japan. Either way, it means that your chances of being able to see an idol live without leaving your home country are at a record high.
While major hitters ATARASHII GAKKO! and BABYMETAL are tearing through Europe and Southeast Asia all summer long, a bunch of our indie and underground idol favorites are venturing overseas in the next few months as well, such as:
Homicidols Best of the Year (so far)
We are one half of the way through the Homicidols calendar year (which runs December through November for REASONS) so we thought it was time to make note of the songs, albums and MVs that Team Homicidols have had on repeat for the last six months. This year’s entries so far seem to largely skew to the punk, shoegaze, and dream pop side of the spectrum, with only a few entries dipping their toes into the louder more hardcore sub-genres. I guess a quieter year is to be expected in the absence of the likes of Melancholic Cinderella Story and Zsasz. However, what the class of 2024 lacks in brutality, it makes up for in inventiveness. As the below offerings graphically demonstrate: alternative idol is still the most creative music laboratory on the planet.
The Greatest Alt-Idol Drops and Breakdowns of All Time
It has been a a few weeks since we asked members of the Homicidols community to identify their favorite choruses, drops and hooks in the genre of alternative idol. We published the nominations for Best Alt-Idol Choruses a short while ago, and now it’s time for the breakdowns!
For the exercise, we defined the category of drop or breakdown pretty loosely, with the primary requirement being that the element marks a sudden change in the dynamics of the song. The submitted entries essentially fall into two different categories:
The first are examples of the hardcore breakdown, where a tune takes a ruthless drop into harsh vocal or screaming metal territory. In idol terms, these are brutal examples of where the gap is bridged, the kawaii slams into the kakkoii, and the sugar and spice gang up and punch you in face.
The second category are songs that are completely devoid of harsh vocals or metal elements, but accomplish startling breakdowns via sudden and distinct shifts in tempo, tone, and genre.
The Greatest Alternative Idol Choruses of All Time
Welcome to the first installment of our latest community project seeking to identify the top choruses, drops, breakdowns and hooks in alternative, indie, and underground idol.
Here in chapter one, we are exploring the best choruses as identified by you, the readers of Homicidols dot com and, I must say, you all got great taste. It took forever to compile this post as these are some of the catchiest and most addictive tunes in idol. They can’t just be listened to once. Each entry took about five minutes to write and then two hours of bingeing the song over and over again. These aren’t just phenomenal choruses. These are some of the best songs by some of the best artists in the genre.
50 Greatest Alt-Idol MVs of All Time: #1 – 10
We made it!! It has been a log journey, but we have finally arrived:
Here are the TOP TEN MUSIC VIDEOS EVER as chosen by the readers of Homicidols dot com via a long, convoluted process that has been covered in depth elsewhere.
As always, each MV is accompanied by commentary from one or more of the individuals who nominated it way back in May or June when we started this process and the Team. I’ll keep the pre-amble short though because what you really want to know is: WHO MADE THE TOP TEN?
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