HATEGLEAM

Time Leap Tuesday: The Lost Promise of HATEGLEAM

/ DAEMON

Welcome to our latest Homicidols feature where we take some time to reminisce about idols, units, songs, MVs and other events from the past that have left an indelible impact on our impressionable little minds. Whether this becomes a weekly, bi-weekly, or occasional thing (or if we forget about it altogether in a few months time) remains to be seen. What I can promise you is that the longevity of Time Leap Tuesdays will not be driven by popularity, not because we have integrity as writers and refuse to be swayed by public opinion, but because we just don’t look at our website metrics all that often. Every couple of months I check the site’s traffic stats just to be reminded that, “Wow, people really like LADYBABY a LOT!”

For our inaugural entry,  we’ll take a leap back in time to the heady days of 2015. BABYMETAL had just completed their first extensive tour of the US and Europe, and  Western punks and metalheads still found themselves struggling against their sudden and undeniable interest in Japanese vocal and dance units. The perpetually raging debate over on r/BABYMETAL was whether or not the Kami Band were official members of the group. It was near impossible for some to come to terms with liking rock acts that didn’t have a single member who played an instrument or, even worse, regularly performed without a live backing band at all.   

Enter HATEGLEAM, the idol-fronted metal band hybrid built to remove all those reservations.

Continue reading →

Better Three Months Late Than Never: Spooky Treat!

/ Homicidol Maniac

Man, does anybody else remember HATEGLEAM? For one extremely hot minute, I thought they represented a next step in loud idol evolution, a genuine metalcore kind of project fronted by a pair of maybe-idols. Their second main foray out into the world wasn’t quite up to the same (really good) standard, and the band never really seemed to catch on, and … then they were done. Exactly what the members were going to do with themselves at that point was a mystery, and frankly all of my thoughts were to other places.

And then a guy types the word “spooky” into a tweet and some odd recommendation, something that I’m allegedly following, comes up. Sure, let’s give this a try:

Oh neat, it’s (basically) HATEGLEAM! Except now going a rather Suzu Hinata-esque goth-rock-metal-like thing. Continue reading →

Did You Like Our April Fool’s Gag?

/ Homicidol Maniac / 12 Comments

Hello everybody! This is an important announcement by Maniac: In case you hadn’t figured it out over the last 36 or so hours, no, I never got a sweet idol job offer and never had to do something with the site and never turned it over to Kerrie except for purely laughs purposes. We had some fun, though! And I hope you got a kick out of Homercidols (and Simpsonswave, and only questioned your existence a few times).

Luckily, like nothing of actual import happened yesterday. Yes, the WACK auditions wrapped up, but the actual fallout is still on its way to reality, and there were of course lives and things like Pikarin blocking traffic so she could walk on her slave-fans, but is any of that all that important? Nay. We can just kind of gracefully return to normalcy and pretend that none of this ever happened.

For your patience and forbearence:

Remember HATEGLEAM? I sure do, speaking of missed opportunities. After the band broke up a few months back, I’ve almost completely lost track of the members, but here’s one of the former front-idols doing her best to scare the living shit out of neighborhood dogs and small children:

You want more? Continue reading →

HATEGLEAM, on the Other Hand, Is Saying Goodbye

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

Now I have a sad! Personal does-this-even-count-as-idol-sure favorites HATEGLEAM very casually announced on Twitter that they’re on their way out.

A person who I take to be their manager is sending encouraging messages about “next steps” and things, but let’s be honest: You can be musically cool all day long, but if you don’t have any fans, it’s not going to work for you. Their website is already gone, and the ubiquitous tweets from/about their official store are just kind of sad at this point. Continue reading →

Life Just Improved Immensely: HATEGLEAM Finally Released a New MV

/ Homicidol Maniac / 13 Comments

I might be HATEGLEAM’s #1 U.S. fan; I sometimes feel like their only U.S. fan. Last year’s debut was so good that I pushed it into the beginning of the Playlist despite the fact that it was the only thing they really had online.

This new video for “Alstroemeria” … sweet mother of bob.


Someone’s been to the Imada Yuna International Academy of Highly Inefficient Harsh Vocals!

And look, we could quibble all day over whether this “anti-idol” band thing even really qualifies as idol. My case is simple: Hina and Umishima both dress and sing like proper (ha) homicidols, both model, etc. That they’re technically the front people of a fixed-membership band and openly rep kick-ass hardcore bands like Madball and iwrestledabearonce (okay, that’s deathcore) and now have (at least on this track) a split harsh-clean set of duties in no way diminishes what’s really going on there.

No, it’s not wishful thinking.

Probably.

This shit’s awesome, okay?

I Want to Hear Hategleam’s Newest So Badly That I’m Listening to Their Demo

/ Homicidol Maniac

You all will have to forgive me for loving the ever-living hell out of Hategleam, hashtag sorry not sorry. With all due respect to Guso Drop, I’m not sure that anybody puts idol and hardcore together better.

However! Once upon a time, all the way back to the beginning of 2015, there was a lonely demo on Bandcamp, and it was by an up-and-coming anti-idol project called Hategleam, and that up-and-coming idol project called Hategleam had three anti-idols fronting the band instead of two and wow they were a lot closer to the idol side in those days.

Continue reading →

Hope Survives: HATEGLEAM’s Shooting Video

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

I like to pester HATEGLEAM from time to time about releasing more music; they got out an EP last year and are otherwise frustratingly quiet unless the topic is selling merch or the members playing Minecraft (using, no joke, a #HATECLAFT hashtag, damn it). I sometimes worry that the only outright band that I keep around might be too busy with other projects and video games to keep moving forward.

Well, at least for a minute, worry no longer!

“But I don’t even know who HATEGLEAM is, Maniac. Why should I care?”

Because the word “idolcore” was basically invented for them:

Happy Friday.

Oh, Cool, Here’s a Preview of HATEGLEAM’s Albumlet and, uh, Something!

/ Homicidol Maniac

I’m bullish on HATEGLEAM for a number of reasons, but the one that really matters is their idol-meets-Biohazard-meets-Living Colour sound; for people under the age of 35, that’s an infusion of funkiness and a good hook colliding with angry proto-metalcore and just the nicest damn choruses. Continue reading →

Who to Profile Next?

/ Homicidol Maniac / 4 Comments

The hope is that this is a constantly evolving website, with new posts on a regular basis and lots of discussion and updates as the idol groups profiled change and release new material (and, sadly, go kaput). I also want to add new profiles on a regular basis.

Here are some groups that I’ve found and rather like and think would make for good additions to the site, but have limited releases so far and/or little information available in English.

Lyric Holic

Creepy gothic metal as composed by Danny Elfman for a Tim Burton movie? Sign me up! But for real, the rest of their sound is much, much more akin to something you’d have heard in the glory days of thrash. It’s good.

HATEGLEAM

In addition to having a name like a Final Fantasy boss’s big attack, this is some of the core-iest idolcore / idol metalcore out there. More, please. Plus, the band is actually recognized as part of the group, which kind of puts HATEGLEAM in a weird place as far as this site goes, but anti-idols fronting a metalcore band is pretty okay, I think. (I make the rules!)

Lolisyn

Dark synth and some metal-like stuff. Honestly, Lolisyn confuses the crap out of me — they’re on their second full iteration after literally burying the original members on stage, and they have real-deal releases and stuff, but I can’t find them anywhere.

Edit: Nevermind about Lolisyn! Turns out that they’re disbanding for good in a couple of months. OH WELL!

Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da

That track right there, “ShitEnd | Placebo,” is on its own in the running for 2015 Debut Single of the Year. What starts off as kind of a digital popcore goes into a legitimate breakdown? And the group’s name is literally “It’s All Your Fault”? Come on. They’re like a gateway drug for Western hard rock fans to get into J-pop.

Plus, they have an album coming up! Given what we’ve heard so far, it could be almost anything, or possibly several everythings united by a lot of energy and a ton of self-loathing and anger.

*Make no mistake; a profile for Kiminosei is probably shortly forthcoming.

And that’s really just to start — there are literally dozens of groups sitting in my queue, and I’m sure that there are more that I don’t know about yet. Tell me who to cover; if you’re management, tell me about your group!