Know Your BiStory

Know Your BiStory #1: primal.

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Gang, we made it. It’s time for #1 in the Know Your BiStory countdown. There are some truly great songs in the world. And then there’s “primal.”

It’s literally a huge honor to get to write about this song. “primal.” wasn’t the group’s consensus #1 when we all voted, but it sort of emerged while we worked out which track was more awesome than another. And, given everything we’ve seen so far, that shows an extremely high level of respect.

I think the most important thing to consider about “primal.” is that, awesomeness aside, it came at one of the biggest — if not the biggest, period — pivot points in BiS’s tumultuous history; Yokoyama Rina, today known as Rinahamu and one of the most creative, prolific women in J-music, had left the group because she just couldn’t with the antics, and Terashima Yufu, the infamous Yuffy, had been recruited to replace her. They had an album and two singles — both of which are on this list — and this third single was representative not of where BiS had come from, but where they were going.

It’s fucking exquisite. Continue reading →

Know Your BiStory #2: BiSimulation

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

The penultimate entry in the Know Your BiStory countdown brings us back to @weeaboowitch, the megafan responsible for “STUPiG” and the BiS Audition Hunger Games. Check out her art at kestreldraws.tumblr.com.

According to Google, “bisimulation” is “a binary relation between state transition systems, associating systems that behave in the same way in the sense that one system simulates the other and vice versa.” But if you’re not a computer scientist, BiSimulation is the song where we said our farewells to Wakisaka Yurika, Terashima Yufu and the famed Quintet lineup as a whole (but mainly Wacky, since it wasn’t until after the single was released that Yuffy finally got sick of Pour Lui’s nonsense and followed her dreams of being a catgirl). Continue reading →

Know Your BiStory #3: PPCC

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

For #3 in the Know Your BiStory countdown, we return to Idol Is Shit‘s Garry MacKenzie for a look at … well, look at it!

“PPCC,” if not the most important (“Nerve” is of course a thing), is one of the most important releases that the original BiS put out. My reason for believing this is simple, it was their major label debut under Avex Trax. Up until that point, BiS had been killing it on the indies and with their anti-establishment message it was somewhat surprising to see them sign to a major label. How their career panned out after that is a debatable subject (I will fight you), but there’s really no denying the historical significance of this single.

Read the whole thing. If you haven’t had enough sex and violence yet in this series, maybe “PPCC” will round things out for you.

/looks at schedule

Nope! Still got plenty more of that!

Know Your BiStory #4: nerve

/ Homicidol Maniac / 9 Comments

We enter Know Your BiStory’s home stretch with what may as well be the alt-idol anthem: You ain’t done shit if you ain’t done “nerve.” Our man boans steps back up to the plate; if you like him, this is how you make friends.

nerve is one of BiS’ best known songs. It’s a fan favorite that was performed at every BiS concert (as an opener, a closer, an encore, sometimes many times in a row), and there’s a good chance it was the first BiS song you ever heard. With multiple studio recordings, and official videos from the very beginning and very end of the BiS timeline, the different versions of nerve each have different nuances that mark different points in their career.

Continue reading →

Know Your BiStory #5: My Ixxx

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

For this entry in the Know Your BiStory series, we turn to Garry MacKenzie at the delicious Idol Is Shit and a great BiS roots song with a rather … colorful video.

… Back then this was not the sort of music that many idol groups were doing. It was something different and people were somewhat dismissive of it, mostly due to the unconventional promotional tactics employed. It’s quite incredible to think how “My Ixxx” and much of the early BiS catalog paved the way for the Alt-Idol scene as it exists today.

Read the whole thing. And now that we’ve gotten through violence, nudity, crucifixion, sex, sacrilege, body horror and pig heads, you’d think that we’re running out of big BiS moments … but we’re just getting started!

Know Your BiStory #6: IDOL

/ Homicidol Maniac / 14 Comments

Day 5 of Know Your BiStory features our own community member boans, who’d probably prefer that I intro him with some other association, so click here to actually get his story.

“IDOL” is not only a prototypical heavy idol song, it’s also the most quintessential BiS thing I can think of.

In the lead-up to the single’s release in 2012, the group (then comprised of Pour Lui, Hirano Nozomi and Terashima Yufu) uploaded a music video to their Youtube channel that featured the trio clad in cute maid outfits, cheerfully bopping through choreography for a typical idol pop song. The promotional campaign around the video’s release encouraged fans to “buy the same CD over and over again.”

Screen capture from Japanese idolcore legends BiS's idol parody video "idol"

Continue reading →

Know Your BiStory #7: MURA-MURA

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

For our fourth day of Know Your BiStory, we return to A-to-J Connections (Twitter) and Justin on one of BiS’s most out-there and explicit efforts. And that’s saying something!

The song itself is BiS at their peak, a wild ride of pop punk at the climax of their career. Something about flowing with creative juices, I don’t know. Did you WATCH that video? It’s about sex. There’s no better way to put it. People have taken to foregoing the technical translation and just calling this song “HORNY.”

Read the whole thing, and know that this whole countdown may continue, but it’s not getting any easier to handle!

Know Your BiStory #8: eat it

/ Homicidol Maniac / 9 Comments

Welcome to #8 in our Know Your BiStory countdown! You’re stuck with me this time, amigos, and it only gets weirder better from here.

I’ll be honest; I wish this song were #10 in the BiStory, because it has such a great kick-off vibe that I’m even dispensing with the usual over-writing:

Continue reading →

Know Your BiStory #9: Suki Suki Daisuki

/ Homicidol Maniac / 8 Comments

It’s Day 2 of Know Your BiStory! Today’s entry comes from Justin Ashby, one of the Japan-loving miscreants at A-to-J Connections (Twitter).

This song is just as catchy as it is terrifying. … “Suki Suki Daisuki” is definitely not for everybody; hell, it’s barely for ANYBODY. Still though, it’s an incredible meeting point for two polar opposite genres.

Read the whole thing. Oh, and, you know, actually connect with the frickin’ song.

Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You: ‘Know Your BiStory’ on the Way

/ Homicidol Maniac / 7 Comments

BiS coming back to life two years after its willful dissolution is a big deal. No, we have no idea if it’ll be a success or even all that good, but Pour Lui getting back into the game isn’t something to sneeze at. And as a public service to the many, many fans of the hard side of idol who came into things after BiS disbanded, Homicidols.com has joined with a team of creative partners to launch Know Your BiStory.

As you may have seen yesterday, BiS and the broader family of alt-anti-post-idols it inspired spawns a lot of creativity. People feel passionately about it — just speculating about who might be included in the new lineup spawned the most popular thread in this site’s forums’ history. Only something so patently ridiculous as punk rock idols done so well with such honest intent could lead to completely contemporaneously relevant meta references well after the original had ceased to exist; basically, everything about BiS is interesting, cool and fun. Continue reading →