Monday Match Game

A Very Special Edition of the Mond– Tuesday Match Game

/ Homicidol Maniac

Hey, do you guys remember IRONBUNNY? I sure do, and even though I ultimately wasn’t moved to make them a proper Homicidols Big Deal, things changed when they popped up in the Western metal press:

I’ve had them on speed dial for the past week because I noticed on Twitter that they’d recorded an MV, which I took to be an almost dead certainty that we’d be getting that MV in due time, and sure enough it happened! It’s a good song, and what incredible timing, considering that I hadn’t had a chance to write up the latest BABYMETAL MV yet but still intended to do so — but would life really be best served with two separate posts about idol metal that has happened to connect to one degree or another in the West, or would things be much more fun than to smash those two things together into a single empty competition? You know the answer by now! Continue reading →

Memorial Day Match Game: Special Tori-x-go Edition

/ Homicidol Maniac

It’s Memorial Day here in the USA, amigos, which in addition to military this-and-that (and gods help me, Rolling Thunder) means that it’s also National Hamburger Day, which means that it’s also Maniac Is Going to Eat a Lot of Meat and Drink a Lot of Beer Day. There’s solemnity, naturally (the whole memorial business), but also the unofficial start to summer, so ergo fun, and while I love me this site and idols and everything, I want to keep it light.

So what better way to do that than by resurrecting a stupid contest thing that people seem to enjoy! Continue reading →

The Monday Match Game Asks You to Choose the Destructor

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

Welcome back to the Monday Match Game, friends! Yes, it is here and only here where you’ll be asked to pit idol against idol or idol against completely attenuated pun-based foe for the purposes of merriment and/or me aggregating information on how better to connect idols with people who don’t like idols yet. It’s great fun!

Last week, Spark faced Spark (but not Sparks) in the re-kick-starting of this weekly ritual; Spark won. This week, I turn to something immediately contemporary and fun, something that has tongues wagging and throats chuckling and guns blazing.

I speak of course of this morning’s big MV, the latest from the rapidly ascending BiSH. Ascending … perhaps toward the clouds? To a mythical realm where giants may dwell? MAYBE EVEN USING A BEANSTALK?! That’s right! How would these latest giant killers fare when pitted not against the thing they’re clearly out to slay, but against others of their ilk? Continue reading →

Let’s Spark the Monday Match Game Back to Life

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

Man, I’ve missed the Monday Match Game. It started pretty much as a gag (being that it’s something to do with this website, that’s not a surprise), but I got a kick out of it, and so did some of you all, and then it was a regular feature, albeit one that tends to ebb and flow with necessity and how much other stuff is going on. I’ve been lackadaisical toward it over the past couple of months because priorities have been elsewhere, but the world needs stupid, mindless, pointless fun sometimes, and dammit does it feel like a thing to do right now.

So. Our last time together, we pitted Coco against Cococo, and it was good. This time, we stay on the names theme, but looking at idols who have very little in common.

In this corner, a re-reformed idol project that used to be rapping dinosaurs before transitioning to the side of rock; in the other corner, idols who have movies on the mind. Two rock units with similar names enter, but only one will emerge victorious! Continue reading →

Your Monday Match Game Enjoyment Is Co-dependent!

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Welcome back, friends, to the Monday Match Game! Last week, BiS 3.0 convincingly beat out every other major iteration of the alt-idol legends, which is a completely wrong opinion to have, but that’s okay, different strokes for really different folks, and all that.

I really must thank Chris for having brainstorms where mine had run dry, as today’s matchup wouldn’t have been possible without his input. Yes, friends, it’s about to get very Co-dependent up in here.

What happens when almost-weren’t idols from wildly different pedigrees square off for the rights to their own names? What happens when doubles and triples are forced to compete for dominance and the split-second amusement of complete strangers in other countries? I don’t know, but I bet it’s gonna be gruesome. Continue reading →

The Monday Match Game Is Old vs. New

/ Homicidol Maniac / 4 Comments

Sorry for taking a few weeks off again, gang! Don’t worry; Chris’s bonkers-ass suggestions will get their day in the ring.

That being said, I was a little bit unsure about how I wanted to proceed today. After yesterday’s unfortunate choices, I was thinking about doing Kamen Joshi vs. Al Jolson, but I thought that people might miss the joke and/or not have any context, and I figure that letting Amina kind of run with it is the smarter move anyway, so.

Instead, we have Terry:

Hm. Continue reading →

The Monday Match Game Returns with a Request

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Friends, we’ve done a lot of voting lately, and you might be like “No, Maniac, not another stupid poll,” but a) isn’t life better when you just ignore things that you don’t like?* and b) what if it were the stupidest one yet?

See, now that the Corenament has reached its shocking conclusion, it’s time to come back to the Monday Match Game, everybody’s favorite Monday-and-also-into-Tuesday activity. And Brian, who is clever and good, managed to put into words what I hadn’t managed to turn into a coherent thought pretty much ever:

I don’t know about fans, or even fan if “clamoring” is the criterion, but let’s do this thing! Continue reading →

This Monday Match Game Will Make You Feel Better

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

Happy Monday, you goofs! As a brief programming note before we dive into the goods, this will be the last Monday Match Game for a little while; I’ll be publishing a Corenament primer later in the week, and then next week will kick us off to get our final field set. SO EXCITING!

The last Monday Match Game pitted the darkness idols, NECRONOMIDOL, against The Cult in a bid to determine who whose kvlt was more trve, and Necroma smashed those swag rock pretenders on their way to a sickeningly good album release and MV, plus the delirious fun that was #Deathless4Necroma.

This week, it’s not about kvlt, but about cures; specifically, what’ll cure what ails you? Is it pants-soilingly intense idols or innovative alt-rock legends? Tiny doll-like girls bellowing hateful lyrics or bad-haired English men singing about how they hate themselves? Yes, friends, neither of these things should have much association with actual cures, but both can be palliative and soothing in their own way.

The trick is, depending on where you are right now — happy, sad, hopeful, heartbroken — which Cure is going to make it all better? Continue reading →

The Monday Match Game Is a Battle to Be the One True Cult

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

It’s Monday, and you know what that means! Yep, it’s time to pit idols against some other irrepressible force of nature and see who’s got what it takes to triumph!

Last week’s Monday Match Game gave the edge to PSYBOU KANOJO doing “BYOB” over PSYBOU KANOJO doing “The Romanticist,” and that’s not a bad opinion to have, especially because Yuki’s version is way better than SOAD’s (fight me).

For this week, though, we return to an important concept: What’s more kvlt?

In this corner, it’s the idols of the dead, of death and darkness and trips to southeast Asia, who are part of the ever-so-enjoyable renegotiation of black metal as an art form that Japan is killing so hard right now, and have the beyond-indie release practices to prove it; in the other corner, a band so influential that they get credited for pioneering everything from New Wave to goth.

When it’s trve kvlt vs. true Cult, only one will survive! Continue reading →

This Monday Match Game Got You Covered

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

You know, I’m a pretty big fan of the defunct-but-also-DAIDAIDAI-inspirational PSYBOU KANOJO, if you hadn’t noticed, and I’ve been spending some time over the past week or so doing a bit of retrospective. Not everything was pure gold, but there was enough creativity and heaviness and power and heaviness and beats and heaviness that I can still throw on some of Yuki’s live videos, or go through the old Soundcloud account, and have enough godDAMN moments that I go right back to being really sad that Yuki called it quits basically out of nowhere.

But we still have her music! And because of that, we can play with it forever.

Last week’s Monday Match Game gave Osaka Shunkashuto a slim win over Q’ulle in a true idol dance-off; this week, we’re going heavy, but we’re going heavy in a completely different way than usual.

PSYBOU KANOJO had some great original music, but also some great covers, and it’s those personal versions of others’ compositions that we usher into Homicidol Arena. The thing is, the referee (e.g. the polling widget) doesn’t like Soundcloud, so what you’re going to use to vote are the originals … but you’re going to be voting FOR the PSYBOU KANOJO versions. Make sense? Continue reading →