(mouse clicks)
♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
♪ (grim piano music) ♪
- (disturbed) Oh. - Oh.
- Oh. - Oh no.
- Some scary shit going on.
♪ (death metal instrumental) ♪
- ♪ (shrieking) ♪ - Holy shit. (laughs)
♪ (shrieking) ♪
♪ (indistinct singing) ♪
- Caw! Caw!
♪ (cacophonous music, shrieking, and singing) ♪
- How creepy is this?
- They, like, genuinely look scary. - No, what are they eating?
- I think she was just eating flesh.
- It's like a giant tarantula on her head.
His head? Her? His?
- Oh, I blame you, Tim Burton. Oh.
- This is some gnarly makeup and costumes, man.
- Production value great.
♪ (shrieking and singing) ♪
- That sound.
- They're sampling my mating call.
- ♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
- This looks great.
- Oh no, they're gonna eat her.
♪ (music calms, intermittent giggling) ♪
- Who laughing?
(sinister giggling)
♪ (death metal starts up again) ♪
- I'm about to close the computer. I don't like this.
- No. Oh. (worriedly) Oh.
♪ (grim piano music) ♪
♪ (harsh notes, song ends) ♪
- That was some crazy shit.
- No, not gonna do that refrain for me one more time?
♪ Aahh, ahh, aah ♪
- I'm going to have nightmares because of this.
Why would you show this?
- I have to say, the music was pretty good.
(sudden laughter)
♪ (melancholic music) ♪
- Okay, I like the rain. - The rain, nice touch.
- ♪ Pig that is soaked ♪
- I hope that's water.
- It's really artistic.
- ♪ It is a pain of the children ♪
- I'm just waiting for something to really go crazy here.
- ♪ Hate yourself ♪ ♪ (metal rock) ♪
♪ In the maze without an end ♪
- It's good.
- Are Gothic boy bands a thing in Japan?
- ♪ In the maze without an end ♪
♪ Why do you still breathe? ♪
- These are like video game characters.
- Look like Final Fantasy characters, really dope.
- Final Fantasy, the rock opera!
- Compared to the last one, this is much easier to digest.
- I don't know if they're boys or girls.
But they fine.
- Look how pretty his eyes are. That's not fair.
- ♪ ...still breathe ♪
- Little Kill Bill references going on?
That was great.
- That one seemed a little normal. - That was better.
- It's still not my type of music. It's no Carly Rae Jepsen.
(film reel clicking) ♪ (zydeco music) ♪
- Little harmonica action.
♪ (zydeco music) ♪
- I can already tell this is gonna be weird.
- Hey, shouldn't play with knives.
♪ (music distorts to a halt) ♪ - Oh no.
(camera shutter clicks)
- Oh, here we go with the weird shit again.
♪ (metal music) ♪
- Oh, this won best album.
- Is this like a style in Japan,
like a certain style music video?
♪ (indistinct singing) ♪
- It's Japanese Marilyn Manson.
- I'm singing along. ♪ (croaky singing) ♪
- What is he drinking?
- ♪ Order are going crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy ♪
♪ (screaming) ♪
- Oh gosh! What is that noise?!
- ♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
- I'm not big on the whole clown thing.
- Minus the clown, we're doing good.
- The costumes are great.
- All the costume design has been really on point.
- Oh my god.
- ♪ Upside... DOWN!!! ♪
- Oh. - ♪ Upside... DOWN!!! ♪
- Ugh.
- Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
Someone licked a leg. I saw it.
♪ (jittery metal) ♪
- This, like, makes my heart race. Oh my gosh.
- Can I get the names of all these bands?
- Even though it's not for me,
I bet you they have millions upon millions upon millions
of people that come to their shows.
Somebody SoulCycles to that, I'm sure.
♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
- (Finebros) So how would you describe what we just showed you?
- I would describe these videos as very disturbing.
- Vibes of Marilyn Manson.
I enjoy it.
- It reminds me a lot of kind of the Final Fantasy aesthetic.
- It was a little Tim Burton-esque.
Like a designed nightmare.
- If I were six years old, and I sat here
and you put this computer in front of me on camera,
I would have started crying. - Me too.
- (Finebros) What genre of music
would you classify these bands under?
- Uh... (laughs) is there a genre for them?
- Panic! at the Disco meet Marilyn Manson.
- I would call that carnage pop.
- Japanese heavy metal?
- Heavy metal. - Screamo heavy metal?
- Screamo heavy metal music
mixed with cosplay and very artistic costuming.
- (Finebros) So all of these bands are considered
something called "visual kei"... - "Visual kei."
- (Finebros) ...which is a movement among Japanese music,
characterized by the use of varying levels of makeup,
elaborate hairstyles, flamboyant costumes,
and sometimes androgynous aesthetics. - Okay.
- So like late '70s. (both chuckle)
- (Finebros) Would you say you liked it? - No.
- I wouldn't say I liked it.
- I did not like it.
I appreciate the art form
and people being able to express themselves.
- I did.
Everything looks very perfect. The hair was perfect.
Their skin-- everything was just unreal.
- From a musical standpoint, no.
From a visual standpoint, yes, absolutely.
- (Finebros) Can you think of any music genre in the west
that is kind of equivalent to what these guys are doing?
- I mean, like Slayer, I guess, and Slipknot.
- Insane Clown Posse?
- Makes me think of, like, '80s kind of like rock bands.
- Kiss. - Mm-hmm,
with their makeup and like, "Ah."
- (Finebros) So let's talk about these videos.
The first one was Insanity Injection. - That's a dope name.
- (Finebros) What did you think of it?
What was happening in that video? - Insanity. That's their name.
- I was so distracted by the screaming that I wasn't even
getting the full effect of the imagery.
- It was like the worst parts of Ridley Scott's Alien.
- It was Satan's side bitches, and they didn't eat that morning.
So they decided to eat all the humans.
- They were eating people.
One of the girls had their costume like this.
She looked like Kerrigan.
- Weird monsters and flesh-eating people are-- I don't know.
I never expected to see it in a music video.
- (Finebros) Second band is called the Gazette.
- The Gazette?
- (Finebros) And they've been around since 2002.
- Oh, wow.
- (Finebros) And they're one of the most popular bands
inside of visual kei. What did you think about them?
- They're probably the most popular,
'cause they're not eating dead bodies.
- I found myself strangely attracted to them. (laughs)
- That was cool. I see they've been lasting so long.
- Out of all of them,
that's the one that I could get down with the most.
- I was expecting some crazy thing to pop out,
but it stayed pretty mellow.
I liked it.
- It was still definitely in the wheelhouse,
like in that style realm. But because it was more simple,
I could enjoy the music a little bit more.
- (Finebros) And the last video's from a band called DADAROMA.
Thoughts on that one? - It just, like, unsettled my stomach.
- I can't possibly form an opinion that's not "I'm afraid."
- The clown thing's a little weird.
I have a bit of an aversion to clowns.
- I don't like clowns, so that's me.
And the music was screaming, which is also not me.
- I love that vaudevillian aesthetic.
I love the puppet-show feel that it had.
- A feel of kind of a Alice in Wonderland vibe going on.
- I liked the music.
The visuals threw me off, but I guess that's what kei does.
- (Finebros) So visual kei is referred to by a lot of people
as a genre of music.
But people who are in visual kei bands
will say it's not a genre.
But it's the fashion and participation in the related subculture
that makes you a visual kei band.
What are your thoughts about that concept,
that could have multiple types of genres inside of an aesthetic?
- I guess I kinda like it,
because then it's inclusive to anybody that wants to participate,
no matter what your taste of music is.
- It allows for people to express themselves
in all of these different ways, and I think that's really cool.
- I like that it's part of a movement.
- And those videos we just saw--
they're like three different types of songs.
But, you know, their costumes are really cool.
- Korn kinda did it later,
where they mixed this kind of like rap rock
but metal thing together.
- It created this culture that existed with these themes,
similar, I would say, to visual kei,
where these themes all lived in there.
- (Finebros) Finally, after being exposed
to some of these videos,
do you think this is something you're gonna want to look up
and see what other bands are out there? - Absolutely not.
- No. - No.
If I'm gonna search it,
I'm gonna be searching it to scare people.
- No. I'm not interested in any way to delve into this nightmare.
- Visually, it's great. Maybe I'll do a Google Image search,
but maybe not a YouTube music search.
- 100%. I am going to make a Spotify playlist
of visual kei music.
- After learning that there can be--
it's about the visual aesthetic and that it's not just one thing.
So that makes me think,
"Oh, there might be something that I would gravitate towards."
So that's worth looking into.
- Thanks so much for watching another episode of YouTubers React.
- You can subscribe to everybody down below
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Let us know in the comments below.
- Goodbye. Sweet dreams.
♪ (end music) ♪