With dozens of Japanese bands trying to crack the West over the last 20 years, whoever would have guessed visual-kei would be the first genre to truly succeed?
The decadent style of bands such as L'Arc-en-Ciel, Dir En Grey and D'espairsRay has impacted heavily in the U.S., Europe and even cynical Britain, allowing these acts to sell out large venues and release CDs in territories where J-pop stars such as Hikaru Utada have failed to make a dent.
Musically, visual-kei favors fairly derivative heavy metal straight out of the 1980s, where the genre has its roots, with strings on top. But the keyword is "visual": Rather than the metalhead's preferred uniform of blue jeans, faded black T-shirts and greasy hair, these bands choose the opulent aristocratic fashion of 18th-century France. And where American and European metal bands opt for a macho image, visual-kei bands tend toward the androgyny associated with Goth.
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