♪ (dramatic chord) ♪

♪ (dramatic chord) ♪

♪ (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

here, here, here, boop, boop, boop, ba-doo-boop.

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Let us know in the comments below.

- Goodbye. Sweet dreams.

♪ (end music) ♪