X Japan

I listened to em about 10 years ago, thanks to dubbed cassettes from a Japanese penfriend, and they ROCK. Are they still around?
 
They disbanded back in '97 because of personal issues. They were going to get back together untill their lead guitarist Hide (Hideto Matsumoto, probally the best guitarist ever) hung himself. Pretty sad stuff...

Hide was truly a great artist. You may not know but he pratcially made NIN, Smashing Pumpkins, And Marlyn Manson. Back in 95-96 he went to Los Angeles and met up with these bands. He acutally gave them ideas, etc... He was actually gonna open for one of Marlyn Mansons first shows (not sure when), but unfortuantely he hung himself.
 
hahahahaha....what i know form japan is:

CSSO(japanese grind rockers with some metal touches!!!GRIND ROCK,TWISTED METAL!!)

VORTEX(japanese technical death metal hailing for us!! with some fast,raw riffs and some good blasting and double paddle ob\n their drum....RECOMANDED!!!)

SABBAT(i don't know if this band is truely come from ja[pan....but someone tells me that this band already hailing from japan and bring some satanic thrash dark metal assault!!)

COGNUETAL HAMMORHADE(truely,brutally,totally noise!! bring some japanoise grind with some technical sound on their riffs....!!!)

GORE BEYOND NECROPSY(japanese noise grindcore..........in their first material their are playing some noise technical grind.......but now,they are playing GRINDCORE!!!!highly recomanded!!!)

POWER OF IDEA(one of japanese grind thrash and sometimes use female vocal....(i hate female vocal!!)

MANGANED(wow!!!japanese truely traditional and epic balck metal!!!!they use their own occult and epic to create their black metal style.........)

there are many ug japanese band but i forgot already....sorry!!!