NEK! 🎸「 Reigen Girl 」 ...more than I expected!『令現少女』 

PS- Thank you for spell checking me on the title there lol ;) . Totally agreed too!

I am sure plenty of Band-Maid fans will like this, don't just look at my comment for that, I come from a "mainly listening to metal" background for 20 years before diving into the Japanese rock/metal scene and there are plenty of Band-Maid fans that prefer their earlier more pop-rock/pop-punk focussed sound. Funnily enough, I was going to bring up Scandal since they are a band that don't work for me personally on the 2 albums I own by them (Kiss From The Darkness and Mirrors). I was thinking of comparing Nek! to Scandal actually but then I realized that Howard is a big fan and I don't know Scandals backcatalogue well enough to properly compare the two. The fact that you, as a fan, basically do so as well makes me think I might have been on the money. To be clear, I am not saying they are the same band, but the chorus reminds me a bit of the Scandal tracks I have heard for some reason. I am personally pretty hit-or-miss with pop-rock bands/songs, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy some of them (I mostly enjoy Shishamo, Tetora, Moshimo and Kaneyorimasaru for example, although most of those are on the pop-punk side) and that I can't see pop-rock bands do well. Scandal has a lot of fans, hopefully they can reach a bunch of them with their music.

@@MaartenT I would say Nek! is still more hard rock than Scandal. This would be about as hard as Scandal goes (AMDKJ, for example). I think NEK! will enjoy a medium of somewhere between Band Maid and Scandal and could do very well there. It will be interesting to see if Nek! can appeal to us both.

@@scottshepherd8795 I agree, I think they actually might pull it off too. I am surprised how many views their first single actually has and have no clue how they pulled that off, but I pretty sure that they should be able to find fans in both fanbases if they can keep perfecting their sound over the years. I am certainly going to try to keep following them, who knows if they can bring me closer to really enjoying some of the pop-rock bands that I have a tough time getting into.

You know, I don't think I remember enough GoGoDolls to even know 😂 . I may have to go check if they sound anything like this!

I have to agree :) !!!

Interesting points! I think this will be the interesting point of the path forwards, as I suspect many people will lean in the heavier direction such as yourself. I must say, I hope they continue to follow this direction, as I found the mixture of the faster elements with the heavier elements was done exceptionally well. We've got a long way to go though, and if the variation in their work keeps up, hopefully they will have many happy fans for many reasons. Fingers crossed!

What's the band that shall not be named? 😄😄

@@dearkazuscorner2549 The one that Hanabie started out covering when they were in school, MTH.