Nine Treasures- I LOVED the music and the way it interwove metal with Chinese classical... but I HATED the vocals. They sounded muffled, weak, monotonous, and totally out to lunch. They lacked power, clarity, and dynamic qualities. I've seen and heard so many metal bands whose music is amazing, but a weak vocalist kills it. Like putting dime store ketchup on artisan pomme frittes.
I'm pretty familiar with Dir en Grey and that band is totally hit-or-miss for me. I love the music in the Dum Spiro Spero stuff, but the vocals sound overly processed and lack any sort of organic quality. On the other hand, the material from The Marrow of a Bone has much more organic vocal production, but the music itself is more "pop rock" to my ears than metal. If I could have the Dum Spiro Spero album with The Marrow of a Bone's vocals, then it would be perfect.
Man, if those Onmyo-Za albums (Fuujin Kaiko and Raijin Sousei) weren't so expensive to import, I'd have bought them months ago. So far, that and Eluveitie have been my picks of this litter. I have the Eluveitie album Slania (I love it) and still want to buy Origins.
To add something to this thread that tickled my fancy, here's what I've heard so far of Dog Fashion Disco's Ad Nauseam album. These two songs couldn't be any more different, but that's what I like about the band. They play whatever the fuck they want, genre barriers be damned. I wish I'd known about them earlier, because I want this album now. I encourage folks to listen to both songs. Same band, same album, couldn't be more different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCd0586QF2A Title track (it's got a groovy swing rock feel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V2BIJ3PED8 Covered in Blood (it's a damn good thrash song.)