Are you Japanese, centurion? You write English VERY well indeed, if so!

By the way: what's all this 'Visual Kuei' things all about? It strikes me as a strange phenomenon.

It's "Visual Kei", and it's just an elaborate, "eccentric" aesthetic many Japanese bands taken on.

I'm not Japanese, though I've lived here for about 7 years. I'm Canadian.

Visual Kei was a pop-culture phenomenon that started in the early 90s, and is now the biggest trend of Japanese music, next to mass-produced boy and girl bands.

In the 80s, there were a lot of bands in various Japanese alternative/underground music scenes (mostly metal, but also punk, goth/industrial, and glam) that decided to "outdo" bands from overseas by adding a more over-the-top theatrical element by incorporating more elaborate extreme fashions, such as loads of androgynous makeup, huge hairstyles, and colorful costumes.
X Japan are largely credited as both the originators of the style, and the ones who brought it into the mainstream after both commercializing their sound and reaching out to the mass market.

After that happened, lots of mainstream Japanese rock and pop bands in the early 90s started copying the look, and turning it into something of a Japanese subculture and pop-culture fashion trend, which is when "visual kei" was born.

I'm not really so good at genres so I'm just going to list some bands from all over the map and try to guess... Ignore the genres you don't like

Acid King (stoner/doom)
Atheist (death)
Suffocation (death)
Venom (black)
Goatwhore (black)
Exhumed (death)
Grief (doom/sludge??) ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alYiwTTlClM )
Upsidedown Cross (sludge/punkish)
Mayhem (black)
Nuclear Assault (thrash)
Sons of Otis (stoner)
Bolt Thrower (death)
Cryptic Slaughter (Crossover thrash i think it's called, more punk oriented)
Napalm Death (grind/death)
Iskra (they're tagged as 'blackened crust' on last.fm, whatever that means...)
Dawnbringer
Decapitated (death)
Nile (death)
Carcass (death/grind/?)
Bone Awl (black)
Electric Wizard (stoner)
Hellbastard (crust/some doom stuff)
Toadliquor (Doom/Sludge) (!!!!)
Noothgrush (doom)

Pantheïst is definitely worth a try imho. I've never gotten tired of them.

Hey, they're not bad. I like "Oblivion" so far.

My favorite has always been "The Loss Of Innocence"

I don't know how more people don't know about them

The whole "Journey Through Many Lands" album is pretty great.

Great list of metal!!

I tend to stay away from the stoner stuff unless it's Black Sabbath or Melvins.....

Can't emphasize on My Dying Bride enough! Their name has been in the doom scene for decades now, and even in some of their songs the line between doom and gothic metal gets so beautifully thinned and blurred! Exquisite, meaningful lyrics and melancholic melodies, their lead singer and frontman -- Aaron -- is indeed one of the best singers the whole metal genere has ever seen; doing perfect on anything from a melancholic normal singing to devlish screams and demonic grawls without a problem!

When it comes to "gothic metal", only the doom bands tend to do it right!!

Agreed!