Visual Kei...

Visual Kei is a term usually related to Japanese rock music, referring to bands whose primary point of interest for their fans is their costume and appearance.

Members of Visual Kei bands often wear striking makeup, style their hair in dramatic shapes, reminiscent of "hair bands" from the '80s, and wear elaborate costumes. Although the vast majority of the musicians are male, they often wear makeup and clothing which would be considered "feminine". Gothic Lolita is a style within visual kei that became popular around 2000, and by 2002 had become a major youth fashion in Japan. Recently some bands are returning to the more colourful and "fantastic" image popular 5 or 6 years ago, taking inspiration from computer roleplaying games and anime.

[Extracted from: Frenster acc of Visual Kei...]
Visual Kei, being based upon visual style, is therefore a genre of band but not a specific type of music. The bands most often play J-Rock (e.g. LUNA SEA, Dir En Grey) and vocal based pop or light rock (e.g. Glay, L'arc~en~ciel, Gackt). However, bands playing or influenced by Anime theme music, Heavy Metal (e.g. SEX MACHINEGUNS), Industrial, Synth Pop, Punk and so on are also to be found. Taking the genre in a wide sense, most of the bands would be considered to play some kind of "rock" music.

Largely this movement is credited to have been started "almost single handedly" by X JAPAN, however a rising trend of utilizing visual shock to gain membership in the independent scene was well in effect by the time X went major: they may be seen in this sense not as a catalyst for the movement, but a mechanism to involve dominant Japanese popular culture with it. Bands in the early '90s such as Die in Cries , LUNA SEA, , Shazna, and By-Sexual along with previous bands BUCK-TICK and X JAPAN encouraged a "boom" of this media culture.