My First Rarezhut Purchase (A Review)

The life of an overseas visual kei fan is incredibly tough when it comes to buying your favorite band’s CDs. Majority of the time, single and album releases are exclusive to Japan and we have to go through specialty stores like CDJapan or Yesasia or even Amazon Japan to make such a purchase. The game gets even harder when you look for bands that have broken up. Also, don’t get me started on pricing…

I was excitedly overwhelmed by RarezHut’s selection of hard-to-find, older singles, albums, and DVDs from many indie bands that broke up years ago! Not to mention a good majority of their stock is less than $10! For my first purchase, I limited myself with to 2 CDs: Plastic Tree’s 2005 single, Sanbika and Cannonball vol.4, a visual kei band compilation album.

When I saw Plastic Tree (literally my favorite band ever, don’t get me started) CDs on the website, my heart skipped a beat! I already had Sanbika on my ipod, but there’s that great sentimental feeling of owning the physical copy of a single or album. Not to mention I did not have the B-side song.

I chose Cannonball vol.4 when I was searching up an old band I use to love, Canzel (they’re literally the predecessors of current band UNiTe). Canzel disbanded in 2010 and I still do not have their full discography, so I jumped at the CD when I saw they were featured on the compilation. I was also excited to see songs from other older bands like DaizyStripper, D=out, and CellT. Honestly, many of the bands featured have disbanded since then (this CD did come out back in 2008), so it’s a nice sampler of older bands that you may have never listened to.

•Shipping
I got a confirmation email later the same day updating me that my package was shipped. My order came within a week which I was quite happy about! Being able to get same-day shipping is always an awesome surprise for someone who does a huge amount of online shopping!

•Delivery
When my order came, it was safely packed in bubble wrap. The shipping was domestic, the journey for my CDs was not very long at all. For CDs that have been used previously, they were in good condition. Beside general scratch marks on the CD that occur over time with use, everything in the case was included like the lyric booklet and cover art. I’m happy to say that my CDs were playing perfectly as well!

I can easily say that as a fan of Visual Kei who looks for CDs from older bands and older CDs from popular bands, I had a super positive experience with RarezHut! Remember when I said I was limiting myself to only 2 CDs for this purchase? I already have my eye on a few LM.C and SuG singles, so this will not be my final purchase from them! If you love old indie bands, I would totally recommend checking them out! I’m excited to see their next livestream to see what will be in stock soon!

Also, A-To-J has a coupon special going on for 5% your first purchase when you use the code: A&J05

www.rarezhut.net

-Paloma A.K.A Alpacqueen