Feature Article Draft

Feature Article

Demon’s Blade, or 鬼の出刃 as they are known in Japan, are the black metal power trio from the neon jungle of Kabuki-cho, Tokyo. They consist of guitarist Kazuya, bassist and frontman Tatsuda, and the mysterious drummer and vocalist known only as Oni, or Demon. Having been on the Tokyo music circuit since 2004, they have gained a large following that has stretched as far as mainstream Japanese television. It has not however, spread as far as the West. However, with their newest album, Raid of Sound, Demon’s Blade are hoping to conquer the West and achieve, in their words, “global domination”. We spoke to the man himself, Oni, about the band, Raid of Sound, and his further ambitions.

First of all, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I’ll start by asking this: How did Demon’s Blade come about?

Well, I’d known Tatsuda since high school, and we’d tried to make some visual kei style music and perform it around 2001, but we could never really make any waves with it. I think our problem was that we didn’t distinguish ourselves from other visual kei bands. We put the idea of being a band on hold until we saw deadman in Nagoya in late 2003. We hitched a ride there with this guitarist who Tatsuda sometimes went to the arcade with. Long story short, that guitarist was Kazuya and we formed Demon’s Blade not long after.

You mentioned Deadman, which is also the title of your first album. Is that a coincidence, or a homage?

Definitely a homage. We released Deadman around 2007, not long after the real deadman split up. A lot of our early stuff was inspired by their sound, so I think we all subconsciously decided to record it as a sort of tribute to our legends.

Is that album the only name of yours inspired by something else, or do you hide a lot of references in your work?

Funny that you ask that. Tatsuda is a complete nerd, and loves video games, which I mentioned was how he met Kazuya. Anyway, whilst we were spit balling about what to call the band, I tagged along to this arcade, ‘cause you could smoke in there. Anyway, there we all were, Tatsuda and Kazuya playing this arcade game, when one of the characters shouts “The power of a demon’s blade!” when he does his attack. We all sort of looked at each other, and decided that Demon’s Blade would be our name. As for any other references, buy our albums and find them yourself!

Were you trying to find a new sound at all for this album, or simply improving what you’ve already done?

I think we’re constantly trying to stay fresh in order to please the fans, as well as not make the same mistake myself and Tatsuda made the first time around. But in terms of this album, I think we definitely didn’t want to experiment too much, to try to expand into new markets. Of course I say that, but we definitely did try a couple new things with this new album.

Could you give us an idea of what they were?

Well, this is our first properly studio recorded and produced album, so we wanted to play around a bit with the new tools at our disposal. One of the big things we did was change the sound of the guitars to be much more intense, as we could channel the raw sound we were outputting better in the studio. We also played around a lot with the balancing, to make it sound really good on a car stereo.

Why was that?

So it would sound better on the radio!

Of course. As a matter I can no longer ignore, what’s with the mask?

Heh, I thought you’d ask about that. Around the same time we created the name, we were looking at the popular visual kei artists to see what we could… take… from their image. We noticed that lavish make-up was becoming more and more common, along with slightly sexual outfits. We were all down for the outfits, but I wasn’t on board with the make-up. As we were thinking of something cool and original I could wear instead, we walked past a costume shop that had a demon costume on display. The mask was cool, so I bought it and just started wearing it when we performed. To answer what will likely be your follow up question, we decided to wear suits when we make appearances off stage to seem professional, but to keep the stuff on our faces to stay recognisable.

That’s actually really cool. As you’re not particularly well-known here in the UK, are there any bands that you take inspiration from that could entice potential listeners?

Well, I think most of the bands we’re really inspired by are just as unknown as we are in the UK, but if anyone has heard of X Japan, they’re our main old-school influence. On top of them, we’re really big fans of Concerto Moon, and while they’re pretty unknown now, put out some really solid stuff that we want to build on. Of course, we want to emulate the greats, like Slayer, Cliff Burton’s Metallica, Motörhead, stuff like that. Though I think the best way to imagine us is if you took BABYMETAL, removed the whole kawaii pop s***, and replaced the vocals with James Hetfield. Then you’ve got our basic sound down, but we try to change the formula for what people expect from metal, and try to fuse a lot of other genres into our work, so you can’t get a perfect idea of our sound without hearing us!

Gnarly. How often do you guys do live performances, and is there any chance of a UK tour?

We love doing live performances, so we end up doing them quite a bit! I think we do our best stuff when we’re playing off an audience, and we all enjoy being on stage, so we end up playing maybe 3-4 nights a week. It sounds like a lot, but we do a lot of supporting act style stuff, along with playing some smaller bars and such. We’re usually based in Tokyo, but we quite often play in Nagoya, they’ve got a great music scene over there. As for a UK tour, we’re planning on doing a full world tour if we get enough interest in this album, and we’ll definitely throw at least three nights in the UK on there.

So lastly, is there anything you want to say to our readers?

I’ll say this – if you want something completely different from the norm, something that is so far from the pop charts that it’s unaware of their existence, check us out. If not, simply rock on.

Raid of Sound, by Demon’s Blade, is available now on Spotify and iTunes, with a limited physical distribution of CDs and Vinyl available December 8^th.