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One of the most impressive music bands that have existed its at the same time; a well know one and an unknown band to others, and the reason of this its that it’s a Japanese metal band, and sadly in our time, the music that comes from Asia haven’t had the distribution and recognition it deserves except for a few selected circles. However it was the Japanese best selling band of the 90.
Having said that, X Japan its just a brilliant band in terms of music, the style of their songs its divided in two characteristic ways, they have a lot of cool power metal songs, and on the other hand they have beautiful emotional ballads, their songs tend to be long some of them reaching the 10 minutes length. Their songs are written in two languages, some of them in Japanese and others in English and some times the two languages mixes perfectly in one song, there are also versions of the same song performed complete in Japanese and in English such as Kurenai. Besides that, the fact that they sang also in Japanese (a not popular language) mustn’t be a detractor to avoid listening to their songs, because the music its so well done and the songs so well performed that at the end the language it’s the less important thing. (And these days we can download the translation of the songs to understand the meaning) |
History
X Japan started in 1982 (named at the time just X) founded by two high school friends, “Toshi” Toshimitsu Deyama) who was the vocal, and Yoshiki Hayashi who played drums piano and was in charge of the music and song compositions. Their first single was I´ll Kill You, meanwhile they made small contributions to a compilation disc named Heavy Metal Force III
After that Yoshiki founded his own record label named Extasy records in which they released their singles “Orgasm” and “Stab Me in the Back” among others, at that time the guitarist Tomoaki Ishizuka best known as “Pata”, joined the group, being followed by Hideto Matsumoto “Hide” and Taiji Saeada, guitarist and bassist respectively. By then they had their complete lineup and they released their first CD Vanishing Vision in 1988 with that they made their first large performance in Japan in the Tokyo Dome (this is a huge indoor stadium with capacity of 42,000 seats, home of the Yomiuri Gigants baseball team) |
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Visual Kei
The look of the members was a key factor to the group, they were one of the
“creators” of Visual Kei, Visual Kei it’s a subgenre of J rock (Japanese rock) emerged during the 80´s combining the influence of city pop and Glam rock from USA, the term in fact derives for the shortened slogan of X Japan in one of their tours “Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock.”
The Visual Kei look consists of: A lot of visual striking makeup, big hairstyles in different colors and some recharged costumes (but X Japan didn’t use a lot of costumes)
We can compare them with the style of glam-rock, punk, or in some cases metal in western music.
The next year (1989) they released their second album with Sony Studio, named Blue Blood, with 12 tracks this album contained some of the songs that will became huge success ones, such as “Endless Rain” a beautiful ballad song, “Kurenai” a super fast metal song and “X” the one that will became the hymn for the group. After that they released in 1991 their next album Jealousy with this they gained some international fame (in Asia mostly) but because there was another band named X in the USA they decided to change their name to X Japan. |
Dahlia
In 1993 their change disc label and signed with Atlantic Records at the same time Taiji left the band and was replaced by “Heath” Hiroshi Morie by this time they made Art of Life, just one single song CD with a 29 duration, and after it they released their final album Dahlia which again have really contrasting songs quick power metal ones like Dahlia, Rusty Nail, and impressive moving ballads such as Tears (the song that Yoshiki wrote for his father that had committed suicide) Crucify My Love, or Forever Love. In this moment they left the Visual Kei look and change to a more conservative look, only Hide maintained his red hair but in a shortened style.
Sadly for all the fans Toshi announced that he was leaving the band and because of that they made the Dahlia Final Tour in 1996, the Tokyo Dome was completely filled in the 5 concerts and the audience sang the songs with a huge emotion, in one moment during “Endless Rain” Toshi stopped singing leaving just the music playing and the crowd sang the chore part of Endless Rain for several minutes over and over again in a touching moment for all the assistance.
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Shocking news
On May 2, 1998 at around 8:32 in the morning, Hide the guitarist of X Japan died. He had arrived at his home, which he shared with his roommate at 6:30 that morning, he was very drunk. He was found by his roommate, with one end of a bath towel wrapped around his neck, the other on the doorknob. He was taken to the hospital, but it was too late. Hide passed away that morning. The police wrote it as a suicide on his death certificate, but many people (me included) refuse to believe that. Hide had too many things going for him at that time, he was so cheerful and had a lot of projects going on, he enjoyed life a lot, so it was maybe a stupid drunk game that ended in the wrong way, many people cried a lot there were some suicides of fans, so X Japan members had to ask fans “to not imitate that, because it wouldn’t made Hide happy”
On the day of the funeral, thousands of fans lined up to bring flowers to Hide and sign their name all the roads the hearse passed through were closed off, and thousands of fans lined the streets. It was a sad day for all Japan, and to many X Japan fans all over the word. Toshi sang the Forever Love song, and Yoshiki gave a moving speech.
Yoshiki had plans to reform X Japan with Hide, but his death those plans were shattered. After hide’s memorial he withdrew from public and moved back to LA. Eventually, he went back to work as producer and songwriter for his very successful label Extasy Records, with bands such as Dir En Grey, Glay, Kiedney Thieves and Abandoned Pools.
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The members of X Japan had a strong and defined personality being mainly 3 of them: |
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Yoshiki
As band leader and excellent musician, he was like the soul of the group, as a child he loved classical music and later he became interested in hard rock, that its completely reflected in the two song styles of X Japan, he do the composition and play piano and drums during concerts, being an excellent drummer, also he was in charge of the post production, and this days he is producer of very successful groups in his label Extasy Records. The lyrics in his songs tend to be really deep, and with well done metaphors.
Toshi
He and Yoshiki were friends since kinder garden, when they started forming a band, Toshi wanted to be the guitarist, but Yoshiki told all the members to sing to find out who was the best, and no one could beat Toshi. Toshi’s voice goes over about 3 octaves and so he can even sing songs that are originally written for a woman voice.
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Hide
He was such an interesting person always dressed in brilliant colors and red artificial hair tone, his guitar skills were amazing and besides X Japan he had his own projects Hide recorded and released his first solo album, Hide Your Face. In addition to songwriting, he played most of the guitars and bass on some of the tracks, and provided all lead vocals. The album's musical style differed significantly from the speed metal anthems and power ballads of X Japan, leaning more towards alternative rock. Hide then went on the “Hide our Psychommunity Tour”, for which the live band was hired that would later become part of his primary project, Hide with Spread Beaver.
Even these days if you go to Japan the music stores are still filled with Hide stuff, posters, k-chains etc. |
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After many request for the fans and many years later, X Japan kind of reunited again, in 2007 they made their first public appearance on the rooftop of the shopping center Aqua City in Odaiba, Tokyo, during which a music video for the newly recorded song "I.V." was filmed. "I.V." also appears on the soundtrack of the movie Saw IV. It is written by Yoshiki and recorded with all living X Japan members of the pre-breakup lineup. Previously unreleased guitar tracks by hide were used for the lead guitar part.
Then in January 2008 they gave 3 concerts in the Tokyo Dome using several substitute guitarist for Hides place (Wes Borland of Black Light Burns, Richard Fortus of Guns N' Roses and Sugizo) but always Hide was present in big screens with footage of him.
They planed a world tour including Paris and NY in the Madison Square Garden but because of many things those concerts were indefinitely postponed, they released a new song “ With out you” the name of the tour its rumored to be, "Final ~ To end our pain" that suggest a final tour, but on the other hand Yoshiki said that he plans to keep up with X Japan for a long time
Although its uncertain if this great band would stay together or not the great part of all its that their music its great, and it has no match in any other group, Asian, American or European, they had an unique style and a brilliant set of musicians working together.
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