Discovering Hanabie: The Unexpected Powerhouses of Japanese Metal.

In this episode, PJ Pat shares an article from Metal Hammer Magazine about Hanabi, an all-girl Japanese metal band that's breaking stereotypes and making major waves in the music scene. Initially skeptical about the authenticity of their sound, PJ Pat does some digging and finds out that Hanabi is the real deal. Highlighting their chaotic and diverse musical style, PJ Pat discusses their rise to fame, their influences, and their ambitious future. With a charismatic lead vocalist and high-energy performances, Hanabi is becoming a sensation both locally and internationally. Tune in to learn more about this phenomenal band and why you should definitely check them out.

00:00 Introduction to Hanabie: A Japanese Metal Sensation
00:37 Discovering Hanabie: First Impressions and Research
01:48 Diving into the Metal Hammer Article
02:45 Hanabie's Unique Sound and Style
04:02 Hanabie's Rise and Ambitions
06:09 Comparisons and Inspirations
07:22 Hanabie's Live Performances and Fan Reactions
09:02 The Origins and Evolution of Hanabie
12:07 Hanabie's Message and Future Plans
19:22 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

[00:00:00] Guess what? I am excited to bring you this article from Metal Hammer Magazine about this band I discovered recently called Hanabi. Yes, that's right. Hanabi. They are a Japanese all girl freaking metal band. That is right. If you look at them face value, they look like High school girls really, but the sound that they can come up with is just unbelievably heavy.

[00:00:23] Initially, when I first saw them and I heard them, those two, it didn't connect. The, the, the, what I was seeing on screen and what I was hearing did not connect. I actually thought it was fake. I actually thought that it wasn't really them performing and singing. So I had to go to YouTube. I had to do some research to really find out, was it truly them performing?

[00:00:42] And yes, you can find a lot of live videos on YouTube of them. actually performing their instrument and singing. And the reason why I say that is because the singer, especially, she has a huge range in voice. She can sing like this high pitch, beautiful sound voicings, but also this, like the guttural, like metal voice that you're like, no, this, this can't be coming from her.

[00:01:05] There's no way. Look at her, you know? And I thought it was just this Japanese music company ploy to get, uh, Four girls that look cute together and, um, hire a bunch of session musicians to come up with this music and match them together. And they can make money off touring like that, but no, it really is them.

[00:01:24] They are the real deal. Totally legit. So I'm excited to bring this interview from metal hammer magazine and let's just dive into them and learn about them together. I'm not even sure how old they are in terms of not age, but in terms of how long they've been around to the music scene. Let's get into this.

[00:01:42] You ready? All right.

[00:01:48] Okay, let's dive into Hanabi, shall we? So the title of the article is called, This is Harajuku Core. Brash, bold, colorful, and chaotic. Enter the world of Hanabi, Japan's most exhilarating new metal hopes.

[00:02:04] Well, that wasn't supposed to happen. Oopsies. Words Paul Branigan pictures Kenki Ito. I mean, look at them. I can't believe these girls are coming up with the type of sound that they come up with. It's crazy. Absolutely crazy. And what's cool about it, it's super refreshing. I mean, I don't understand a lick that the girl sang, but you can just feel the emotion that's coming out of their music.

[00:02:28] So that speaks to how good the music is. I highly encourage you to check it out. What I like about it, it's kind of, it is Chaotic that's a great description about it. It's kind of like all over the place. It's like no metal you've heard before and There's like some I don't know man. It's hard to describe.

[00:02:45] There's just many sounds within a song many styles within a song there's like these poppy cheerleader type sounds and these death metal sounds within the same song pretty interesting stuff Okay, let's get into the article. Viewed from above, the famous pedestrian crossing outside Tokyo's Shibuya Station resembles the world's largest and best organized wall of death.

[00:03:08] Stand at its center point as thousands of Tokyo residents and wide eyed tourists hurtle across the intersection from every conceivable angle and you'll experience true sensory overload. The blur of human traffic is accompanied by a dizzying, truly deafening collage of sounds. The relentless metallic clinking of the district's Pachiko Arcades clashes against the effervescent beats of the latest J pop and K pop hits bleeding across the Shibuya, uh, 109 Mall, the world's wildest, loudest department store.

[00:03:38] Advertising jingles blare out from the giant neon screens overhead, and loud hailer yielding street vendors yell enthusiastic exhortations to embrace the joys of consumerism. Sounds pretty crazy. I gotta go. It's a jarring, disorienting, almost overwhelming experience, yet also exhilarating, intoxicating, and weirdly life affirming.

[00:04:00] Okay, so I really gotta go now after a sentence like that. This rush of sensations mirrors the emotions stirred while listening to the city's latest breakout band, Hanabi, whose joyously chaotic, thrillingly intense, hyperkinetic second record, Reborn Superstar! released in the summer of 2023, was heralded in this magazine as signifying the arrival of Japan's next great crossover metal stars.

[00:04:24] Such predictions do not faze Hanabi at all. In a recent interview, they asked what the future holds for her band. Vocalist Yukina was even bolder stating, I want to become the world's number one girl band. We're not accustomed to hearing Japanese bands express such naked ambition, but Hanabi have zero interest in conforming to stereotypes.

[00:04:44] This was made abundantly clear 12 months ago with the eye catching video for Pardon Me, I Have to Go Now, which saw the quartet high school friends Yukina Matsuri, who does guitar vocals, Hetsu, who does the bass, plus 2023 recruit Chika does the drums, rebelling against misogynistic corporate culture and violently rejecting assigned gender roles.

[00:05:06] Hey rock fan if you're digging this type of content and want to support the channel Please consider clicking on the link in the description below where you get access to the it's one letter podcast Store where you get rock and roll themed clothing like this Like this like this hoodie with the devil horns up in the air Like this Gryphon logo.

[00:05:24] Gryphon is a mythological creature, half eagle, half lion. Ooh, dangerous. There's a black one for ya. And you also got the double devil horns right here in this one. So if any of these rocked your boat at all, I'd appreciate you to click on the link. And you know what, just for doing that, use the code ROCK1, the number one, louder to benefit from a 15 percent off just for you.

[00:05:48] Equally their music defies categorization, melding influences from metalcore, punk, electronica, j pop, and anime soundtracks into thrillingly intense, ultra modern, Gen Z metal anthems. Yeah, so that's what I was saying earlier, it's hard to categorize this band because there's so many genres within the same song.

[00:06:06] Anyways, have I told you to go check them out yet? Unlike Babymetal, there is no mysterious Svengali directing Hanabi. No stylists manicuring their image. No carefully plotted career arc mapped out for them. So they mentioned Babymetal. So my introduction to Japanese metal was actually through Babymetal. I think a friend of mine showed me that band.

[00:06:25] And for those of you who haven't seen them, they're another kind of crazy band. They're, I think, start off with two girls, now they're three. But it was just like these beautiful, looks like high school. I hate to go back to this, but they do look like high school girls, the way they dressed and you know, how young they look back then.

[00:06:43] Even now I've seen them recently, but it's just like this super heavy guitar oriented metal music behind these beautiful voices that almost sound like a cheerleader style type of thing. And again, I had never heard anything like that before, but this I find goes well. One level louder, I should say. One level louder than BABYMETAL in terms of craziness and the chaos.

[00:07:07] In the tightly policed Japanese music scene, they're an anomaly, which may explain why they're already gaining a fiercely devoted fanbase, both at home and internationally. The Hanabi family is growing all the time, every day, Yukina tells Metal Hammer. It's exciting for us to think about where we go next.

[00:07:22] Last year, Hanabi played the long running Dynamo Metal Fest in the Netherlands as part of their debut European tour. On a build that features the likes of Megadeth, Trivium, and Biohazard, they stood out. No shit. During their set, Yukina was dismayed to spot a young boy in a crowd weeping uncontrollably, and so afterwards, she sought him out to find out what had upset him.

[00:07:44] It turned out that the boy was visiting from the U. S. and had actually been crying tears of joy. He explained to Yukina that Hanabi were his favorite band, and that he had persuaded his parents to fund a family holiday to Europe. So we can go see them play live. Figuring that they may not have the opportunity to tour in America.

[00:08:01] So overwhelmed was he by his first experience of seeing a group live that he began crying. We've heard similar stories since from the other grade school children who convinced their parents to take them to see us play. But that boy was the first one, Yukina says. I'm so happy that we're able to encourage these little kids to have fun and pursue their dreams.

[00:08:18] Just as the other bands have inspired us. You know what, she raises a good point, like how I was saying earlier, if you look at just the picture of the band, and then you listen to the music, there's some sort of disconnect there. So I think that speaks to a lot of people who do feel, pun intended, disconnected, and who do feel that like if they don't fit into a box, this band definitely speaks to that person.

[00:08:38] And I think more and more now, especially with a lot of the mental health issues and what's going on, I think more and more people feel alienated and alone. And this band definitely speaks to them. I mean, like I said, they sing in Japanese, so I'm sure a lot of people have no idea what they're saying, but they can feel it through the music, and that's such a powerful thing.

[00:08:57] And I think that's why this band is getting a lot of attention, because just the music alone speaks for itself. Hanabi's own journey began in the spring of 2015, when the four members weren't much older than a buoyant question. It was initiated by the briefest of exchanges between Yukina and Matsuri in a corridor at the all girl Tokyo high school both attended.

[00:09:15] We were actually in junior high school together, but we weren't too close back then, says Yukina. But one day in high school, I heard from a mutual friend that Matsuri likes loud music, and so I went up to her and said, I heard that you like Maximum the Hormone and Babymetal, is that true? That was a catalyst for everything that has happened since.

[00:09:32] While Babymetal needed no introduction, Maximum the Hormone have a lower profile outside their native Japan. Huge cult stars on a country's loud rock circuit, and often likened to System of a Down for their irreverent quirk of humor, Maximum the Hormone punctuate their alt metal with elements of ska, funk, hip hop, and punk, and have a reputation as one of the country's most engaging live bands.

[00:09:54] Oh man, definitely gotta go check this band out, Maximum the Hormone. Okay, well, gonna be streaming that later. Yukina and Matsuri freely admit that Hanabi were a little more than a Maximum the Hormone tribute band in their earliest days, but their sound quickly evolved as they absorbed influences from anime, video games, synth heavy, Vocaloid pop, homegrown rock acts, in parenthesis, a crowd of rebellion, Tokyo incidences, sim, good for nothing, hysteric panic, and international death metal and metalcore artists.

[00:10:25] Matsuri credits Alabama Ragers Gideon for opening the door to western acts. I started listening to brutal death metal bands, Yukina adds. I'm kind of laughing because I can see the image of her and it just still doesn't fit. I once read an article that said that brutal death metal helps you relax before going to sleep.

[00:10:43] So I started listening to it as a background music when I went to bed. Oh, man, she's hilarious. The duo also name check Gagutora, the drummer with Japanese metalcore outfit Crystal Lake, for encouraging them to push their music into more experimental, less formally structured territories during earlier studio recording sessions.

[00:11:02] Man, I'm telling you the Japanese music scene must be insane. So one thing that always marked me is Marty Friedman leaving Megadeth. And just packing up and going to Japan. For those of you who don't know, Marty Friedman is actually a big star in Japan. He's been living there for many, many years now.

[00:11:18] Marty Friedman from Megadeth, obviously. And Friedman has said in interviews that what initially attracted him to Japan was just the diversity of music that was happening in the country at the time. Apparently even now like just there's was all kinds of craziness going on in terms of just the metal scene there I think Marty felt like it was getting a little too monotonous the metal scene here in Western side of the world But you know back then There's all these genres just mixing it up in the metal scene in Japan.

[00:11:47] And that's what Got him to go there, and he's been there ever since, and is actually a huge star there. He has a couple of bands there, he's on a couple of TV shows there, and he's like fluently speaking Japanese. It's pretty impressive actually, really cool, and he seems really happy there, and really soaking in the music scene there to this day.

[00:12:05] Okay, back to the article. Hanabi now is whatever we want Hanabi to be, Yukina says simply. What Hanabi want to be right now is what they call Haraguchukor. The name explicitly links their brash, bold, forward facing sound with Haraguchu, Tokyo's most vibrant and colorful district. An area renowned for its cutting edge street fashion, it's the spiritual home of the city's youth tribes, from sharp dressed bikers and pallid goths to extravagantly dressed steampunks.

[00:12:32] and the sassy striking ganguro gals. The latter with their dark fake tans, bleached hair, and minimalist clothing are celebrated in the video to the single be the gal early summer ver. Hanabi's admiring salute to their individuality, fearlessness, and self confidence. You want to put out positive messages even when the music is its most brutal says Matsuri.

[00:12:56] It's okay to be who you are and like what you like and live life your own way. Those girls are an inspiration to us because they don't care what anyone else thinks. Wow, now I'm sure that's a message that can resonate to a lot of people, right? Live your life your own way and don't care what anyone else thinks.

[00:13:13] Now those are words I can live by for sure. You go, Hanabi! Reborn Star was conceived as a space themed concept album with its opening tracks, Blast Off, and Hyperdimensional Galaxy suggesting that Hanabi's music is being beamed From a different dimension. Get the band are not afraid to address more commonplace Gen Z concerns, such as the dangerously addictive allure of dating apps, uh, which refers to their song, Ray, what dating apps generation and the anxieties inherent in maintaining a permanently online social media presence, referring to their song warning.

[00:13:45] Their videos and live performances exude a similarly uncontained personality from the cartoonishly aggressive yet stylish videos for pardon me. I have to go now and to sue run away to the explosive gig at the camden underworld in the summer that marked the end of their 2023 uk european tour had to become over as smart self possessed fun loving and proudly independent young woman so i've seen a lot of footage on youtube about their performance from the camden underworld festival And man, they rock out.

[00:14:16] Like, what I mean by that is that they're all over the place. Like, they're really active, headbanging, you know. Really, uh, a great stage presence, you know. They're not one of those bands, like Oasis, that just stands up there and just, you know, looks at their shoes. They really do give a great performance running around upstage.

[00:14:35] And the band gets really into it. The fans, even more, get really into it. Mosh Pit's going on. Like, the real deal. It's a shame then that today's interview is conducted over Zoom with the cameras turned off. An interpreter sits in on a call, as do management representatives. Given the circumstances, it's hard to get a genuine sense of Yukina Mitsuri's true personalities.

[00:14:55] Oh, that sucks. I wonder why they had to include those people in the interview, and why they couldn't just do it with Yukina Mitsuri. That's weird. Hopefully that's not a Big Brother situation going on. Perhaps mindful that a cover story for a respected international music magazine carries a certain gravity, they seem a little subdued and guarded.

[00:15:11] Huh, that's too bad. A jokey question about where Hannabee tours might rank on a sliding scale, measuring rock and roll excess. With the carefully insulated BABYMETAL at 1 on set scale and Joan Jett's party lovin LA punk and roll crew, The Runaways at number 10, is met with a response revealing that, when not on stage, these 20 something musicians like nothing so adrenalized as doing laundry and visiting shopping malls.

[00:15:34] I guess they leave it all out on stage. Still, even with their expressions unreadable, Yukina and Matsuri are audibly appreciative and excited about Hanabi's current trajectory. Hammer is speaking to them just before they're due to support Limp Bizkit in Tokyo. Limp Bizkit? They're still going around, really?

[00:15:50] Auckland and Sydney. They met Fred Durst in West Borland at last year's Louder Than Life festival in Kentucky. Wow, Fred Durst is gonna be what? In his fifties right now? Mid fifties? And he's still singing break stuff? Wow. Good on you, Fred. Good on you. I asked why they picked us to play with them in Japan and Australia and New Zealand, and they said that they saw our videos and thought they were interesting and cool and fun, says Yukina, who will later end up joining Limp Bizkit on stage in Auckland to sing Nuki.

[00:16:16] Those videos have undeniably boosted their international profile. The surreal We Love Sweets promo was a Gimme Chocolate style viral hit last year, Assisted by a flood of TikTok and YouTube reaction videos. I think Gimme Chocolate was a Babymetal song actually. So I think they got inspired by Babymetal.

[00:16:33] Still Yukina and Matsuri view Hanabi shows as key to their future success. Not that it's always been easy for them. At their earliest shows in Tokyo's clubs, They were met with skepticism from fans and other bands who doubted their abilities, at least until they actually plugged in and played. Oh man, I, so like I was saying earlier, I fell into that same trap.

[00:16:53] I fell into the same trap, cause it's just so unbelievable, listening to the music and just looking at how they look. You just, I just needed to see it to believe it, so I guess a lot of people felt the same way. Oh, Hanabi, you don't get the respect. You are getting it now from me, definitely, and definitely from the metal.

[00:17:08] community with this article for sure. We didn't have much of an audience back then when we first started booking gigs, but we were excited and keen to make an impression. And please, Yukina remembers. I'd jump into the crowd and scream in people's faces or kick over beer crates and people would be shocked as they weren't expecting such energy or aggression from little high school girls.

[00:17:27] It's always nice to exceed expectations and surprise people. Damn right. That attitude continues to underpin Hanabi's entire approach to gigs, where babymetal shows are built around choreographed performances designed to unite. The band and their devoted audience their country women are more of an unpredictable and anarchic proposition on stage Yeah, that is true.

[00:17:48] If you check out baby metal videos, it's very much choreographed. That is right They have all these moves that they do on stage probably the fans know the moves inside and do with them type thing But yeah, this is the complete opposite of that Still, there are moments of syncopated brilliance, chiefly the already iconic gang chorus of What the fuck?

[00:18:06] Delivered midway through the gal. In Europe, every country and every audience reacted differently, which was fun to see, Matsuri says, praising each territory for their wild enthusiasm. Yukina adds that the quartet's London show exploded to the max. The group's 2024 live diary is rapidly filling up, with Hanabi set to hit the summer festival circuit hard, including their very first trip to Donington Park for Download 2024.

[00:18:29] Oh wow, cool! Now I'm telling you, if you made it to Download Festival, that means you've made it folks. That's such a great barometer for where they are right now. Very cool to see. Of course at first, with everything developing so fast, there were times we thought, Is this a dream? Says Yukina. But at the same time, it gradually grew on us that this is happening.

[00:18:47] From the start, we believed in our music and our potential. And now we're at a point where we have the realization that our music is finally spreading, and we want to push it further. So now, it's not like a dream, it's our reality, and we want to keep it going and take it as far as we can. What about that ambition to become the world's number one girl band?

[00:19:03] Why stop there? Why not shoot for being the world's number one band regardless of gender? Sure, why not? Yukina laughs. All the great bands started out with the same dreams we have. We hope that more and more people will be interested enough to listen to at least one song and see why people are talking about us.

[00:19:19] Give us a chance, and maybe we'll blow your minds. Okay, well that ends the article. Cool. Make sure you go check out reborn superstar If I haven't been preaching enough about this band go see them go check them out on youtube see how they look like and see the intensity of their shows and just the Uniqueness of what they're presenting to you.

[00:19:38] It's really cool My hope with this episode was to introduce you to something new something Difference something that you'll be excited to go check out. Hope I accomplished my mission Thank you so much for listening really appreciate you all If you learned a thing or two you're excited about going to check them out smash that like button Will you and subscribe I really appreciate it really helps me out.

[00:19:57] Thank you so much rock on one louder Thanks

[00:20:04] for sticking to the end Pj pat and I really appreciate it Connect with PJ Pat on Instagram, X, and Tik Tok at rockwithpjpat. If you want to support the show and love wearing rock and roll themed apparel, please check out itsonelouder. com.