Me & X Japan

On the evening of July 13, 1996 a friend showed me a three minute long anime music video. It was director Rintaro and character designer Nobuteru Yuuki’s X², their first anime adaptation of CLAMP’s ongoing manga series X. That fluidly animated, bloody, and spectacularly visual psychic action extravaganza stunned and awed me. However, the anime alone wasn’t solely what made the impact. The music video was set to a pounding, intense Japanese heavy metal song driven by insistent drums, powerful guitar, and raw, emotional vocals that demanded attention. Without even consciously realizing that was happening, I became an X Japan fan that evening, and in the fourteen years since, my respect and adoration of the group and its music has only increased.

Founded in 1982 by schoolboy friends Toshimitsu “Toshi” Deyama and Yoshiki Hayashi as just “X,” the hard rocking group pioneered of the now eponymous “visual kei” style of androgynous hard rockers wearing gothic make-up, flamboyant punk clothing, and wild, “big hair.” However, unlike many Japanese hard rock bands, the sound of X, renamed X Japan in 1992 to avoid confusion with the veteran American punk band, wasn’t just metal. Like a Japanese equivalent to England’s Queen, X Japan crafted a dynamic sound that merged rhythmic metal with the sweeping orchestral sound of classical piano and strings. Nowhere was that more evident in the group’s epic half-hour long English language 1993 song “Art of Life,” which deftly moved through crunchy heavy metal noise to elegiac piano medley.

I started out with the X Japan Singles Collection CD, an outstanding introduction to the group’s best and most popular tunes. When that single disc of highlight tracks grew insufficient, I ravenously bought all of X Japan’s albums: the original indie Vanishing Vision, the groups major label debut, Blue Blood, Jealousy, and Art of Life, the live album On the Verge of Destruction, and the B.O.X. ~ Best of X collector’s set (which I honestly think includes the group’s only mis-step, the too obviously Guns’n’Roses inspired single “Desperate Angel”). Now more than ten years later, I still vividly recall eagerly purchasing the 1996 Dahlia CD in the 1997 Anime Expo dealer’s room.

When X Japan disbanded in December 1997 I was elated by their beautiful farewell single, “The Last Song,” and bitterly disappointed that I’d never have an opportunity to see this amazing group perform in person. X Japan had sold over 30 million albums, sold out the Tokyo Dome well over a dozen times, and established itself as arguably Japan’s greatest rock band. With powerful English language songs including “Art of Life,” and “Crucify My Love,” I was convinced that the group had the potential to break-through in America. But a break-up seemingly made that seemingly a possibility forever unfulfilled. However, a decade after its break-up and the untimely death of its popular guitarist Hide, X Japan regrouped, as creative and as ambitious as ever.

X Japan launched its first North America concert tour on September 25, 2010, and the group is now finalizing its first international album consisting of new English language versions of four or five X Japan classics complimented by four or five brand new English language tunes. This weekend I’ll be attending the final show of X Japan’s first North American tour, the Sunday, October 10th performance at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. I’m tremendously excited to finally see this spectacular group in the flesh. I’m fully prepared to be aurally assaulted and amazed by the band’s “psychedelic violence crime of visual shock.”

With X Japan’s Yoshiki also now partnering with equally iconic creator Stan Lee for an as yet undisclosed project, X Japan appears poised on the verge of a second renaissance and an unprecedented breakthrough into American success.