On the 14th of March 2016, the Japanese band CROSSFAITH came to Paris for a concert at Le Trabendo, last date of their tour “XENO Europe Tour 2016“.
Only a few hours before the show, we had the opportunity to meet with the bassist of the band, Hiroki, for an interview.
It’s our first interview with you. Could you present yourself and the band?
This is Hiroki, I play bass and I spit Jack Daniels to the people of the show. Thank you.
How did you met each other and how did the band form then?
That was when I was seventeen. The singer Ken and the DJ Teru (Tamano Terufumi) formed a band with each other because they were friends since they were 18. And Tatsu (Amano Tatsuya) was new. Singer Ken was the leader of the music club in high school when he was seventeen and Tatsu was like the new student so Ken (Kenta Koie) brought Tatsu to the band and started metal band. I saw them when I was seventeen and they were really good.
Do you know the band called Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas? The singer, Minami, he’s my friend since we have twelve years old and we started a band. It was the first time, we started together and we were doing…I think we were doing well. After a few months, my band broke up. He joined Las Vegas and I joined CROSSFAITH. That’s how I started in the band.
As a group, what is it that makes your strength?
We didn’t know a lot when we started CROSSFAITH, we were from a local side of Osaka and… you know like if we grow up in Tokyo there is a lot of music club. But we were more nerds who were listening to music in Teru‘s really tiny room and you know like smoking weed and drinking together and showing’ this is my favorite new music recently’, like that… we were just nerds. But I think that was really good because if we have a lot of friends, and we are going out to party, party, party, we aren’t gonna be into music.
When we thought about our future at that time, we didn’t know and thought “What are we gonna do?”… Download Festival! Main stage of Download Festival! We were just like that and now we did it and I think we did a lot.
If you had to choose one of your songs for someone who doesn’t know your music yet, which one would it be? Why?
From all of our songs, I might say “Photosphere“. The song has a strong drum and bass and has hard parts. CROSSFAITH first album was more metal but now the percentage is different.
Which one of your songs are you the most excited to sing tonight?
“Scarlett“.We haven’t been playing it on this tour. So… for Paris… secret!
It’s not the first time that you are coming to Europe. What were your expectations for this new tour?
This time, I expect much because the first time we played here, with the group Architect from UK, that was chaos and we were surprised. I want to see it again.
Your last album XENO brings together a mix of hope, failure, love, betrayal and death. In what way is this album so different from the previous ones?
It’s really different, the producer is different. He’s not like our former producer. We worked with David Bendeth, he did Paramore, Breaking Benjamin and Bring Me The Horizon but he was like producer, producer like this is the right way. But Josh was like in the morning “Hey guys guys guys! I’ve got a new idea!” And he was more like making an album in a cave, we couldn’t see where we were going but he was like “I’ve got an idea and we can choose where we gonna go”. So he was more comfortable first and we made an album just by ourselves, we were called producer so it was comfortable for us. That was a big difference from the previous album. How we tracked was the opposite. Usually, the band start tracking from drums. Josh, his idea was “drum tracking last”. And then we could change, you know, if we track drum first you cannot change the accent. But if we track it last, we can change every time, every day, we brought new ideas. That was really good!
This year, you are celebrating your 10th anniversary as CROSSFAITH since you started your career in 2006. On this occasion, are going to do something special?
What do you expect?
We didn’t know it’s gonna be our 10th year until you guys told me. So we haven’t think about it. Something… Yeah we may do something…
What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen on tour?
There’s a lot. Two years ago, when we were touring in UK and Europe. And I think that was in UK, we were moving in the bus and we stopped. We were still like in the middle of the city. Teru went to pee on the village but there was people under there,and the guys were so mad. It was so funny!
Do you have a message for your French fans?
Thank you for everything and make sure to check Xeno. On this tour we had a really good time in France. We had tour here a lot of times but this time… I’m not just talking about food but how you guys are having food is really beautiful. There’s “Bon appétit” and “Merci”, not just like eating fast-food.
We would like to thank Hiroki for answering our questions.
