Japanese Rock and Metal

A few years ago, when I started learning Japanese, I realised that being a fan of Japanese bands could help with my studies. Watching interviews with them, reading their tweets, etc. would be great practice with new and exciting studying material coming all the time! And that would certainly be much more fun than grammar books. So, I went to YouTube and spent a lot of time looking for rock and metal bands from Japan. At first I wasn't very lucky – the easiest to find mainstream bands didn't grab me. But eventually I found Janne Da Arc, BUCK-TICK, exist†trace, and D'espairsRay, and my 'listening to lots of Japanese rock and metal' era began. ^u^

Last year, when working on my Women of colour in rock and metal Twitter thread, I revisited a few Japanese bands that I knew had women in them, and some of them I became a fan of! And then I just kept finding more and more cool bands that I liked, with or without women, and now I don't even know how many Japanese bands I listen to! =D So, I figured it was time to make a post featuring some of my finds! There's something special about Japanese metal, and I love how many all-female bands they have! Also, I used to be mostly indifferent to guitar solos, but I enjoy so many Japanese guitar solos now – perhaps I just didn't like what kind of solos I heard in European metal and not the guitars themselves? After all, my favourite guitarist is you from Janne Da Arc! ^u^

These are all bands I started listening to no more than a year ago, in no particular order.

And no, I didn't become fluent in Japanese yet, but my knowledge of attractive Japanese musicians is pretty vast now haha.

Aldious – We Are

Mary's Blood – Marionette

Nocturnal Bloolust – Genesis

Unlucky Morpheus – Black Pentagram

Serenity In Murder – The Rule

lynch. – Creature

Lovebites – Shadowmaker

Femme Fatale – Freya

LIV MOON – Black Ruby

陰陽座 (Onmyouza) – 青天の三日月

Wagakki Band – 戦-ikusa-

FILL IT UP – Thousands of Lie

DEXCORE – Imitation