SiM MAH and YOASOBI Ayase discuss metal music and the role their music should play in the world as music from Japan.

　In our special feature "The Latest Trends in Heavy Metal," we looked at how heavy metal has spread and how influential it has become in the 2020s. The word "metal" has a wide range of connotations, and what kind of metal music listeners like depends on their tastes, generation, and nationality.As a result, there is a wide range of pop music that is influenced by metal, and the evolution of metal bands themselves, which have renewed their musicality as if to break the genre barrier, has been accelerated since the streaming era.

　To round off this special feature, a special conversation was held between MAH (SiM) and Ayase (YOASOBI). In spite of their seemingly different fields, both SiM and YOASOBI have their roots in the metal and hardcore genres and sublimate them into tricky and pop songs with a high degree of originality. This is the first time MAH and Ayase have met, but they are deeply in tune with each other by revealing their attitude as stage performers. (Editorial department)

MAH and Ayase - The Metal Roots of Their Youth

ーーFirst of all, what kind of person is MAH to you, Ayase?

Ayase: He is charismatic. I was really nervous while shooting with him (laughs).

MAH: Thank you (laughs).

Ayase: I have been playing in hardcore/metalcore bands since I was in high school, and even back then, SiM, Crossfaith, and coldrain had a tremendous influence on me. All the  singers around me wanted to be like MAH, and for me as a high school student, this is a dream come true.

ーーSo, MAH, How do you see the current activities of YOASOBI and Ayase?

MAH: Needless to say, they are number one. First of all, my wife and son fell in love with YOASOBI, and they used to sing "Into The Night" all the time at home because she wanted to sing it at karaoke. 3 years ago, my son was 2 or 3 years old, but he could already hum the whole chorus of "Into The Night. I thought, "YOASOBI is amazing," and got interested in them. From there, the band quickly took off and made it big.

Ayase: I'm very grateful to you. ......

ーーWe would like to talk about metal music, which is the subject of this project. For both of you, what was your awakening to metal-oriented music like?

Ayase: I was in junior high school when I saw the music video for Slipknot's "Psychosocial" and was shocked. The visuals, the explosiveness of the performance, and everything else was so fresh that I wanted to show off the band to my friends.Then, as my ears got used to the loud sound, I heard Maximum the Hormone's "Koi no Mega Lover" playing in a supermarket and thought it was so cool that I bought the CD and was hooked. I had always wanted to be a singer before that, but I had only listened to J-Pop and didn't really know what kind of singer I wanted to be. I thought, "This is it!" I joined the school rock band club in high school and found out about SiM through "JACK.B" from a senior at a live music club I frequented. So, in terms of an introduction, it was Hormone. After that, Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) was a big influence.

MAH: Was that in the deathcore era?

Ayase: It was during the deathcore era that I first came across BMTH, but soon after that I started listening to "Sempiternal" (2013) and others. I also listened to Whitechapel with a lot of blasting sounds. I think Oliver Sykes is really cool in BMTH, and I really like their last couple of albums, which have some pop elements. I think they are really fighting for the expression of what they are trying to express.

ーーMAH, How about you?

MAH: I started out with Hi-STANDARD, but at my local TSUTAYA, Rancid and NOFX were introduced as "if you like Hi-STANDARD, I also recommend this," so I started listening to Western punk music from there. It was around junior high school that I discovered Yamarashi, Uzumaki, and other Japanese rapcore. I felt that my desire to listen to hip-hop and rap combined with my desire to listen to intense rock music, and I fell right into it. I started listening to Limp Bizkit as a Western version of that. But as I listened to them, I began to realize that while YAMARASHI was rough and sharp, Limp Bizkit was too posh and clean, and that their  personalities didn't match mine. I was the man who was depressed during my teenage years, so I thought I would prefer something a little darker, and after reading the liner notes, I came across KoRn and Deftones, and eventually fell in love with them. I never got into metal music with guitar solos.

ーーSo you were very attracted to Nu Metal, weren't you?

MAH: Yes, I was. But KoRn and Limp themselves were often listened to by the older generation, so in my real time I was listening to screamo bands like The Used and Story of the Year. I was shocked by the music that had punk in it but was shouting, so I listened to all of them. Well, it was my first encounter with Refused that was the big one. When I saw the music video for "New Noise," I thought to myself, "I should black my fingernails and try shouting."

ーーYou mean you came to the place where you crossed the boundaries of emo, punk, metal, etc?

MAH: Yes. Punk music is also about singing about frustration, but I thought, "What can I do about my anger that I can't express by just singing over a melody?" I thought, "If I'm going to be in a band, I want to shout at the height of my anger," and I think hardcore punk and screamo were probably born that way. As for the rhythm, you can express your anger better with a metal-like bass-heavy "Dadaan Dadaan" than with a two-beat rhythm like "Zuntan Zuntan," right? Something like that.

ーーSiM originally combined reggae and rock while also incorporating screamo and metalcore, and it seems to have reached a state of perfection around the time of "THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE" (2016). How do you see the changes that have taken place?

MAH: The first album ("Silence iz Mine" in 2008) was an album that I made with a group of friends in my hometown who were just 20 years old or so, and we were like, "Let's go out into the world," so of course it didn't sell well. Then the members started to leave, and I was thinking, "Oh no, ......," when I met coldrain and HEY-SMITH, who were from the same generation. Those guys had a good audience, so I thought back to "what do we lack?" But we didn't want to do something lame, so we said let's go for it right on the edge, and our mode started to change around 2010 when we released "JACK.B". Metalcore was becoming very popular at that time, so I listened to Crossfaith and others and studied how to incorporate heavy phrases into my music, "KiLLiNG ME" is the result of that. From there, the audience grew quickly, so we strategically tried songs like "Amy" next, and then, until "THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE".

Ayase: At the time, I just thought "Cool!" But now I think it's amazing that they released "Amy" after "KiLLiNG ME". It has elements of danceable metalcore and reggae, so you can tell it's SiM as soon as you hear it. The chorus is a bit more poppy, which makes the more intense parts stand out, and I think that's why everyone goes crazy for it.

MAH: That was lucky for us. Thanks to older bands like Hormone and PTP (Pay money To my Pain) who had already played at big festivals, the audience had developed a tolerance for music with shouts.

ーーAs a listener, I feel that Hormone and PTP laid the foundations for loud rock music, and SiM played an important role in establishing it and spreading it at once.

Ayase: I really think so.

MAH: I appreciate you saying that, but we were just thinking about Japan at the time when coldrain and others were going overseas and doing their best. However, it is true that when we released "KiLLiNG ME," we were told by various listeners, "You’re the guy from 'KiLLiNG ME,' aren't you?" It was a great expansion. It wasn't just loud music, but it expanded into visual-kei and other completely different genres.