MELLO's journey began as a five-member session band in Hokkaido in the early winter of 2005. At that time the band consisted of five members with Amonn on vocals, Yumezi and Shun on guitar, Sato on bass and Minato on drums. In December 2005 the band had their very first live at MESSE HALL Sapporo where they also distributed the live-only single, Alice hana no ran. Their second performance was an event with several other visual kei bands, among them Poitrine, a band known for being quite close-knit with MELLO.
MELLO's first one-man concert was held on the 8th of April 2006. They released their first maxi-single, the appropriately named Motel Sapporo, just a day later. In public, the band appeared as a quartet, lacking an official drummer. By the end of September the band had joined Loop Ash Records, but did not seem to be in any particular hurry; concerts were few and far between and their second maxi-single, Susuki no akai ame, was not released until December. Earlier in 2006, before actually releasing any material of their own, MELLO collaborated with Poitrine to release a limited distributed CD, Arienai, which contained the two bands' covers of each others' songs.
2007 was also rather quiet. The band held some concerts and released two CDs, their first official single, Shunsoku Liner, in April, and their first mini album, Mayday, in July. Mayday contained five songs, among them a new version of Fugiri no kuni no Alice, a song that was originally on Alice hana no ran. In addition to this, MELLO participated in omnibus releases and released another live-only single. Their collaboration with Poitrine continued and Shun and Yumezi busied themselves with Poshadori, a project of their own.
In the spring of 2008 the band was featured in the American Visual Kei DVD Magazine Vol. 1 with live clips and a small interview and, amid touring, they released three consecutive singles under the title CORE-CD. Two of these singles made it to the Oricon Indie charts: Saigeki no vector ranked #5 and Nijiuzu no photon ranked #7. Soon after the release of the final CD, Jisei no catastrophe, the band announced that they would go on a break. To the fans' great surprise, MELLO soon returned as a trio, announcing the release of their major debut album, MELLO, under the record label Crown on the 24th of December.
The year 2009 has started off with concerts, but is sure to become busier for this budding visual band. MELLO is definitely a promising band that is worth keeping an eye on.
