Interview with girugamesh at Sakura-Con

Having been nearly two years since they last performed in the US, tension was at its highest during girugamesh’s Friday night concert. Before their Q&A session the following day, JaME caught up with the band to see what they’ve been doing since we last talked to them.


Thank you for meeting with us!

ShuU: Us too, thank you for meeting with us!

Could you please introduce yourselves and tell us something others might find unusual about you?

girugamesh: (all laugh) Hmm…like a secret?

Sure!

Satoshi: I'm Satoshi I’ll start! A secret…
ShuU: (in English) "I am gay."
(Everyone bursts out laughing)
Satoshi: If that was true…wow! That would be amazing!
(Everyone laughs again)
Satoshi: Last night, I had steak for dinner. And then this morning, I had steak for breakfast, too. I love eating steak. (laughs)
Яyo: Ryo here. A secret… hmm…
Nii: (whispers) Tell them about the toilet! (all burst out laughing)
Satoshi: And how you left eight dollars!
ShuU: Yeah, that! (all laugh)
Яyo: About the toilet…my toilet got backed up in the hotel room. You can imagine how that happened.
(ShuU, Satoshi and Nii cover their mouths, trying to hold in their laughter)
Яyo: So I wrote a letter saying "please fix the toilet" and left a big eight dollar tip for the hotel staff so that they would fix the toilet.
(Everyone bursts out laughing)
ShuU: I'm Shuu, the bassist. First of all, let me start off with: I have one hundred children.
(Everyone laughs)
ShuU: (pauses and thinks for a moment, everyone laughs again) I promise that I’ll tie that into something! (laughs) I went to Okinawa on a trip and a Chinese person came up to me thinking I was Chinese and asked me directions, so I tried very hard with my limited English to help. (in English) “Straight, right,” and I was feeling good about helping when all of a sudden an American came up! (in English) “May I help you?” and helped way better and kind of shut me out! (laughs) I felt embarrassed even though I was doing a good thing.

And the one hundred children?

ShuU: …it’s a joke! (laughs)
Nii: I'm the guitarist, Nii. In Europe, I drank about three liters of beer and I got really drunk and I was in the toilet for about an hour. I don’t remember any of it but someone took a video of that and put the footage on an Easter egg on a DVD. (laughs)

How was yesterday in comparison to Jrock Revolution?

ShuU: Jrock Revolution was my first time overseas ever doing a live, so I was really nervous. But this time around, even though I was nervous, I was able to enjoy it.
Satoshi: At Jrock Revolution most people didn’t know who we were, so that was different, but at this event people were singing the songs as we were watching, that was the biggest difference.
Яyo: The same thing for me that ShuU said, I was really able to 100% enjoy myself this time, and the other thing is that there is a lot of cosplay and that brings up the tension a lot, and I really want to do cosplay myself. (laughs)

What would you cosplay as?

Яyo: Naruto from "Naruto!" (laughs)
Nii: The same thing with me. I was so nervous the very first time we had gone abroad and after that, we did Europe and I got used to dealing with foreign people, and so it’s been a lot more enjoyable this time around.

Since we’re at an anime convention, if you were to be an anime character, who would you be?

ShuU: I can only think of "Doraemon" right now for anime… (everyone laughs)

Or video games!

ShuU: Ahh, video games.
Яyo: (whispers) Just say "Dragon Ball!"
ShuU: I want to be a slime! (everyone laughs)
Satoshi:You’re so weak! (everyone laughs again)
Satoshi: Hmm… I want to be someone strong… (thinks) Goku from "Dragon Ball!"
Яyo: Naruto from "Naruto!" I want to use Rasengan! (imitates Naruto)
Nii: From "Naruto," the character Uchiha Itatchi!

You just finished your tour CRAZY TOUR 08-09 that included 47 shows. What hardships did you encounter on such an intense schedule?

Яyo: Laundry! (laughs)
Satoshi: Getting sick.
Яyo: Money.
Satoshi: Muscle spasms!
girugamesh: (all laugh) It’s a lot of managing our bodies.
ShuU: We ended the tour and went right into recording, and now we’re in America. Really, the crazy tour hasn’t ended.

You sold out 13 dates on this tour including your tour final at Shibuya AX. Looking back on small venues you’ve played like Shimokitazawa ERA, how does it feel to have become such an accomplished band in the scene?

ShuU: All of us have a lot of competition between each other, between the members, so we’re always striving to be better, but in the end, for us, if everyone accomplishes their dreams, we’ll be happy. Part of that is going to more and more bigger venues for our shows and have more and more people listening to our music.
Satoshi: We did the 47 prefectures and we did a lot of lives. We try harder and harder every live, so for me, it’s really a sense of accomplishment that we were able to do it.
Яyo: I need to say something strange here. (laughs) I want to become bigger with this, I don’t want it to end here. It’s just a point on the road.
Nii: To me, it feels natural. We want girugamesh to be bigger, and if we’re making good music, if we’re doing good live shows, it just seems like a natural progression that we’re getting bigger. It doesn’t seem unnatural in any way.

Having performed in many different places, one can imagine you’ve received unusual or incredible gifts. What’s the most memorable for each of you?

ShuU: I get a lot of bath products and a lot of people draw my photo. That’s really interesting for me to look at, to see what people perceive me as. Like, I look like an alien in some of these drawings sometimes!
(Everyone laughs)
Satoshi: I really like movies, so I love getting DVDs as presents since on tour I have so much free time and I need something to watch, so I love getting DVDs.
Яyo: I've gotten things like a PS3 and a Wii as presents! And cigarettes. I really like getting cigarettes. During the tour, I always know I’m going to have enough cigarettes because people give them to me, but when we’re not on tour, I have to buy my own. I’m really happy to get cigarettes. (laughs)
Nii: I also get a lot of bath stuff, but I like beer a lot, so when I get beer, I’m happy.

You’ve mentioned before that your families helped influence your career in music. Have they always been supportive of your decisions?

Яyo: I have a lot of support from my family, and right now I have a very good relationship with my parents.
Satoshi: My mother, since I was a kid, would show me X JAPAN videos, and that was my education, so she’s always been very supportive of my goal. (laughs)
ShuU: I am the oldest brother and I have a younger brother. Normally in Japan, the oldest son takes over the responsibility of the house, but since I am like this… (everyone laughs) and in rock and roll, my younger brother said, "Don’t worry about it! I’ll take care of it, you go do your music."
Nii: I’ve really been a burden on my family, but they have been supportive and girugamesh is getting bigger now, and I would really like to continue to have a really strong relationship with my family.

For the past several years, you’ve worn black suits, but recently have been wearing hoodies. What prompted this change?

ShuU: I kind of got bored with it. We can go back to the suits, but I really just got bored with it. There’s really no reason, we could go back to it,
Яyo: MUSIC came out and it was time for a change. You guys are bored with the suits, aren’t you? (laughs)

We like the hoodies! (laughs) With regards to one of your earliest songs, Mouja no Koushin, the inserted speech during the instrumentals was Stalin, correct?

ShuU: Yes, that’s correct.

With the darker lyrics of this song, which talk about corruption and politics, why did you choose this specific speech insert? Was there a specific meaning behind this song?

(Яyo and Satoshi start laughing)
ShuU: I think we made everyone have high expectations that there would be a great reason why we did that but…we just thought it sounded cool.
girugamesh: (all nod and laugh)
Satoshi: (in English) Sorry! (laughs)

The instrumentals for 13’s Reborn were all recorded simultaneously, like it was a live performance. Why did you decide to record like this?

Яyo: That was the first time we had a producer and he said we should, but as a result, it turned out really well!

Would you consider doing it again?

ShuU: The single that comes out in June in Japan, Alive, will be that way.

With each of your albums, it’s clear as a band you and your music have evolved, but the emotional aspects you seem to cover remain consistent, such as pain, depression and anger. With the new electronic aspects added into the music, were they to help express a new emotion you couldn’t before?

Satoshi: Great question! Up until now, the whole anger in the lyrics was more of a self-satisfaction type thing, but we went around on this tour with such appreciation for the fans…
ShuU: We were helped so much by the fans that it’s sort of…
Satoshi: For them, we changed the lyrics.

Why did you decide to name your latest album MUSIC?

ShuU:The album was pretty much a simultaneous release in America and Europe, and it was really the first big push for girugamesh in the international scene. We really just wanted to display that this is who we are, and that’s why we went with a simple name, MUSIC.

You recently announced a series of singles set to debut this summer. Can you tell us what we can expect from these releases?

Яyo: What to say…
ShuU: There’s a lot of influence from the tour, you know, we’d be in the middle of the tour and Яyo would go "Oh! I’ve got a good song!" and then he would just hole himself up in the hotel room and write it. (Яyo demonstrates and laughs.) In the end, there’s a lot of influence from the tour in them.

Lastly, please give a message to your fans.

ShuU: We just did every prefecture in Japan and next, we would like to do all the countries in Europe and all the states in the US, so please support us so that we can!
Satoshi: Up till now, we’ve only done lives in America and Europe outside of Japan, but if there’s other countries that people want us to go to, call us! We’ll do our best to go, we want to go to other countries!
Яyo: I’ll make it really simple, we’ll do our best! (laughs)
Nii: girugamesh is going to continue making good music and doing good live shows, so please support us!


JaME would like to thank JapanFiles, Sakura-Con and girugamesh for making this interview possible.