【Crossfaith World Tour Diaries】第7回 Even Darkness Must Pass―Teruが綴る新シングル『New Age Warriors』制作秘話

Teru pens down the untold story of the making of the new single,
"New Age Warriors"

Written by: Terufumi Tamano (Crossfaith)

Even Darkness Must Pass

In [The Lord of The Rings], one of my favourite movies, Frodo is encouraged by his close friend Sam, who, when the protagonist is about to lose heart, says

"even darkness must pass."

I have been saved by this word over many nights.
It's me, Teru. I'm playing a program/vision role in the Crossfaith band. In this post, I am going to explain our single "New Age Warriors," which came out in July.

This is a story about last December, when I was in the darkness. I was staring at the ceiling of a room at MORG STUDIO, which we often use for pre-production, while the monitor of a laptop was endlessly displaying a screensaver. I don't want to put it in this way, but I was in a creative slump.

"Wildfire" from album "XENO" (2015)

I was glad about it when we completed the "XENO" album. It was a piece that represented what we had accumulated.
That said, to write the new single, it was necessary to build things step by step from scratch.
We were set to start recording from New Year's Day, but the music writing process got behind schedule substantially.
"We won't be able to do recording at this rate when we go to LA. Why don't we call it off?" I asked KEN, looking like a zombie.
"My instinct believes it's gonna be alright when we arrive in LA though. It should be fine. The choice of not going wouldn't change anything, so we need to go."
Encouraged by this remark, I locked myself with KEN into the studio and finished "Revolution" on New Year's Eve, a day before the departure.

Like "XENO," we again asked Josh Wilber to produce the single.

I thought we could explore more musical possibilities with him as his approach to recordings suited us.
On arrival at Fortress Studio in LA, we were met by assistant Nick, who remembered the Osaka slang we'd taught him previously. We reunited with a cheerful "Maido (meaning Hi)," and then entered into the recording.

“Revolution”

In recording the last album, "XENO," Josh brought potential out in KEN, who was trying some melodies.
We chose Josh without hesitation largely because he had already developed a reliable relationship with KEN, and meanwhile, KEN was eager to go further and develop himself as a singer.
Most of "Revolution" consists of melodies and is also a track in which we explored new possibilities of a band.

“Kill'Em All”

Tatsu drove a big American car and took us from our hotel to the studio every day, and it's radio that we always enjoy while on a vehicle in the States.
A number of channels segmented and specialized in each genre hinted at how popular and influential radio was in America.
What we listened to every morning was of course SiriusXM, a rock specialized station.
It often played out songs with chunky drums by the likes of Disturbed and Papa Roach. The intro of this song, in particular, represents an influence from it.

Disturbed "The Sound of Silence" from album "Immortalize" (2015)

“Rx Overdrive”

This one explores as much punch as it gets, built around fierce guitar riffs, one of Kazuki's fortes.
In the genre of electro, there's a style called Hard Style, whose characteristic is the thundering, distorted kicks at about 150 BPM. It's one of the most aggressive sounds in electro, which I've thought we could take into the Crossfaith productions.
When we combined those kicks with Kazuki's riffs, it came out insanely powerful.
But at that time, I was fettered by the stereotype of music and I hesitated to add the hard style quality to our 190 BPM band sound until the last minute.
When I called the members to my room and let them hear the demo, Kazuki says "such a punchy track! 　Why don't we do it? 　Existing theories or anything else doesn't matter. What counts is whether it's cool or not."
I completely agreed with him.
And his remark reminded me that, down the ages, we had been aiming at 'a double punch,' an extreme sound that has two dimensions like a band sound and an electro sound melded together.