THE PREDATORS "ROCK'N' ROLL PANDEMIC"
Interview & Text: Tatsuya Kaneda
The [predators], the battle-hardened veterans, are back for the first time in three years! Being packed with whatever they wanted to by the members who simply followed their guts, the highly infectious rock ‘n’ roll sweeps across Japan!
THE PREDATORS has delivered us their new album for the first time in three years. The circumstance that all three of them are members of three different active bands, and their stance for THE PREDATORS being ‘to have fun with all our might’ always bring us the rock-ish sense of humor and pure joy of a power trio. You’d thoroughly enjoy this piece, too.
“When we start making new songs, I’m like ‘Hey, JIRO and Takahashi, let’s hang out again.’ Essentially, it’s the worst idea to play music just ‘to be in a band.’ But actually, that is the very purpose of our band. That said, though, all of us are capable musicians, so you know what happens.” (Sawao Yamanaka, guitarist/vocalist)
Hiroki Takahashi (drummer) says that he has completely gotten used to the band’s mindset, taking part in this third release for him since he joined the band.
“Each of our pieces had different stances, but this time, you’ll see our stance very clearly. That is to say, something like ‘it’s not necessary to take any [posture].’ All I needed to do during production was to unlock my diversity of music, which I’d accumulated over the three years since our last piece, one after another at each session, and pick the most suitable one of them. I’ve gradually gotten to realize that it’s not necessary to think too much.” (Takahashi)
Though having a tune written by Takahashi was also a topical element, five of seven tracks were written by JIRO (bassist), and the whole album is even more pop than ever.
“I love pop songs with major codes like the ones in this album, so I think I was able to play even more relaxed than ever.” (JIRO)
Moreover, his bass playing style is something you should check.
“During the last three years, the producer of GLAY was changed from Masahide Sakuma (established producer known for producing many famous musicians including BOØWY and THE BLUE HEARTS, who passed away in 2014) to Seiji Kameda (famous musician/producer who produced many artists including Ringo Sheena, Ken Hirai and SPITZ). That greatly affected my approach to the bass. With Mr. Sakuma, I used to explore how to minimize the number of sounds to the least. But Mr. Kameda required a more active style which made me realize once again that the bass lines can drastically change the piece. It was a time that, once more, I was realizing how fun it was to play the bass. So, compared to the past songs of (THE PREDATORS) in which the bass was fairly simple, in this album, I tried producing a larger swell with my bass. That’s a big difference from the past works.” (JIRO)
The album was named “ROCK'N' ROLL PANDEMIC.”
“(Even in Japanese), we sometimes hear the word ‘pandemic.’ I have a note pad that I use to take note of words I want to use in lyrics, and ‘pandemic’ was one of them. I guess I liked how the word sounds. And when we discussed the title of this album, I came up with the idea of using the word. ‘ROCK'N' ROLL PANDEMIC’ made me feel good when I said it loud, so I decided on it following my intuition.” (Yamanaka)
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll like Ramones’ was the keyword for the production of the new album. Just like Ramones’ music, their impulsive sound would spread the ‘rock ‘n’ roll infection’ all over Japan.
