J-rock Belgium: Band of the Week: Golden Bomber (ゴールデンボンバー)

From left to right: Jun (Ba.), Yutaka (Gt.), Shou (Vo.) & Kenji (Dr.)

Golden Bomber (ゴールデンボンバー) is not your typical J-rock band. They stand out in the Visual Kei scene because they are an air band. The members prefer to entertain their audience through theatrical live shows. Vocalist Shou is the only one who actually sings live every performance. The other members are to play live sometimes. Similar bands are Guild (ギルド) & DaizyStripper.

Shou & GACKT

Vocalist Shou Kiryuin and guitarist Yutaka Kyan formed GB in 2004 with the concept "Hyper Giga Hybrid Super Subculture Visual Rock". None of the members play instruments, with the exception of Shou & Yutaka, so the music recordings are done by professional musicians but Shou still writes all the music and lyrics. On stage the members dance and perform, show videos and act out dramas. They also do parodies of famous visual kei bandmen and Japanese pop culture icons. An example of this is “GOCKT”, Shou's portrayal of GACKT. Shou declared more than once that he's a big fan of the popular vocalist. Besides dancing and fooling around, GB are also regularly featured in the Japanese fashion magazine “MEN'S SPIDER” for the Gyaruo fashion and collaborate with all kinds of different people from the music, fashion and gaming world.

In 2005 GB released a new single every month for 5 straight months. Each single sold more than 3000 copies even though the band was still in their indie stage. They held their first live in February of 2005, and in 2006 they signed with Zany Zap. In April of 2007, bassist Jun Utahiroba joined the band.

Their first albums "The Golden J-POPS" and "Renai Shuukyouron" were put on sale on 24 December 2007, and their first live DVD was released the same day.

On January 1^st 2009 they released their mini concept-album "Imitation Gold ~Kinbaku no Meikyoku Niban Shibori~". The album became a huge hit on YouTube and NicoNico Douga. In June of that same year, the song "Time Machine ga Hoshii yo" was used as the ending theme for the Playstation 2 game of "Skip Beat!", based on the popular shoujo manga "Skip Beat!" In July, they produced a movie called "Sorinokoshita Natsu". Not only did the members star in it, but they also scripted, directed, shot and edited everything themselves. GB held the movie's screening and made it into a DVD. On that same day, they also released an original soundtrack for "Sorinokoshita Natsu". On October 21^st 2009 the single “Memeshikute” was released an reached #77 in the Oricon charts, but got #4 on the indies chart. GB also held a year-long tour with a total of 46 stops. The tour was such a success that they performed again the next year, but with fewer dates.

In 2010 they released a new song every single month through dwango.jp and all the songs that were released reached the #1 spot in the dwango daily rankings. With the growing popularity of the band in 2010, GB got major debut offer from 7 companies but GB rejected all of them. They took the feelings of their fans into consideration and were willing to stay a “good-for-nothing” indies band.

2011 was also a busy year for Golden Bomber. They performed nationwide with their “Life is All Right” tour (the initial name of that tour was “Isshou Baka”, Lifetime Idiot, but it was changed after the disaster of March 11). In July they performed at Japan Expo in Paris, and in August they had 2 lives in Seoul. For fall they had yet an other tour scheduled in Japan.

On 14 & 15 January 2012 GB performed in Nippon Budokan and on 21 January they played in Osaka-jō Hall. 18 June was the date for the release of their first international album called “The Golden Best”. It was released in the UK, USA, France, Germany, Taiwan and Korea.