The popular J-Rock duo VAMPS returned to America for a two-city US tour, hitting Los Angeles and New York. Visual Kei Heaven managed to catch up with HYDE (vocalist) and K.A.Z. (guitarist) right in between the two shows to discuss their latest single AHEAD/REPLAY, their plans behind global marketing and to ask them the ultimate question: Is VAMPS a visual kei band?
Find out all of that and more in this interview!
VKH: Let's begin by discussing the live in Los Angeles. How was that for you?
HYDE: Ah. Yeah, it’s probably been about three years since we were last in L.A. Hmm, I’d say about that.
K.A.Z: Yeah, I think so.
HYDE: The crowd was excited last time, too, and it kind of had this “at home” vibe, like just really easy and natural.
VKH: What was your best memory from this show in particular?
K.A.Z: Well, quite a lot of Japanese fans came as well, but the things Japanese fans do and the fans over here do can be a little different, so by the end the Japanese fans kinda got overwhelmed, haha. It was interesting, though. Yeah. Like, when shouting for an encore. Ultimately, the response from the crowd was American.
VKH: How do you feel about having only two tour dates for this show? Do you feel like you can be more creative with your production this time than in comparison to the last tour you did?
HYDE: Hm. Well, there are a lot of places that... I mean, America itself is very important for us and so would like to go around to all the different places and make new fans on the way.
VKH: Let’s talk about your new single AHEAD/REPLAY. “REPLAY” was a very dramatic song with dramatic vocals, especially. What were your inspirations for the vocals of that song?
HYDE: Yeah, I think you could say that the song itself was dramatic, I suppose. How should I put this... It...just ended up turning out like that. No particular reason, I guess.
VKH: The guitar riffs were sort of mechanical, like a machine, with electronic sounds. What inspired that to happen with this song in particular?
K.A.Z: For this song we were looking to give off a cold impression, I mean, like, hard and dark, you could say, that’s the kind of texture we wanted to create. And so, yes, there were mechanical sounds, and even fa guitar - we wanted this “hard” nuance, like a machine, you could say. And it really matched the atmosphere of the song, and it’s image. That’s what we were going for, I think.
VKH: In contrast there was “AHEAD,” which was more of an energetic song. It had a lot of the alternative rock guitar riffs, which we really liked. Do you have any inspiration for that song and its lyrics?
HYDE: I wanted to try to write a song like K.A.Z-kun’s too, but it ended up not having that “cold” feel to it. It came out energetic. As for the lyrics, it was when we were just starting with Universal, so it was kind of this feeling of us wanting to express where we were determined to head, our direction at the time. I wanted to get to where it was "active” music, as opposed to being passive or apathetic. That when I'm doing something, I wanna be able to take it as far as I can, all the way...that’s what I was singing.
VKH: Let's expand on that. When VAMPS first debuted it was very dark, gothic themes. Not only with the visuals, but with the music as well. Now it's sort of moving towards an American, more alternative style. Is this an organic transition, something that came about with Universal or something that you felt that VAMPS was getting to on its own?
HYDE: It was a natural transition because it wasn't our intention to do that. We always choose to do what we want. Perhaps next year we might make enka or country music.
K.A.Z: (laughs) I don't know about that...
HYDE: Simply put, we play what we feel like.
VKH: What are your current inspirations, then?
HYDE: Well, that whole “rock, rock” thing, for example. I feel like now I’ll often hear that rock vibe more in dance music, you know? And for me I find that it often sounds cooler, too, so making dance music into rock music is something I find inspirational sometimes, I think.
VKH: You also released the best-of album, SEX, BLOOD, ROCK'N'ROLL, earlier this year. We noticed that there were some songs included from your album BEAST were remixed. Did you have any process for what you wanted in this album?
HYDE: Well, in Japan it’s a best-of album, but we also kind of see it as our first album overseas. And so as our first overseas album, we decided that, yeah, we wanted to showcase the best of VAMPS. So, first, we focused on the songs we play at our lives, those kind of songs, and then from those we chose the best 13 songs we wanted to show our fans overseas.
K.A.Z: Yeah, HYDE set it all up from the start and then showed me his suggestions and asked me what I thought. And then from those, I thought about which songs I wanted to include myself, like “MY FIRST LAST”, for example. Like, you know, songs that people in Asia would most of all... I mean, songs that would go down really well with Asian music tastes... So, again, with “MY FIRST LAST”, we could show a different range, a different side.
VKH: If you could put that into words, what would that be? What would you say to the overseas market? " Hey this is VAMPS, we're cool because..."
K.A.Z: America and England definitely don't have this kind of musical sound. For example, American people would listen to country music while Japanese people would listen to Enka. “MY FIRST LAST” is a song that definitely has an Asian taste to it because music with an Asian taste is definitely something that American people can't really do. Each country has a specific type of ethnic music style and I feel that“MY FIRST LAST” is a great song that can really showcase VAMPS ethnic style.
VKH: Would you say that you're using English lyrics to appeal to the global audience?
HYDE: Of course, moving from the Japanese to the American market is something that we intended to do.
It's not that we thought, "We shouldn't use Japanese". We just didn't want to look back and realize that we failed because we sung in Japanese.
We do what we feel is good at the time. This time we did everything in English, but there's a possibility that next time we'll do it in Japanese.
VKH: VAMPS has very heavy visual elements. As the American market has labeled VAMPS as visual kei, With productions like Halloween Junky Orchestra, would you identify VAMPS as a visual kei band despite the classic rock styles you have or do you just not want to have that label?
HYDE: I think that during our time, there wasn’t really any “visual kei” and visual kei bands have different roots from us. I didn't grow up with visual kei so it's very weird. I think their roots are probably from L’Arc and X, but our roots are from American and European bands. But I don’t really mind if we end up being categorized as visual kei.
VKH: What would you want people to call you?
K.A.Z: I want people to just call us just regular rock. What would you call that?
VKH: SEX, BLOOD, ROCK'N'ROLL?
HYDE: (Laughs) Yeah, that's a good idea.
VKH: It's just you, no one else has that!
VKH: For fans that don't know much about VAMPS and its history, why play with the band concept of "vampires"? How is the concept evolving as the band progresses?
HYDE: Well, I had liked vampires from awhile back and I had always been interested in the word “vamp” and wanted to use it for something. It wasn’t that I had wanted to make music about vampires or vampire-like music, but it happened naturally when we named the band that.
VKH: Recently you've had L`Arc~en~Ciel comeback and Oblivion Dust revival after a long time. Do these revivals and doing other projects inspire you when it comes to VAMPS or do you just like to keep everything separate for each act you do?
HYDE: The different bands each have a different environment. Also, because they have different inspirations, the material is unique.
It's quite interesting. We can have something and be like "Oh this is good for VAMPS". And what we can't do for VAMPS we do for L'Arc. So we can try various things. I think that's very healthy.
K.A.Z: For example, something that we can do in VAMPS might be something that is possible with Oblivion Dust. Or for example what we do in Oblivion Dust we can try it in VAMPS.
That's why doing both bands at the same time we can see something that we can't see with just one band.
By doing both bands, I feel like I can grow.
VKH: Speaking of growing, we know that VAMPROSE is producing the younger artists like Monoral and other bands. There are artists that inspire you and we're sure that you inspire other artists, but what made you choose them for your label? Is there something special that you look for in the new artists?
HYDE: (About Monoral) What do we expect...? They are a good band, but we don't really expect much (laughs). In Japan there is a lot of activity and Japanese minds are a little more logical.
For example, Japanese people are very serious, even with music so it would be hard to do things like missing a deadline. Japanese are very business-minded even with making music. So for them, it's difficult, but quite possible, for them to be successful.
From this point, we hope to come across new bands with that kind of mentality.
VKH: Do you have a farewell message for our readers?
HYDE: Sure. This year we released the best-of album, which was our first world wide album, but these songs were already written and released. Next year, we want to record new songs, so we can release it in different places of the world, like America.
We’re really happy to be able to come to the U.S. this time and it’s an honor to have our fans waiting here to meet us like this. We also want to keep doing what we do as VAMPS so that we can meet more of you in the future. I hope we’ll get the chance to come here again next year, and beyond that, too.
Special thanks to VAMPS for taking the time to answer our questions and to Universal Music Japan for putting this together!
VAMPS' next show is December 8th! Find information in the flyer below:
http://www.ticketmaster.com/vamps-new-york-new-york-12-08-2013/event/00004B349163A38
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