After years of anticipation and overcoming many hurdles, Japan’s brutal metal band DEVILOOF is finally heading to Europe for a tour! With the tour “properly” kicking off next month, we took the opportunity to check in with the band ahead of this long-awaited milestone to hear what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. We also touch on their musical direction and collaborations with artists such as Sennzai, and the cursed idol group MAZARI.

We’re curious about your upcoming European tour, but before that, today you’re playing with Imperial Circus Dead Decadence (ICDD), so how’s your condition?

Daiki: I’m in perfect condition, [In English] perfect!

Ray: The staff and I were getting so excited during the car ride [from Osaka] that we didn’t get any sleep at all.

Keisuke: Man, I had a ketsuben, [in English] “bloody shit”.

Ray: How would you properly translate that? [Laughs]

[Laughs] Should we assume that’s a good sign?

Keisuke: It’s definitely a good sign. I feel like we’ll put on a good performance today.

Moving on to something more serious, your latest release “Inshu“ is quite a complex and interesting song. Musically speaking, what can we expect from DEVILOOF in the future?

Keisuke: We plan to keep evolving while pushing out new songs that follow in the footsteps of “Inshu”. At the same time, we are also thinking about doing various collaborations.

You worked with vocalist Sennzai on “Inshu”, how did that collaboration come about?

Keisuke: Even before the collaboration, I knew of Sennzai and how captivating her falsetto vocals are. Since we wanted to include female vocals this time, we reached out to her, and she kindly agreed.

That’s interesting, especially as we’re also fans of Sennzai. Now let’s talk about your upcoming European tour.

We interviewed you back in 2019 right before your 2020 European tour plans, which COVID-19 unfortunately prevented. But this November, you’re finally making it happen! So we’re here again to see how you’re feeling just before this big leap.

Daiki: We’ve made our European fans sad time and time again. While we’re certainly excited and happy for this opportunity, more than that, we’re filled with excitement and gratitude at the thought of finally being able to show our fans what DEVILOOF is all about. I’m truly looking forward to it.

Ray: With the shows we’ve been performing overseas recently, the atmosphere and reactions are different in each country, so I hope we can enjoy and experience that. Also, since we can finally tour Europe for real, I hope we will be able to convey our appreciation to the fans who have been waiting for us all this time, among other things.

Keisuke: As Daiki touched on earlier, we are truly sorry for having canceled the European tour twice. We’ve made you wait long enough and we’re finally coming to you. This time we won’t cancel, we’ll be there for sure, 100%!

[Everybody laughs]

Daiki: That’s jinxing it [laughs]!

Keisuke: We’ll get there one way or another, even if it means we’ll have to swim. Please wait for us and look forward to it!

Is there anything you’re looking forward to when visiting Europe?

Keisuke: In Germany, it’s definitely beer and sausage, that’s something I want to try. And the Netherlands have those famous coffee shops, right? Maybe I’ll check them out… but don’t worry, I won’t do anything crazy.

[Everybody laughs]

Is there a Soho in the UK? There’s a movie called “Something-something Soho”, and it has made me curious about the place.

Daiki: Regarding the UK, I watched a bit of Harry Potter this spring and got pretty hooked on it. As for Hamburg, it is the birthplace of one of my favorite metal bands, Helloween, so I’m really looking forward to playing a show in the holy land—the birthplace of melodic speed metal.

Ray: When I think of Hamburg, I think of hamburgers, so I want to try one there.

Daiki, as a fan of ramen, don’t you want to try it in Europe?

Daiki: I’d like to try ramen abroad, but… [In English] “Dangerous flavor”.

[Everybody laughs]

Keisuke: You’d probably regret it [laughs].

As Ray mentioned earlier, you’ve recently performed overseas, like in South Korea. How does playing abroad compare to performing in Japan?

Keisuke: They don’t understand Japanese.

[Everybody laughs]

It’s obvious, but still, it was a bit shocking. However, everyone was really passionate, and the response was amazing. When I try to hype them by saying, “Let me hear your voices!”, they all go, “Woah!”. They were so enthusiastic, and it was a lot of fun.

So do you do anything different for the audience?

Ray: Nothing in particular, but we use the local language to hype up the crowd.

Got it! Speaking of Japanese, we noticed how you’ve incorporated traditional Japanese imagery and sound in your music, from the album “Oni” to the recent single “Inshu”. Would you like to share the idea behind this?

Keisuke: Since I myself am Japanese, I’ve sometimes thought that, as long as I am Japanese, I should carry on Japanese traditions. It also felt like a good way to express our originality, so we decided to incorporated it.

Moving forward, will there be more of a traditional inspiration to the musical direction of DEVILOOF?

Keisuke: Yes, as long as we don’t change our minds.

In one of our previous interviews, Daiki mentioned how DEVILOOF is in a very niche genre, yet you impressively managed to sign with a major record label. With that support, can we expect more overseas tours in the near future?

Daiki: Oh, of course! I think we’ll be doing more overseas shows starting next year. We’ve already toured Latin America, and now we’re heading to Europe. After that, we want to visit the US mainland and other parts of Asia, so I hope everyone’s looking forward to it!

Ray, you’ll be part of the support band for the cursed idol group MAZARI’s first anniversary show, along with Akinori from “lynch.” on bass and Hibiki from Matenrou Opera on drums. How did this collaboration come about?

Daiki: The pay was good.

[Everybody laughs]

Ray: Just ignore him [laughs]. Well, the producer for MAZARI wanted me to play, and our label got in touch. I hadn’t really listened to many idol songs before, but when I heard the songs, it was really heavy. I thought it was a great opportunity, so I decided to give it a try.

Later I found out Leda [formerly guitarist in DELUHI] wrote the guitar tracks, and I kind of regretted it—it’s way too difficult. But I’m really happy to have the chance to play with Akinori and Hibiki.

So looking ahead, what is DEVILOOF’s next big goal?

Ray: To buy a private jet.

[Everybody laughs]

Keisuke: Touring by Shinkansen, maybe?

Daiki: To be able to travel by Shinkansen, and then a world tour on a private jet.

Keisuke: Personally, I’m not very good at setting long-term goals. I just want to do my best with what’s in front of me.

Daiki: I think extreme metal is on the rise right now, so I want us to become a band that represents Japan and Asia in extreme metal and play shows in arenas overseas.

Ray: It’s not really prejudice, but, well… since we’re a band with makeup and play heavy music, there are, you know, all kinds of preconceptions… I don’t really know where I’m going with this, so let’s just have fun and enjoy it!

[Everybody laughs]

Please leave a message to your overseas fans who been waiting for you all these years!

Keisuke: As I said before, this time it’s 100%—no, 100 million percent certain—we’ll be performing this year. So let’s get excited together and enjoy ourselves. We can’t wait to see you!

Ray: We’ll do our best! We want to meet and hopefully even exceed the expectations of everyone who’s been waiting for us.

Daiki: There are still many countries on the schedule that we haven’t visited yet. We want to work even harder to become a band that gets invited to those places too, so please wait for us. Thank you, as always, for your support.

It’s always such a fun time catching up with DEVILOOF, and we’re really grateful the members took the time to talk with us despite their busy schedule that day.

If you haven’t grabbed your tickets for the band’s European tour yet, scroll down below to get them!

Inshu

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