envy: Rebirth and Innovation

At times over the past half decade, it seemed that ENVY‘s sixth album, Atheist’s Cornea, would be their last. Periods of silence from the band and the news of departing members suggested the Japanese post-hardcore pioneers were headed to a dissolution. “It was a rough period for us the last few years where there was a continuous member change in the line-up, and we were just at the cliff-edge of a breakup,” explains guitarist Nobukata Kawai.

No such break up transpired, and in February the first new ENVY album in almost half a decade was released – The Fallen Crimson. What brought the band back to the studio? “There’s been a lot of things within this period and it is hard to explain everything, but if I put it into one sentence, ‘we didn’t want to stop’,” he explains. “I had a choice to start a new band and it might’ve been fun doing that, but I didn’t want to throw away all the songs I had composed since the first days, when I have gone through all the good and bad. Although the songs that were composed when we were young are immature, those songs can only exist because of the emotions we felt during those days. I realised that I can’t play in a band other than ENVY.”

Widely acclaimed on release as some of the best music of their 28-year career, The Fallen Crimson is a demonstration of the band’s talent and vision. How would Nobukata describe the album? “I let the world decide on what and how they feel about our music. We are trying to play music where there is a hundred ways of understanding it if there is a hundred people. It is way off the edge to describe our own music in words.” The album has also seen a move to Pelagic Records. “Our line-up changed and we wanted challenging to the new. We really thank MOGWAI and Rock Action from the bottom of our heart. I still remember the huge impact I had when we first supported MOGWAI in Tokyo. We really respect and thank them all.”

Despite the turmoil and changing faces, there are things that have remained the same. “The song process hasn’t changed within the 25 years. Basically I write the riffs and arrange it with everyone. Once the song is done, Tetsuya [Fukagawa, Vocals] starts writing the lyrics. It’s been like that since the beginning. Sometimes I bring the song nearly complete, and sometimes I bring it only with one or two riffs. We are always open to each other and take in everyone’s opinion. Unless it is totally wrong, we always try every opinion. I try to bring the songs to the studio a little bit vague, so that there is space for everyone to throw their opinions. I believe it is a very analogue process in such a digitalised era, but this ambiguous process creates a fluctuation between the boundaries which we each hold and brings a new sound or ideas a lot of times.”

This approach to creating music has been supported by incoming members, with guitarist Yoshimitsu Taki producing the album (Nobukata describes him as “literally a super musician”). Fellow guitarist Yoshi also keeps the band management and communications internal. “Big thanks to them that it made the process a lot faster and gained a lot of time for the original members to consider the songs a lot more. Taki brought the riffs for Marginalized Thread, Eternal Memories and Reincarnation and Memories and the Limit to the studio and Yoshi already has some song ideas in his mind, so we are greedy to make more songs. I am also looking forward to myself in building something new.”

The frantic, intense energy of The Fallen Crimson is the very essence of ENVY‘s live show distilled in the studio. Nobukata explains this was always the goal. “We made this album with a vision that we will be playing them [the songs] at shows, considering the audiences will be listening to the songs at this volume, lights and sound. We believe it became a masterpiece, however, all songs were made thinking we were going to play them on stage, so instead of describing the album, I would rather say ‘hey, these guys are touring nearby, so let’s go catch them on stage.'”

The new members have also added to those live shows. “Our new three members are 10 years younger than the original members, so simply we became younger on average. Their power definitely adds a lot of positive energy to our live performances. When the original members were young, we always went crazy on stage, but now we focus more on playing calmly, in a good sense,” he explains. “Passion is not only something to express directly. I guess I was too late to realise that I could’ve got less wounds on my body. There is a Kabuki (Japanese traditional play) actor called Tamazaburo Bandou and he once said ‘it is not good to be too high or too low in tension, the middle is the best’. I really understand his point these days. I’m almost 50 years old and I have a kid, so I don’t feel like playing like I was 20 years old as if I am going to die on stage. And I also definitely don’t want to cancel tours just because of getting wounded on stage. But of course, I don’t want to stand on stage not moving at all and I won’t be touring around if I had to just stand and play. I want to be in the middle and convey our messages through our instruments playing them with our heart. I realise I feel this way now because of the new three members.”

The Fallen Crimson continues ENVY‘s history of innovation and experimentation, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Nobukata can’t point to any direct influences on his writing. “All of our members listen to various types of music. However, I don’t. I really don’t listen to music at all – I think I haven’t heard any other bands for 10 years. Maybe only when I’m at shows, or songs coming through the radio.” There’s no desire to be compared to anyone else. “It takes a lot of time and work to output even even a small idea and I always want to do something new, so I really hate to be compared or to be told that we are like some band in the US or Europe. I would like to make a strong assertion, at least inside myself, that ‘I am not imitating anyone else’. I don’t mind, but recently some people have written we sound like DEAFHEAVEN. We accompanied their tour in the US. They were such cool guys, and we really had a great time with them. But before that tour started, I had never heard their band before. In the past, there were bands from the hardcore scene in the US and Europe that gave influence to start ENVY, and I still love them, but just because we’re Japanese that doesn’t make us an imitator. It’s an important pride for me, which comes from a background of respecting the scene outside of Japan.”

When it comes to the scene inside Japan, ENVY have not been quite so successful, and changes in the scene over the years have had little impact. “People in Japan have constantly said to us ‘if you play hard only for stimulation, it’s not music’; ‘if you write a beautiful song, it’s not hardcore’; ‘if you use major chords in your songs, it’s not ENVY. We were really different from the others. There was nowhere to play, so we decided to create a place of our own and that was the motivation to play for 25 years. I don’t care if the scene has changed from the past or what is happening. The important thing is not the opinions of the others, but the continuous change of ourselves.”

Off the back of a crucial album and with a series of major festival bookings in hand, the future for ENVY is clear in Nobukata‘s mind; “The answer is simple; write good music and play good shows. Even if we speak different languages or believe in different religions or live in different environments, we would like to do the best we can to make the person in front of us to smile, and show our respect and gratitude to them. We would like to face music with such feelings seriously within the limited remaining time we have. We hope to travel around the world as much as possible.”

The Fallen Crimson is out now via Pelagic Records.

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