Goodmorning, Cruel World!

Today is the release date for our first album Goodnight, Cruel World!

 

We have a lot to do today, but luckily I was up at 7 this morning :P This will definitely come back to me in the evening.

Anyway, I wanted to write a little bit about the meaning behind the title, because it's not as dark as it sounds.

First of all, "goodnight, cruel world" was a thing I used to write on my twitter before signing off for the night, just as I was starting to get into emo music and that image. It was meant to be a little ironic, not to poke fun at people with actual depressions or suicidal thoughts ofcourse, but just to laugh at myself a little, I do things like this a lot.

Tomoya, not knowing the actual meaning, thought it was a cool sentence, and said "why don't we use that as an album title?".

This was even before Kento joined the band, and the ideas for the album weren't planned out yet. We just had this title.

Then, as the last song we finished on the album, we made the song "Goodnight, Cruel World", which made me really think about what I actually mean by that.

The lyrics for the song, which I will be posting next week, came to be about children uniting and fighting the "grown-up society", substituting archaic and outdated rules with fresh new ones, and not accepting the ways that the adults try to keep them down and convince them to just follow the old ways  (should be a hot issue in Japan btw).

I wanted to tell boys and girls to be allies and go towards the future together, not treat each other like enemies and like members of two different species, like a lot of us have been taught. Because being equal is also one of the important new rules.

But I wanted to do it all in a fun way, so yes the song is aggressive towards it's "enemies", but encouraging towards it's allies.

Make sense?

Maybe not :P

Anyway, here is the song:

As for the album cover, we wanted something that was about partying and being a stupid, because there is a lot of that theme in the songs (like Night of the Dancing Dead, Ice-cream Headache and also to a certain degree Screams Within), and we thought drugs and booze was way to symbolize this. The cocktail fitted perfectly as our band name is the same as a cocktail, but we actually decided that the two together, paired with the title, was a little too dark. For some reason, however, the designer sent us this and we kind of fell for it ^^; Chances are most Japanese people won't understand it anyway, but I'm hoping people outside Japan will like this album too.

Now I gotta figure out what to wear :P
Goodmorning, Cruel World!

Catching up and unwinding

Hi! I know I haven't blogged in a while, it's been pretty busy since I came back to Japan.

First I had all my exams at school, and even now that the holidays are finally here I still have a lot to do!

We've already played two concerts since I've been back, and we've made the first part of the music video for Goodnight, Cruel World.

Lol, my head is enormous (°_°)

Yeah, I actually went to the hairdresser, they didn't have the unsifisticated pink haircolor I wanted:p

The video was shot in Yokohama. I wanted to make a lot more out of it, but this one is Kentos project so...

Takajis dog came to staff for us ^^

Just look at that!

I also found tacos in the lunch break!

Tacos are not that easy to come by in Japan (except in Okinawa) and it's one of my favorite foods!

This is another picture from the shooting day:

The sign reads "no skateboarding inside the cup noodle museum park".

Seriously, is this Japan or just some parody of an Asian country? ^^;

The day before yesterday Tomoya and I had an interview in Shibuya. It's for a project by a company called Willsgate. I was a bit scared at first when I saw the building, cause it was so proper and glossy, but the interviewer was really nice and friendly!

Tokyo has been incredably cold the last few days! We even got snow the other day! Real proper snow!

Yesterday we had band practice and worked some on our new song. That's right, the mini album isn't even out yet, but we have to start making the next one now^^;

I have the whole weekend off from today, so today I'm going to a friends live performance in Shibuya, unwind and party a little :D

See you!

Goodmorning, Cruel World!

Hellooooo!! How's your new year, everyone?!

Mine's been pretty good so far, though I really need my parents to stop feeding me now XD

Yesterday out official homepage was finally finished! You can find it here:

I'm gonna put up a link in the sidebar too ofcourse^^
It it in Japanese, but if you can't read Japanese the live schedule is still pretty readable, and you know you could also use it as practice for your Japanese ;D

It's also official that our new album, "Goodnight, Cruel World", will be out on March 19., on iTunes too^-^
And our release party will be at (guess where) Shinjuku Headpower, on March 20.!
There's gonna be a lot of awesome bands, and also us, so if you're in Tokyo please come and watch!
Tickets can be reserved through my e-mail address up there (to the right) or even by commenting, I speak English :P You can contact me about whatever else you want too ofcourse.

We also had an announcement on Splatter Records official site:

Seriously, this picture lol.
The link is here: http://splatter-records.com/

I'm packing my stuff today, getting ready to go back to Japan. Crossing my fingers that everything will work out fine (I'm always nervous, and I hate flying).
Going shopping today too, to buy some edible gifts!

That's all really. See you (hopefully) on the other side of the world!

Hello, New World, it's time begin!

Hello! Did you all have a nice Christmas?
I sure did! I've been with family, I've met some really REALLY old friends, and some of my really close ones. Can't wait to see more of my close friends on New Years!
I went to see the Hobbit too, and I really loved it!
Been eating too much though, but hey, it's Christmas right?^^

 This is my dads place, where I had Christmas dinner, and this is my old room:

I was going to a Christmas party.

As I promised, I'm posting the lyrics for our final song, Goodnight, Cruel World.
Like I said, it's a little juvenile, but is does have a point and it's just fun lyrics for a live show!


Goodnight, Cruel World

Hey, mister, do you care
that you are blocking my way?
Hey my life just started
I'm gonna end your days.

I don't care what you believe, I am old enough to read
and you're making rules for me that you don't follow.
If we can't change your mind
then we will be left behind
All the manners without heart are fucking hollow.

Your greed is rising in me now.
Don't pull me back don't pull me back
back to your time.
The age of old men
will come to an end
thorough a law or through crime.

Do you think that you can shape us, you will die before you do!
Power brats!
Power brats!
It's our song!
Do you think just 'cause you made us we were made to be like you?
Gratulations on your values, shut the fuck up now
and sing along!


Hey, sisters! Hey, brothers!
The world needs someone like you.
Power brats
united!
Go for the future, crew!

You can try to beat us down, but we're gonna take the crown!
We've been taught to break the rules by our teachers.
I don't wanna die today, and I'm not gonna be okay.
We're not gonna let you call us fucking leeches.


Your angers rising up within.
Goodbye, old world
Hello, new world, it's time, begin
Call me what you want
just words so they won't
even scratch at my skin.

Do yo think ...

There's a lot of lyrics, and it is quite a long song. It is kind of the main work on the CD.

I wish you all a happy new year and a happy New Years Eve! Personally I'm really excited about 2014!

Happy Jul, people!

Hi! Merry Christmas!
Sorry for the delay, the last week in Japan was soooo fucking busy, and then I got on a plane and well... I guess I've just been in hyper relax mode since I got here. That' an oxy moron for you right there ;)
I know it's the holidays, but in my experience I never know when someone's gonna start to nag me, so I'm trying to relax as much as possible!

I've got a few things I want to write about, so I'm taking a break in my busy schedule of horror movie watching and willpower battles with the gingerbread.

First of all, the last week before Christmas I had my two last days of recording. The last one was the hardest. On both the other days we got two songs down with a good margin, but we saved the longest, most difficult and least practiced song for the last day. The title track of the album, "Goodnight, Cruel World". Very describing for my feelings throughout the day btw. We've only had one practice with this song and only one live, and it's like five minutes long and had THREE full sheets of lyrics. That's my fault though :P
Here is the whole team after we finished.

I do feel that we've made kind of an epic punk song though. It's a bit juvenile, but in spite of it's title the lyrics are definitely more punk and less emo than any of the other tracks on the CD. I'll try to make a lyric post sometime during the holiday, and then we'll just have to wait for the release in March to hear the song ^-^ I'm pretty excited about the whole album actually! We're so much better now than the last CD we made!

Naturally, some celebrations were in order.
This time yakitoriniku... don't tell me that's not a real type of food, have you been to this restaurant?

Since we had to sit at two different tables Tomoya entered competition mode and suddenly it was all about who could eat the most meat before our time was up... All so healthy ^^;

Kento ordered this grotesque shit. I've seen a lot of intestine looking like intestine in my life, but this one takes the cake.

Who could eat this??
Just thought I'd share, you know :D

Takaji, self acclaimed Party yarou (party bastard), hadn't really celebrated for a while.

Being a responsible contributor to society can take it's toll on your alcohol tolerance. Just a warning to you people out there who are thinking of taking the step and actually grow up soon :P

You're never too old for purikura though, are you?

Beautiful. There we go.

We also filmed a new SALTV that day. Finally!
And it's not just another SALTV, it's the one all in English that I promised the international twitter readers a loooong time ago^^; It'll probably be up sometime during the holidays, so please look for it! I'll ofcourse post it here!

The very last two days before going home to Norway for Christmas I went to the town office to take care of some long overdue address changing business, and then I had a Christmas date with my guy on the last day.

We started out with some Christmas shopping in Shibuya, bought each other presents, and then moved on to yakiniku....
It's Christmas, ok? You're allowed to stuff yourself like a pig, right? ;_; Right?

We ended up inviting Cat to have dinner with us too, so I got to spend a little time with my two favorite people in the world before getting on that plane the next day.

Bye, Japan. Bye, Pirate Puppies. See you again in a few weeks hopefully!

Hello, Norway. Hello, goat cheese.

Goodnight and merry Christmas, Cruel World.
I'm so jet lagged lol

Winter greifs and nabe-party

Yesterday the band had a nabe-party at Kentis apartment.
For the uninitiated, nabe is basically meat and vegetables cooked in a pot with soup or stock of some sort, and you keep the pot on the table and make more as you eat. It's kind of a Japanese winter tradition.
Because we're SALTY DOG, we ofcourse did salt base. We didn't eat dog meat though, but Tomoya tried to convince Kentis bunny, Rum-chan, that the pot was a bathtub for her:P

She didn't go for it.
Of course we used the day to do some work on the newest song too, before the recording next week, and we also had to make some slightly overdue decisions about the new band logo and some stuff, and then Tomoya gave each of us our to-do lists^^;
And then Kenti brought out some yukke!! 

Yukke is not just the name of the bass player in MUCC (I'm actually curious why he chose that name), it is actually a type of raw meat dish. I think it's originally Korean, but I could be wrong.
Might seem a little weird to some people, but all though I can't stand raw fish I love raw meat! It was so delicios!

I've also started making some ideas for out band t-shirt...

I'm not sure what we're going to end up with, as some of us have very different taste when it comes to art and design, but I'm really liking this character. If it doesn't end up as a band t-shirt I might make t-shirts anyway^^


Today I've taken the Saturday off, pretty much. Except for cleaning the house and doing some shopping. Need to rest and stay warm to try and beat this beginning throat cold that I've had since yesterday. Gahh I have a super weak immune system and I usually spend the entire winter battling a sore throat. If I can just stay healthy until the recording is over next week that's all I ask!

Finally got the opportunity to steal my bfs Coldrain hoodie! Today was definitely hoodie weather, which is quite the compliment for a December day! Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm really excited! I refuse to be sick!

My guy also made me a huge batch of okayuu that I could eat throughout the day, with garlic and stuff, 'cause that's how he rolls *^-^*

Okayuu is kind of like rice porridge that for some reason it's really good for a sore throat.
Lots of food facts today, huh?:p

Making of the sounds

Trying out blogging from my phone for the first time, I'm sorry if something looks off or anything.

So yesterday I had my first recording session for the new album.

I was kinda nervous, because recording has always been a big ordeal for me. I get nervous and my voice gets flat and nothing sounds like it's supposed to :( 

Turns out, however, that I'm a much better singer now than last time, and also that there is a big difference between recording in the basement of a university with media students as engineers (like we did on the last album, Chasing my Tail), and recording in a proper studio with a pro engineer^^

Who'd have thunk it, huh?

Me in the recording booth.

It went really well and I finished two songs smoothly, still leaving time for Tomoya to do the background vocals and Kento to put the finishing touches on the guitar tracks.

Tomoya, Kento and our manager DAISAN (he used to sing in a band called Killkills)all pitched in on the "slutty background vocals" for Night of the Dancing Dead.

I know that the more diffecult songs are still to come, but it makes me feel very good that we managed to get two finished so smoothly^^

Afterwards the whole team went to yakiniku!

Ahahahahaaaaaa♪───Ｏ（≧∇≦）Ｏ────♪

Guuuuuhhh{(-_-)} the Japanese guys, of course, were so excited about the squid they ordered three plates...

Kento and me.

Even Tomoya had a few drinks, without keeling over, there was some kind of magic in the air^^

I guess I shouldn't be celebrating so much since my recording is not by far finished, but I guess I can celebrate for Kento, right?

I was gonna do a few "deprevation days", starting today. That's when I change most my meals for salads and stay away from candy and alcohol, but as it was I suddenly got really sick on the train this morning and had to get off halfway to school, cause I felt like I was gonna puke.

I tried chilling out for a while and went to get some breakfast at the station I'd gotten off at.

It made me feel a little better and I got to school for my second class.

Now I'm on my way home. My bf came back from a Coldrain/Crossfaith Kansai tour this morning, and I'm looking forward to hanging out together.

He had some very awesome news for European Coldrain fans, but I'm not sure if it's official yet, so I'll leave it at that for now☻

Gonna sleep on the train now! Goodnight, Cruel World!