Japanese Jukebox: Japan’s Dark Metal

Dark Metal, death metal, and black metal ranges from the monstrous to the macabre. Japanese bands have shoved their axes into this hellfire genre and wielded mighty guitars that warp wicked sounds of woe and misery. Yeah, what? J-Metalheads, just throw up your devil horns to this:

Darkever of the Light brings the scary movie soundtrack experience back with their killer sound. Watch as they set a slasher mood in a live performance of “Ding Dong.” Female frontlady Akina’s vocals contrast nicely with the broody guitars. While she might wear a frilly dress with a flower in her headband, the music is loud and neckbreaking. Surprisingly, Akina’s solo work sounds absolutely nothing like this.

Want something more metal meticulous in craftsmanship? Enjoy Serenity in Murder.

When you name your band Serenity in Murder (most likely after the Slayer song of the same name) you are probably a metal band. Here’s a quick behind the scenes look at the making of Serenity in Murder’s new album The First Frission of the World out 9.14.2011. In this production video, you see and hear how hard it is to murder a track. It’s a grueling process of mixing the music with the layering of guitars and synthesizer, yet it’s pretty darn neat to watch the progression from the lab to on stage.

Bury yourself with Coffins. These muscular baddies will beat the snot out of you. Their shaky cam youtube video is also pretty scary, and the quality of the video and audio are severely lacking (really not doing this metal band any justice.) If you truly want to hear the crunch and boogity monster vocals, visit Coffins myspace for song samples. According to their facebook page, they are now a four-piece band and are currently working on a new album.

And for something just slightly more demonic, Grim’s visual kei monster rock is sure to terrify. The band explores the seven deadly sins in their album Seven out 9.9.2011 and it just might rip your face off. If the masks don’t scare you, the satanic occulty stuff should at least disturb you a little bit.

So if you like what you hear and find yourself grinning ear to ear, maybe you should start that pretend dark shrine to Japanese death metal. Emphasis on pretend please!