Luna Sea

If the Eighties saw the birth, spread and rising popularity of the visual kei movement, it's fair to say that the following decade represents its imperial era. Not only did the genre's founding bands reach staggering sales records (X-Japan's “Jealousy” topping a million copies; Buck-Tick living out the peak of their success throughout the first half of the Nineties), but fierce new acts arrived to push the founding fathers' ideas further, diversifying and at times radicalizing what had been heard in the previous decade. Not necessarily the most extreme of the bunch, but certainly among the most lyrical and majestic of that Nineties crop of bands, Luna Sea from Kanagawa soon rose to become one of the movement's emblematic groups, quickly establishing themselves as a benchmark for the many artists who would follow. With their third album, an absolute stylistic watershed for Japanese rock, “Eden” makes crystal clear the impressive influence exerted by the quintet.

It's a paradise conceived with care, created after years of careful thought and attention: formed in 1986 out of the meeting of still-high-schoolers Jun Onose (who would later shorten his name and go simply by J) on bass and Kiyonobu Inoue (from then on Inoran) on rhythm guitar, the two would have to wait three years to recruit a vocalist (Ryuichi Kawamura), a lead guitarist (Yune Sugihara, better known as Sugizo, also skilled on violin) and a drummer (Shinya Yamada), completing a line-up that would remain unchanged from then on.

The quintet thus formed took the gothic path introduced by Buck-Tick and D'Erlanger and threw themselves into the fray under the name Lunacy, wading straight into an increasingly feverish visual scene. They would soon change their name to Luna Sea and debut in 1991 on Yoshiki of X-Japan's Extasy label, with a self-titled album that draws on the lessons of Bauhaus and Sisters Of Mercy but wedges them into a grimy punk mechanism, seasoned with distant folk suggestions and a grand-guignol allure, perfectly captured by the flamboyant looks flaunted on the cover.

The following year's “Image” marks the move to a major label, and with it resources grow; the production reveals a newfound cleanliness, the interplay between the parts becomes sharper and more precise, yet without any simplification of the language, which still takes care to reveal its gothic roots through an inlay of hard rock textures and an unprecedented pop tinge, still partly muted but already restless. It's here that the seeds of the future garden are planted, ready to sprout with startling speed.

Their third album in three consecutive years, “Eden” arrives in April 1993 to consolidate a popularity that had grown at a frenzied pace, cementing Luna Sea's name among the most impactful newcomers of the entire visual kei scene. For the occasion, the quintet also opted to release a lead single, fully in keeping with the conventions of mainstream Japanese record releases, but surprising for an approach that departs substantially from what was offered on their first two records. With the gloomy gothic pall of the self-titled album thinned out (relegated for the most part to an intriguing accompanying touch), and with an airiness that had never before belonged to the band, “Believe” fully embodies the band's new direction, the evolved form of a language that doesn't give up its rock substance but vastly amplifies its melodic potential. Pop, one might almost venture, were it not that the song's blend combines a host of disparate elements, playing on Inoran's flanged guitar, Shinya's punk drumming, and violin flourishes that soften the introduction and carry the track toward its ending, lending the whole a romantic touch. It's a metaphysical dream, a yearning for knowledge, which Luna Sea turn into a genuine anthem, helped along by the passionate delivery of Ryuichi's voice, almost breaking with emotion and intensity: an introduction worth its weight in gold.

At the crossroads between styles and expressive needs, between the dark overtures of their beginnings and the stadium-filling touch of their later work, the paradise staged by the quintet rests on an exceptional balance, able to reconcile exaltation and reflection, melodic euphoria and instrumental breathing room, all built on the five members' electric chemistry. Within this design, it's the introduction of a specific sonic attitude that makes the real difference, highlighting what set Luna Sea apart from those who came before them. These, after all, are the years when the international scene is populated by bands bringing genres such as dream-pop and shoegaze to a wider audience: Pale Saints, Slowdive, Chapterhouse, the post-“Heaven Or Las Vegas” Cocteau Twins: an entire universe of bands spreads dreaminess through rock with great conviction, offering a different way of approaching the guitar.

Already long-time fans of the genre, Sugizo and Inoran had tried to work dream-pop elements into “Image”, with its closing track “Wish” being the moment when these attempts truly took shape. Just a year later, what the guitarist himself described as “attempts to replicate the psychedelic feel of shoegaze bands” find their ideal space within the framework of “Eden”, multiplying the sonic directions of an album that draws its strength precisely from such variety. Just listen to the way Inoran's arpeggios shimmer on “Rejuvenescence”, tempering Sugizo's solos and Shinya's metallic drum patterns, even before “Recall”, which sets aside any trace of harshness to surrender to a sea of memories and dreams, fully embracing the entire sonic mechanics of the genre.

Romantic and despairing, always fully present before himself and his struggles, Ryuichi becomes the conduit for this poison-cloaked sweetness, this fatal torpor. Between white tombstones and clothes as black as love (the lethal beauty of "Anubis", inexorable as the iron tread of the drums), corrupted memories lost in the ice (the desolate sense of detachment that animates "Lastly", the most lyrical and painful moment of the entire collection), moonlit nightmares (the angelic ectoplasms swarming through "In My Dream (With Shiver)", one of the band's future classics), Kawamura's voice becomes the vessel for shattered illusions and inescapable loves, framing an earthly paradise now corrupted by passion and fantasy, tainted even in the imagination.

Everything is a chimera, threatening presences stirring in the dark. And so the lopsided grooves of "Steal", pivoting around several fully independent melodic lines, warn against the traps of emotion and their perilous recklessness, which find their perfect conclusion in the carefree bass lines of "Lamentable": a total, irreducible solitude. As if it had stepped out of a music box, with its waltzing gait and tragic violin commentary, "Providence" tackles the theme of paradise lost with careful, veiled poetic brushstrokes ("if there were a mother in this Eden of sin, she would scold her son and shed tears"), the final shudder before "Stay" closes the whole project with an epic surge of feeling.

Reaching only number 5 on Oricon's weekly chart (though it would go on to achieve platinum status), the album nonetheless marks Luna Sea's passage into maturity, from then on one of the driving forces of rock made in Japan, capable of filling Tokyo's legendary Nippon Budokan in record time. Yet it's the record's impact, far more than the band's later bestsellers, that would come to define its importance within their discography. The dreamy cut of the arrangements would be immediately picked up by contemporary bands eager to open their sound to a more varied and expansive imagery (note the striking transformation of Kuroyume from a murky gothic outfit into a more inventive alt-rock unit), and likewise the extensive use of violin would pave the way for visual-kei acts who would make the neoclassical setup their strong suit, naturally consolidating it in a symphonic direction (Malice Mizer being the most widely known and respected worldwide). Not only that, but bands that had only a brief affinity with the whole visual movement (Glay in their early career) would also find in the breadth of scope charted by Luna Sea a crucial element for keeping their own music vital. However corrupted, the quintet's Eden bore exquisite fruit.

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21/09/2025