Mary’s Blood guitarist Saki may just be the most beloved female rock and metal guitarist in Japan. She recently started two new bands. First off, there is Amahiru, featuring former DragonForce bassist Frédéric Leclercq as fellow guitarist. In addition, she started Nemophila. And all of this while Mary’s Blood is still active. Plenty of reason to catch up with the guitarist.

Amahiru’s self-titled debut album will be released internationally on November 27th. The project is a full-fledged collaboration between Saki and Leclerq. “Fred and I got to know each other when Mary’s Blood was opening for DragonForce in Hong Kong“, Saki explains. “We discussed making music that combines western and eastern elements. About two years ago, our record label in Japan approached me to release a solo album, but I thought the timing was right for my collaboration with Fred. That’s when we started working on the album.“

And while that may seem inconvenient, with one band member based in France and one in Japan, Saki emphasizes that a majority of the album has been composed as a duo: “Some of the songs were already written at home by Fred and me. Maybe three or four songs. We met in Tokyo last year, where we wrote the rest of the songs in the studio and combined everything.“

Traditional

For an album that is to supposed to bring east and west together, the emphasis on ‘Amahiru’ initially appears to be strongly Japanese, as evidenced by song titles as ‘Samurai’ and ‘Ninja No Tamashii’, as well as brief melodies that appear to be taken from Japanese folk songs. “That was all Fred’s idea“, Saki admits. “He was coming up with so many of these things. The ninjas, the samurai… That was too traditional for me, but Fred said that was the most important thing to bring into the album, because those were very new things to the western audience.

Amahiru needed to be a little more modern than Mary’s Blood. Mary’s Blood is straight heavy metal for me, but Amahiru sounds more like hard rock in some parts, so the sounds should be a little more modern and have less distortion. Also, I use seven strings for Amahiru, whereas Mary’s Blood is all six string guitars.“

Fluffy

Amahiru is not Saki’s only new project. Earlier this year, the first two Nemophila singles were released. Besides Saki, Disqualia guitarist Hazuki and former Lipstick singer Mayu (formerly known as Sindy) are among the band’s members. And just like Mary’s Blood’s Eye, Mayu stands out due to her powerful, notably raw-edged voice. Where does Saki find all these singers? “During my auditions for Mary’s Blood!“, she laughs. “And Mayu was a friend of friends of mine. I didn’t know her very well, but my friend told me she was looking for other musicians to play with after she quit Lipstick.

She asked me to play a session with her, for one time only. We got together at Mayu’s session in August of last year and we quickly found out that this was going to be a good band, so we simply decided to start a band. At the time, my management was already talking to Ward Records, so they booked us to play at Metal Weekend last year. So we started composing songs that combined some little Japanese things, like in ‘Oiran’, some electronic elements and Japanese rock with lots of melodic elements.

The most important thing to us is to play hard music like metalcore, but make it ‘yurufuwa’, to give it more of a personality. A Japanese word, it means… Fluffy and smooth. That’s the concept for Nemophila. Nemophila is also a little more modern than Mary’s Blood, with the metalcore-inspired sections. Also, Mayu likes to scream sometimes. I had not worked with that before.“

Freedom

It appears to be the different styles of vocalists that are the most important distinctions between Saki’s projects. “They all have completely different ranges“, says Saki. “Archie (Wilson, Amahiru’s singer) is a man. That was the most different thing, haha! At first, I was writing songs as I usually write them, but they were often too high or very odd for Archie, so we had to change the keys.

It’s not that much different than writing for Eye or Mayu, as they are very different types of singers as well. I have to think about the type of vocals when I’m writing the songs. So it’s definitely more exciting for me to work with all these different typers of singers.

For Mary’s Blood, I write a large portion of the songs and when I write a song, I compose almost everything in the song, except for some fills that (Mary’s Blood drummer) Mari comes up with herself. n Nemophila, I write songs, but there is also a composer team, so we compose the songs at the same time and give every member the midi’s. Tamu (Nemophila drummer Murata-Tamu) has had the longest career of the band, so she always makes her own fills by herself.

I have the chance to try many different things. Mary’s Blood is a straight heavy metal band, but we have so many different styles of songs, so for my songs in Mary’s Blood I feel really free to make all the sounds that I want. In addition, Eye and (Mary’s Blood bassist) Rio love Japanese visual kei music so much. t’s a little bit different than heavy metal sounds. So with their songs, it is sometimes difficult to find the tones that match the vocals.“

Serious interest

A couple of years ago, all-female metal bands were a small hype in Japan. Saki joined Destrose in 2009 – after her later Mary’s Blood bandmates Eye and Mari had left the band already, remarkably enough – and saw the trends come and go. “When I joined Destrose, Aldious and Destrose were releasing albums and gaining popularity already. HMV in Japan started a label and an event around the same time for all-female heavy metal bands.

Also, Burrn!, the magazine, released issues about these types of bands. Serious Japanese heavy metal media started to search for female bands like these. Then, after Babymetal gained popularity, idol fanzines started noticing these female metal bands. Maybe that was the point when heavy metal fans started searching elsewhere.“

Allegedly, Aldious often faced remarks that their popularity was mainly due to how they looked and couldn’t really play in their early days. Mary’s Blood was spared most of that. “Maybe because we didn’t dress quite as colorfully“, Saki thinks aloud. “There are still people who say that they are like Babymetal, but fortunately, we never had anything like that.“

Studying songs

Saki may have described her main band as straight heavy metal, but her influences are far more diverse than that. “When I started playing guitar, I really loved Queen“, she explains. “I love Brian May. I love Brian May. Also, I was influenced by Seikima-II, a Japanese heavy metal band. I like them so much. I played so many songs of Seikima-II and Queen. I studied their songs and sounds for a long time.“

And then the most important question: can we expect Saki to pop up in Europe more often now that she started a project with European musicians? “We were actually thinking of doing some shows in Europe with Amahiru in June and July. Unfortunately, the corona virus happened. We are still planning to tour with Amahiru. Hopefully we can do it sometime next year!“

Order Saki’s work from nearly anywhere in the world at CD Japan below