My final post in honor of Band-Maid's upcoming U.S. tour (Starts Oct 9 at the Aftershock music festival)

I know professional musicians who are flying across the country to see them. I hope I’ve been able to convey a little bit of why they are so special. Thank you for reading.

Being a Band-Maid fan is like trying to sip from a fire hose.  They are one of the most driven, productive bands in rock history, and have done it without any lapses in the quality of their songwriting or playing.  In fact, their last two albums (one an EP that was just released) seem to show them stepping on the accelerator, with ever more progressive, inventive songwriting. I was going to try to write about their last full-length album, “Unseen World”, and ran out of time.  The good news is, that album has elicited a huge amount of on-line commentary from professional you-tubers and music bloggers, if you are interested in checking it out. 

Even their playing keeps improving, especially that of the band founder and main songwriter Miku Kobato, who had the audacity to pull this group together without actually knowing how to play the guitar.  She is now a down-and-dirty rhythm guitarist who seems to delight in adding new tricks to her arsenal with every performance.

Kobato’s companion in crime, Kanami Tono, does most of the composing, and is also a great lead guitarist whose playing is both lyrical and technically masterful. She can melt your heart or melt your face, whatever the song calls for.  MISA and Akane Hirose bring unique jazz-inflections to their work on bass and drums, respectively, but can also bring the thunder.  Their improvisations are probably the most important factor in making the “Band-Maid Sound” so immediately recognizable. And Saiki keeps growing as a vocalist, as you will see in two of these clips.

“Sayonakidori”

This is a dialed-down acoustic version of one of their hardest-rocking songs, performed by Miku, MISA and Akane.  Frequent comment:  “60% of Band-Maid are better than 100% of most other rock bands”.

“Unleash”

Band-Maid produced this part-anime, part live-action montage to tell the story of their emotional turmoil during the Covid pandemic and their emergence back into the world of live performing.  For fans of the band, the anime portion contains dozens of references to the history of the band and the personality quirks of the band-members. 

“Influencer”

Do you think the world of social media “influencers” is horrifying and, well, tacky?  So do Band-Maid. For this video, they managed to find a wild setting in an abandoned quarry.  The song includes some off-the-chain solo work by the instrumentalists and Saiki spitting bars like nobody’s business (if you don’t know what “spitting bars” is, you can look it up).

If you have tickets to see them on tour, congratulations!  If not, you may still be able to find some on the resale sites like stubhub.  Keep rocking!