Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010

Courtesy of Avex Entertainment

Things had been going nicely for Tokyo metal group Fact—right up until a car swerved over the median and hit their tour van head-on just outside Atlanta last April.

The episode provides the basis for the title track of their new album, In the Blink of an Eye. When singer Hiro (the members go by their first names) utters the line, “We’ve rolled the dice/But we’ve survived,” he’s being fairly literal: the van flipped onto its side, and the band’s five members are lucky to be alive. Drummer Eiji’s arm was fractured in several places, requiring major reconstructive surgery that’s left him with a searing red scar up its entire length.

Ironically, the accident occurred the same day as their debut release in the US, the self-titled album FACT. Signed last year to Vagrant in North America and maximum10 in Japan, the group had finally begun to see their dreams come to fruition after ten years of toil on the Tokyo live-house circuit.

“The accident was definitely behind the idea for the album,” says Hiro in an interview at maximum10’s Aoyama office. “The theme ‘in the blink of an eye’ says it all: life is short and fast.” He adds with a wink: “and our music is fast too.”

Fact are definitely capable of some serious shredding in the classic Metallica/Anthrax tradition, which speaks to their background in the metallic hardcore scene. But with its dreamy, melodic intros and willingness to mix real “singing” with guttural “screamo” shouting, In the Blink of an Eye also speaks to their exposure to dance music and pop.

Forming in Ibaraki around the nucleus of guitarist Kazuki and vocalist/guitarist brothers Hiro and Takahiro, the quintet slogged it out for years before being picked up by Vagrant and maximum10.

Their signing led to an invitation to tour the US where, in addition to hitting the major metropolises, they were welcomed as a novelty in rural areas.

“We were best received in Texas,” says Kazuki. “The big city people seemed a bit more used to the idea of Japanese bands, but in the countryside we were often the first Japanese ever to play the venue.”

While it’s taken a decade to come about, Fact understood from the start that if they were going to make a real go at a music career, they needed to think beyond Japan. “Japanese are more into heavy music than in the past, but compared to J-pop it’s still minor,” continues Kazuki. “It’s impossible to get by on performances alone in Japan, where the market is so small. You can tour the entire country in a month, so there’s no way to make a living from it. From the start, we knew we had to bring our music abroad.”

For FACT, the band appeared on the cover in traditional noh theater masks, which served the purpose of introducing them to an overseas audience as unmistakably Japanese. But, as suggested by the fact that their faces are again obscured for In the Blink of an Eye, there was also a larger motivation. “We want people to approach us directly through the music, not through our visuals,” Kazuki explains. “We want to provoke their curiosity, and make them dig deeper.”

“Actually, we only wore the masks once—for Halloween,” Takahiro admits. “It’s really difficult to wear them because the eye holes are so small.”

In addition to becoming one of just a few Japanese bands to tour the US heartland, Fact also achieved the feat of joining the small number of Japanese metal bands to crack the all-important Oricon charts.

Takahiro says that, because of digital piracy, sales are actually more important than ever to a band’s career.

“People don’t value music as much anymore,” he says. “I think that the type of person who illegally downloads music isn’t going to bother paying to see us live. It’s the fan that will pay to see us live who also wants the CD package. We are able to continue doing this thanks to people like them.”

In the Blink of an Eye is available on maximum10 and at Amazon Japan.

Fact
Japanese masked metal band. Feb 8, 7pm, ¥3,900. Shibuya O-East. Feb 9, 7pm, ¥3,900. Club Quattro, Shibuya. Tel: Creativeman 03-3462-6969.