Looking for a new form of cruel and unusual punishment? Then look no further than Deviloof, whose highly individual take on deathcore merges harsh, devastating sonics with Japan’s distinctive ‘Visual Kei’ culture. While eye-popping visuals have gone hand-in-hand with heavy metal since the genre’s earliest days, Visual Kei goes beyond shock value and showmanship in order to help its practitioners better expand upon their specific worldview.
“Visual Kei started in the 1980s when Japanese bands took inspiration from American and European metal and evolved it into something new,” explains bassist Daiki. “At its core Visual Kei really comes from metal: the early songs of X Japan, who are considered the founders of Visual Kei, are basically melodic speed metal. There are many ways to interpret it, but it’s more about the visual aspect than a strict musical genre - nowadays you’ll see bands playing anything from metal to pop while still being considered Visual Kei.”
Since the days of X Japan, Visual Kei has exploded exponentially outward, with flamboyant artists pilfering liberally from anime, fetish gear and retro-futuristic Elizabethan formalwear to concoct styles that make the Western glam and hair metal bands of the 70s and 80s look like frumpy librarians. Deviloof, however, explore decidedly darker depths, and their aesthetic perfectly matches their music’s themes of pain, sadness and anger.
“We use Visual Kei elements in our makeup and look to really push and build the world of each song,” explains Daiki. “You can look cool in just jeans and a t-shirt, but with costumes and makeup you can create this almost otherworldly space that everyday clothes just can’t give you. That sense of the extraordinary is what attracted me to Visual Kei.”
The band’s ghoulish aesthetic – think Hellraiser and The Crow by way of Cradle Of Filth – serves as a perfect match for their brutal sound. Serrated riffing, stop-on-a-dime rhythms and skull-crushing breakdowns are delivered with deadly precision, while frontman Keisuke provides a bewildering range of tormented croons and larynx-rupturing shrieks.
“In the beginning our style was basically ‘do whatever you want’,” says the singer. “Since we didn’t have any kind of examples to follow we hit a lot of walls along the way, and there was even a time when we tried to be more audience-friendly. This made us feel like we were losing our originality, so we stopped and looked at who we really are as a band. We decided that if there was no example for us to follow, then we should be the ones to create it.”
Thanks to their mix of brutality, musicianship and creative flair, Deviloof have been making bigger and bigger waves, their fans ranging from dedicated deathcore freaks to diehard Visual Kei devotees.
Perhaps the band’s most surprising fan, however, is Tadanobu Asano - the Golden Globe-winning actor perhaps best known in the West for his roles as lightning-wielding thunder god Raiden in 2021’s Mortal Kombat and as Shōgun’s charmingly duplicitous Kashigi Yabushige. The band discovered Asano was a fan when they were on the hunt for someone to star in a video for the song Inshu, and found him amongst their social media followers.
“We wanted to create a music video with a cinematic, story-like feel so we were looking for an actor whose presence would really fit Deviloof’s atmosphere,” says Daiki. “That’s when we reached out to Mr. Asano. He hasn’t come to one of our shows yet, so we definitely hope he’ll come see us live someday!”
The music video for Inshu is both striking and unsettling: a five-minute mini epic that sees the band thrashing like maniacs against a surrealistic backdrop that suggests a classic Japanese horror flick (think Kwaidan or Onibaba) filtered through the work of maverick filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn. While Asano was undaunted by the heavy metal chaos unfolding around him, Keisuke was slightly more nervous about being in the presence of a professional actor.
“I got to watch Mr. Asano up close and I was completely blown away by his skill,” says the singer. “I’m sure it was loud right in his ear at times, and my hair probably hit his face here and there, but he took it all with a smile and I’m truly grateful for that.”
Having hit European soil for the first time at Spain’s Resurrection Fest earlier this year (“we gave it everything we had and the audience gave that energy right back to us,” beams Keisuke) the band are now gearing up for their first tour of the continent.
“I’ve really been looking forward to this,” says guitarist Ray. “Because of COVID and other setbacks we weren’t able to come for a few years, but people have been waiting for us. Now we finally get to bring them the evolved version of Deviloof, and I can’t wait to see how they react.”
Despite their imposing aesthetic the band had some fairly cheerful ambitions for the UK leg of the tour, which took place a couple of months after this interview. They were keen to make a pilgrimage to Abbey Road and take in sights from the Harry Potter franchise. Don’t let these chipper extra curriculars fool you, however: the band are making no bones about what metalheads can expect from the Deviloof live experience.
“It’s going to be brutal - absolutely brutal,” says Daiki. “I want people to feel the fragility and beauty hidden within that brutality. Go wild with us, let it all out—your frustrations, your anger—everything. That’s what our shows are for.”
CalloutInshu is out now via Toukama Japan Communications
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