From left to right, top to bottom: Takashi Ike (bass), Yuuki Nakajima (keyboards), Fumiya Morishita (drums)note , Masatoshi Ono (vocals), Shusuke "Syu" Ueda (guitars)
A neo-classical/Power Metal band from Osaka, Japan formed in 2001. Galneryus shares a similar style to bands such as Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force and Stratovarius. Though they began their career as a Visual Kei band, they quickly dropped the look in favor of a more ordinary casual look, though they continue to almost universally use stage names (with the exception of drummer Jun-ichi Satoh). Although they have enjoyed considerable commercial success in their home country (especially after SHO joined with 2010's Resurrection), their following overseas is much smaller, albeit still highly dedicated. They also seem to have a thing for flags with at least one song with a title referring to flags on four of their eleven albums.note
They have worked on three compilations with other Japanese metal bands, the first contributing a cover Stratovarius's "Black Diamond," the second contributing a cover of Loudness's "Soldier of Fortune," and the third contributing their own song "Struggle for the Freedom Flag." They also recorded the soundtrack of Death Note: The Movie.
The album art of their first three albums were drawn by legendary Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano.
Galneryus's future was in question after the departure of vocalist Yama-B. Yama-B quit due to creative differences and disagreeing with the direction the band was taking. He was replaced by Masatoshi Ono in 2009, while Yu-To was replaced by Taka for bass.
Members:
- Lead Vocals: SHO (Masatoshi Ono) (2009-present)
- Guitar/Backing Vocals: Syu (Syusuke Ikeda) (2001-present)
- Bass: Taka (Takashi Ike) (2009-present)
- Keyboard/Backing Vocals: Yuhki (Yuuki Nakajima) (2003-present, support in 2002)
- Drums: Lea (2020-present)
Former Members:
- Vocals: Masahiro "Yama-B" Yamaguchi (2001-2008)note
- Bass:
- Shogo Himuro (2001-2002, support)
- Yusuke (2002-2003, support)
- Ryousuke "Tsui" Matsui (2003-2006)
- Yu-To/Leda (2006-2009)note
- Keyboard:
- A (2001-2002, support)
- Yoshinori Kataoka (2002, support)
- Drums:
- Toshihiro "Tossan" Yui (2001-2002, support)
- Jun-ichi Satoh (2003-2016)
- Fumiya Morishita (2016-2020)
Discography:
Yama-B Era
- The Flag of Punishment (2003)
- Advance to the Fall (2005)
- Beyond the End of Despair (2006)
- One For All - All For One (2007)
- Reincarnation (2008)
SHO Era
- Resurrection (2010)
- Phoenix Rising (2011)
- Kizuna (2012, mini-album)
- Angel of Salvation (2012)
- Vetelgyus (2014)
- Under the Force of Courage (2015)
- Ultimate Sacrifice (2017)
- Into the Purgatory (2019)
This band exhibits the following tropes
- Album Title Drop: "The Flag of Reincarnation" in Reincarnation and the title tracks from Angel of Salvation onwards, with the possible justified exception of Vetelgyus, since the song is an 8-minute instrumental piece.
- "Destiny" from Resurrection references the album's title in its final versesDestiny is calling you but you don't believe it
Keeper of the resurrection is standing alone
- "Destiny" from Resurrection references the album's title in its final verses
- All Drummers Are Animals: Jun-ichi and Fumiya, especially during their solo performances.
- Auto-Tune: ONO. This is actually one of the major reasons many of the Yama-B fans left and/or see Ono as a
Replacement Scrappy - Yama-B was not heavily autotuned to achieve the sound he did, and Ono has Auto-Tune-like effects even in live performance. - The Band Minus the Face: One of two faces, but after Yama-B left due to creative differences with Syu.
- Concept Album: Their debut album The Flag of Punishment in the Yama-B era, and Under the Force of Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice in the SHO era.
- Distinct Double Album: The Ironhearted Flag. The first, Regeneration Side, comprises of re-recordings of past songs, while the second, Reformation Side adds new lyrics to existing songs.
- Under the Force of Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice have also been stated to be a double-album, although they came out about 2 years apart. Under the Force of Courage tells a story, and Ultimate Sacrifice tells the "sequel" or second part of the story.
- Cover Version: "Black Diamond" and "Soldier of Fortune". They also covered many other songs in their Voices from the Past cover albums and a few from Syu and Ono's solo albums.
- Epic Rocking: Most of their material is this, but the title tracks from Angel of Salvation and Under the Force of Courage take the honor of being the longest songs in their catalogue, both clocking at over fourteen minutes. The title track of Ultimate Sacrifice and "Brutal Spiral of Emotions" from the same album are a close second and third.
- Expy: The band itself is one of Stratovarius.
- Masatoshi Ono/Sho, of Toshi of X Japan, to the point that early in his career he actively worked as a Toshi impersonator. He still sounds like mid-90s Toshi, albeit with less range and more crooning.
- During the band's X Japan clone phase in 2010-11, Syu tried to look like Yoshiki. It didn't work out very well for him, and he dropped the look and affectations around early 2012.
- Masatoshi Ono/Sho, of Toshi of X Japan, to the point that early in his career he actively worked as a Toshi impersonator. He still sounds like mid-90s Toshi, albeit with less range and more crooning.
- Harsh Vocals: Syu provides them on occasion.
- Heavy Meta: "Tear Off Your Chain" sounds a lot like this, but without the references to metal.
- Heavy Mithril: Where to begin?
- Iconic Item: Syu's signature Crying Star guitars from ESP. For Taka, it's his Kubicki Ex-Factor bass
. - Instrumentals: Almost all of their albums have at least one or two of these, and they're usually reserved for the first and last tracks. Reincarnation and Ultimate Sacrifice are the only albums that avert this.
- Lead Bassist: All three bassists are type A, with Tsui being an additional type B and Yu-To/Leda type B and C thanks to his involvement in many other bands since leaving, the most prominent being Babymetal.
- Meaningful Name: Vetelgyus is named after the second-brightest star in the Orion constellation, hinting at the Space Opera theme.
- Protest Song: "Stardust" from Reincarnation is a protest of nuclear war. The "stardust" is radioactive fallout.
- Rearrange the Song: "Owari Naki, Kono Shi" and "Across the Rainbow" from Kizuna, the latter being a lyrical rearrangement of "Whisper in the Red Sky" from Advance to the Fall.
- For the band's
10th anniversary, they released a series of rearranged song albums dubbed The Ironhearted Flag.
- For the band's
- Shout-Out: The "Power! Devour!" line before the chorus in "Tear Off Your Chain" might be one to Rainbow, if not unintentional.
- "Angel Of Salvation" can be seen as one big 14-minute Shout-Out to Tchaikovsky, since numerous parts of the song are taken straight out of Tchaikovsky's Concerto In D Minor Op.35, including the entire string-orchestra-intro. This has led some fans to joke that "Angel Of Salvation" is "basically a rearrangement of Tchaikovsky's Concerto In D Minor".
- Special Guest:
- Yuhki was recently featured at Guilty Gear x BlazBlue Music Live 2011.
- And he did a joint collaboration with Daisuke Ishiwatari himself to remix and rearrange the already killer soundtrack of BlazBlue for Chronophantasma.
- Leda from Far East Dizain and Babymetal's Kami Band (formerly of Deluhi and his solo project Undivide, both of which were disbanded) was featured as a guest guitarist in one of the band's tours which was included in the Phoenix Rising album. He was the bassist Yu-To when he was still in the band.
- Akane Liv from Liv Moon was a guest vocalist in the title track for Angel of Salvation. Prior to that, she sang a cover of "Alone" on Syu's first solo album.
- Yuhki was recently featured at Guilty Gear x BlazBlue Music Live 2011.
- Space Opera: The Vetelgyus trailer hints at this as a theme.
- Spoken Word in Music: "Meditation for the Saga" from The Flag of Punishment, "Reach for the Sky" from Angel of Salvation, "Premonition" from Under the Force of Courage, and "Enter the New Age" from Ultimate Sacrifice
- Stage Names: Only four members in the band's historynote used their real names.
- Ono's is SHO.
- The Quiet One: Taka rarely speaks except outside of live performances.
- Translation Train Wreck: The band has suffered from a few of these, due to singing/writing lyrics in English, then kicking out their best English speaker in Yama-B. Their 2014 album title, Vetelgyus, is one example - it's supposed to be "Betelgeuse."
- Visual Kei: Double subverted: they began as a Kote Kei band but quickly discarded almost all their VK elements. Though in recent years, they have started to appear in full VK and at times do the post-Visual thing better than similar artists.
