MAN WITH A MISSION, a band based in Japan consisting of five ultimate lifeforms, will release new album Break and Cross the Walls I on CD from28 January 2022 directly from JPU Records, home to some of Japan’s most internationally recognised rock and metal bands. It's available to preorder now. The album will be available through retail outlets a week later, from 4 February 2022.

Break and Cross the Walls I is MAN WITH A MISSION’s sixth album and its singles have amassed over 26 million streams on Spotify. Some of the tracks have been theme songs to popular anime and blockbuster movies, while one track became synonymous with rugby in Japan. This international edition of the album will include English liner note and lyric translations, as well as Romaji transliterations. Additional video on demand content is also available.

The album was originally conceived as a two-disc set. However, following the impact of COVID-19 on Japan’s music scene and the band’s own fandom, they decided to speed things up by releasing two consecutive albums instead. The next part, ‘Break and Cross the Walls II’, will be released in spring, 2022.

Guitarist Jean-Ken Johnny comments, “We’ve completed our first studio album in three and a half years. We never stopped during Covid and progressed step by step, resulting in a big gift of a two-album series for our fans. For now, here is the first album – we are very happy with the result, including the tracklisting. Hope you enjoy it”.

‘Break and Cross the Walls I’ includes the opening theme song ‘Merry-Go-Round’ from one of Japan’s most popular anime series overseas My Hero Academia. It also includes the theme song for the Japanese release of Godzilla vs Kong (‘INTO THE DEEP’), and recent J-drama series Radiation House II: Radiology Diagnosis Report (‘Remember Me’). Additionally, the band’s track ‘Change the World’ was used for the theme to rugby coverage via NHK, Japan’s government own public broadcaster.

A total of 14 songs are included, as well as seven brand new songs; ‘yoake’ (also the band’s latest music video), ‘Thunderstruck’, ‘Break and Cross the Walls", "Between fiction and friction I", "Klaxon Mark", "Subliminal" and "Anonymous". The album’s cover artwork also symbolically features five wolves descending into a two-tone black and white space alongside a black and white game of chess.