Official J-rock News

SCANDAL, one of the most famous Japanese girl bands who will celebrate their 15th anniversary in 2021, performed a special show in Tokyo on Christmas Eve, 2020. The unique performance, in collaboration with creative company NAKED, INC., saw all four seasons of the year regained and projection mapped across the stage. The magic from this intimate one-time event will now be available to stream across the globe from 29 December. Held at Toyosu PIT following full coronavirus guidelines, the collaborative live show delivered a heart-warming concept for a year lost. Through SCANDAL's electric live performance and NAKED, INC.'s eye-popping projection...

New Japanese rock band One Eye Closed have released their first winter ballad. It's entitled 'With How I Feel' and is available to download and stream worldwide from today. The Tokyo-based band gained global recognition earlier this year when their ace rock anthem 'Low' was featured as the ending theme to No Straight Roads ("The coolest game of 2020" – Forbes). The game went on to be nominated in the 2020 PlayStation.Blog Game of the Year awards in the 'Best Independent Game' and 'Best Soundtrack' categories. 'With How I Feel' sees One Eye Closed take a new direction in sound...

"As if regenerating the golden age of DragonForce and Blind Guardian… the 'girls metal band boom' of the 2010s, which brought us the likes of BABYMETAL, owes its initial success in part to the pioneering talents of Aldious." – Alternative press "These girls will rock your brains out. As metal as one can get in heels and pink bows" – Kotaku Japan's "groundbreaking" (Nylon) metal band Aldious continue their ten-year conquest with an international edition of Evoke II 2010-2020. JPU Records will unleash it from 29 January. The special CD-edition includes two pages of English liner notes, English lyric translations...

Legendary Japanese band BUCK-TICK will stream their upcoming performance ABRACADABRA THE DAY IN QUESTION 2020 at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan worldwide on 29 December. The band has made it a tradition to see the year off with a show at the 14k+ capacity Nippon Budokan since 2001. Last year saw BUCK-TICK switch venue to the equally impressive Yoyogi National Gymnasium 1st Gymnasium while the Budokan underwent renovation work. Now, they return to sacred grounds. Coronavirus prevented the band from touring in support of latest album ABRACADABRA, the international special edition of which is out on CD and cassette with bonus tracks...

Hello! If you're here just for the tunes, scroll down and get listening! For everyone else, read on. The JPU Records Playlist is a collection of tracks from Japan and beyond handpicked by members of bands on our roster or our staff and available on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and Deezer. For the majority of 2020 members of SCANDAL and Lie and a Chameleon took turns selecting their favourite songs and offering a further glimpse into their musical inspirations. Now, for the first time this year, the playlist is crammed with great Japanese music we've released. They're all from this...