Zero News

We've got a big two days ahead of us in Buck-Tickistan, and brevity is the soul of wit, so we'll be brief: numerologically speaking, Buck-Tick have completed the cycle they finished with No. 9 and reset the clock to 0. On March 14th, known in Japan as White Day, the band will release their 21st full-length studio album, entitled No. 0. 

And if you think White Day is about white supremacy - go unfriend yourself from Facebook, you nitwit. White Day is a fake holiday invented by candy companies as a companion to Valentine's Day, because Japanese Valentine's Day revolves around the sexist custom of women giving chocolates to men to beg desperately (and probably in vain) for their approval while failing to appreciate the fact that most Japanese men prefer a gift of booze over chocolate any day of the week (also girls, if he doesn't give YOU chocolate, he's not worth crying over). Then on White Day, the men return the "favor" - by obligatorily giving chocolates to every girl who gave them chocolates on Valentine's Day, which means that nobody's feelings get hurt, and also, it means that these chocolates have no meaning, emotionally speaking, particularly given that they're supposed to be white chocolates, because apparently, in addition to being unable to smoke cigarettes or drink whiskey, beer, or coffee, women in Japan are expected to prefer white chocolate over milk or dark, because doncha know, every woman in Japan is a strawberry Lolita, or so I'm told.

(If you don't know what a strawberry Lolita is, click here to find out.)

Anyway, sorry, that wasn't a bit brief. Guess we're not witty anymore. But it's time someone told the truth about White Day already. Obligatory chocolate sucked enough already without it being white like the abominable snowman.

But! On to the news. As we announced in our last post, prior to the release of No. 0, Buck-Tick will be releasing a second single, entitled Moon Sayonara wo Oshiete, and the are now some more details about that. In addition to an adorable band photo which can be viewed on the splash page of the band's website, the band have announced that the B-side to this single will be a song called "Salome," with lyrics by Mr. Sakurai and music by (drumroll) Hoshino "Sexy Beast" Hidehiko, who hasn't been allowed to write a track for a Buck-Tick single since he made more money in royalties from "Dress" and "Jupiter" than Imai ever made in his whole life since "Love Parade" in 2013. Not only that, but the last single track Hide wrote that actually made it onto an album was "Yougetsu," the B-side of Kuchizuke, which was released in 2010. Not only that, but the last time Hide wrote the A-side for a Buck-Tick single was "Gensou no Hana," released in 2003, and kids, 2003 was a whole 14 years ago. So on that note, we were already betting that "Salome" was going to never appear on an album, possibly never be played live, and almost certainly be instantly forgotten by just about everyone (with the exception of yours truly) until some anniversary rolls around and they re-record it as the theme song for the BDSM action thriller Goth Bondage Jesus 2: Mistress May I Have Another (y'all remember "My Baby Japanese," it was the theme song to Goth Bondage Jesus: Crucify My Love, that terrible yet amazing film with starred Mr. Sakurai opposite a cross-dressing Yoshiki.

(God guys, how could you forget this movie so soon? It was way better than Longinus!)

However, it's all academic at this point to take bets on whether "Salome" will get the head of John the Baptist all up in its bits or if it will be, as we predicted, relegated to the B-side bin of history, because the track list for No. 0 has already been announced in the latest issue of FT, and "Salome" isn't on there.

Join me in playing a sad trombone for Mr. Hoshino... but play it with a bit of bounce, because, friends, this is a blessing in disguise. Hide has three of the songs on the new album, and if one of them were "Salome," that would mean a total of three Hide songs for the next two years, but none of them are "Salome," which means that we get FOUR Hide songs, which is at least one more Hide song than we got last time, so put on your striped t-shirts, pour ten packs of sugar in your coffee, point and wink at the girl nearest you, and dance like that shy-yet-sexy rhythm guitarist second fiddle in the streets/fiddler extraordinaire in the sheets you know you are... especially because every Hide song on this go-around has a sexylicious title and all save one are named for women, which more deeply pounds in the point (absolutely no sexual double entendre intended!!!) that when Messrs. Sakurai and Hoshino get together to write lyrics, there's clearly something sassy going on that isn't going on when Imai's involved, because more often than not they end up writing about sex on the beach, white froth and incoherent moaning, stripper pussy, mystical mandala LSD pussy, death goddess pussy... well, you get the picture (bonus points for whoever can match each description above to the Hide song it describes. Leave your answers in the comments.)

But without further ado, here's the track list for No. 0.

01. Reishiki 13-Gata "Ai" (Type-Zero Model 13 "Love") - Sakurai/Imai
02. Bishuu Love (Love the Beautiful and the Ugly) - Sakurai/Imai
03. Babel - Sakurai/Imai
04. Nostalgia-Wita Mechanichalis - Imai/Imai
05. Ophelia - Sakurai/Hoshino
06. Femme fatale - Sakurai/Hoshion
07. Barairo Juujidan -Rosen Kreuzer- - Sakurai/Hoshino
08. Gustave - Sakurai/Imai
09. Moon Sayonara wo Oshiete (Tell Me Goodbye) - Sakurai/Imai
10. Hikari no Teikoku (Empire of Light) - Imai/Imai
11. Igniter - Imai/Imai
12. Guernica no Yoru (The Night of Guernica) - Sakurai/Imai
13. Tainai Kaiki (Return to the Womb) - Sakurai/Imai

Sakurai has already declared that it's one of the best albums they've ever made, and there's clearly a lot in here, but we don't want to speculate too much without having had a chance to look at the lyrics. Still, there are a few things we can comment on. 

The title of the first track is written in such a way as to imply that "Love" is a make and model of weapon, such as a gun, missile, or bomber. 

Ophelia is the lead female character in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Ophelia is basically Hamlet's girlfriend, but Hamlet plays hot and cold with her and in general treats her pretty badly. He has his reasons, but it's not enough for her. She has a mental breakdown which culminates in one of the most beautiful suicides in the history of literature, immortalized in a famous painting by John Everett Millais, beloved of both goths and emo teens alike.

A femme fatale is a beautiful woman who lures men into trouble, often to their deaths. Salome was one of the original femme fatales, but we'll go into that more once the Moon single is released.

Rosen Kreuzer is the German version of Rosicrucian, which was an esoteric society that gained popularity in the 1600s in Europe. Whether or not the secret order actually existed, the idea of such an order had a tremendous impact at the time. The theosophists who searched for Shambhala-Argarttha around the turn of the 20th century were a later wave of similar hermetic occultists. We're sure we'll have loads more to write about this when the album comes out.

Gustave is probably a reference to the engraver Gustave Dore, whose engraving of Babel we shared in our article a little while back. When we hear the song we'll be sure, but he wouldn't be the first artist for Sakurai to write a tribute song to or name in a song - the award for the former goes to Van Gogh in "Asylum Garden," and the award for the latter goes to Chagall in "Lullaby III."

Edit: In the latest issue of FT, Sakurai stated that "Gustave" was Imai's working title for the song, which he took from the name of artist Higuchi Yuuko's brand Gustave, which includes a lot of whimsical illustrations of cats. Y'all may remember that Higuchi Yuuko's illustration book Babel is one of works which inspired Buck-Tick's song Babel. Anyway, according to Sakurai, Imai showed Sakurai some of the Gustave cat illustrations, and Sakurai felt inspired to write a song about a cat named Gustave, and therefore he kept Imai's working title as the final title of the song. But as for where Higcuhi Yuuko took the name Gustave from... the answer is, she took it from a crocodile! This crocodile, to be exact. Read about it here. (Special thanks to Blog-Ticker Mawb for helping us with researching this while we were off partying at the DIQ).

Guernica is a famous painting by Picasso depicting the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika by the Nazi Luftwaffe at the start of World War II. All hail rock albums about art history.

.

In any case, if all this news has you feeling weak in the knees, or if you're a crotchety old granny who likes to enjoy your rock-n-roll through opera glasses while sitting on your plum duff in a red plush seat at the back of a Respectable Adult Theater far away from the speakers, rather than dancing your feet off while plastered to a speaker in a clump of sweaty fangirls at some Disrespectable Non-Adult Live House, then boy do I have some good news for you: Buck-Tick are going to be putting on another seated tour this spring to support their album, and it's going to last approximately four years and take them to approximately every city in Japan with a population greater than ten. Don't believe me? Here's the tour schedule:

3-31 (Sat.) Kanagawa - Yokosuka Arts Theater
4-1 (Sun.) Tokyo - Olympus Hall Hachioji
4-7 (Sat.) Hyogo - Kobe International Hall
4-8 (Sun.) Nara - Nara Centennial Hall
4-14 (Sat.) Tochigi - Utsunomiya General Cutural Center
4-15 (Sun.) Gunma - Gunma Music Center
4-21 (Sat.) Ishikawa -  Kanazawa Honda no Mori Hall
4-22 (Sun.) Nagano - Nagano City Arts Center
5-12 (Sat.) Kagawa - Sunport Hall Takamatsu
5-13 (Sun.) Kochi - Kochi City Culture Plaza Carport wtf?
5-19 (Sat.) Okayama - Kurashiki Citizens' Hall
5-20 (Sun.) Kyoto - Rohm Theater
5-26 (Sat.) Hokkaido - Sapporo WakuWaku Holiday Hall
6-1 (Fri.) Fukushima - Kooriyama Citizens' Culture Center
6-3 (Sun.) Chiba - Ichikawa City Culture Hall
6-9 (Sat.) Osaka - Orix Theater
6-10 (Sun) Osaka - Orix Theater
6-14 (Thu.) Niigata - Niigata Citizens' Arts and Culture Center
6-23 (Sat.) Hiroshima - Hiroshima JMS Astair Plaza
6-24 (Sun.) Fukuoka - Fukuoka Citizens' Hall
6-30 (Sat.) Miyagi - Sendai Izumity 21
7-1 (Sun.) Aomori - Aomori Citizen's Hall
7-6 (Fri.) Saitama - Kawaguchi Lilia
7-7 (Sat.) Kanagawa - Kanagawa Citizens' Hall Yokohama 
7-14 (Sat.) Shizuoka - Shizuoka Citizens' Culture Hall
7-15 (Sun.) Aichi - Nagoya Blah Blah Forest Hall
7-18 (Wed.) Tokyo - NHK "Shittiest Sound in Tokyo" Hall
7-19 (Thu.) Tokyo - NHK "Shittiest Sound in Tokyo" Hall

Tickets are now 8000 yen each plus as 720 fee, because they just keep jacking up the price of sitting in a red plush seat so far from the band members that you can't see them without opera glasses, breathing in the farts of the fat lady who's standing next to you refusing to dance, while intermittently screaming "ACCCCHIIIII" in your ear in a baby voice whenever things get too quiet. The Fish Tank presale (i.e. the only time you have a minimal fighting chance of getting a seat close enough to the stage to see the band with the naked eye) is on between January 13th and January 23rd, to ensure that people will buy the maximum number of tickets despite not knowing what the fuck they'll be doing in JULY because it's half a year away for fuck's sake, and therefore some of those people will definitely end up not being able to go see B-T, which means that they'll resell their tickets on Ticket Camp or similar, and Buck-Tick's management will get angry about resales and maybe ban some people from Fish Tank, only god dammit, they brought this on themselves.

If any of y'all want our help with tickets, we are ready and willing to help, but ask us as soon as possible. General sales open on March 10th, but before that there will be lots of Ticket Pia presale lotteries and other similar presale options, so don't miss them.

Also, if you enjoyed watching the Fish Tanker's Only 2017 DVD, please write to Buck-Tick's management and tearfully request moar fun standing shows like that, because the opera glasses industrial complex already has enough of our money, and listening to a live show in NHK Hall is kind of like listening to a live show through the water in an indoor swimming pool.

And... that's it for now. Tomorrow is the Day in Question. The day after tomorrow is also the Day in Question. Cross your fingers with us and hope that they've swapped out "Dokudanjou Beauty" and "Muma the Nightmare" for some old songs they haven't played in a while. We known it won't work, but if there's one thing Buck-Tick taught us, it's never to give up on our dreams.