Everything Λucifer / Aucifer / Lucifer / リュシフェル

For the first time in who knows how long, Aucifer are set to make a TV appearance on TBS network’s 「BLITZ INDEX」 on June 11th! No info as to what sort of appearance we should expect but seeing that it’s a 10-minute slab of airtime, we could possibly be looking at a little talk and — fingers crossed! — a live performance. You can never have too many performances of “Datenshi BLUE.”

If you’re desperate to try and catch this live, you might have luck with KeyHoleTV or freshverse for example, but the quality is going to be pretty lousy. The best livestream I’ve found is the gundam.eu one but unfortunately it appears to be down for the foreseeable future. If there’s any goodness in the world, someone will later put up a good quality version on the ol’ Tube or elsewhere.

In any case, for those of you with access to Japanese TV, Aucifer will be on air this Friday – Saturday night at 26:55 – 27:04 Japan time, which of course translates to Saturday 02:55AM – 03:04AM.

In other news, Aucifer are to be featured in the upcoming August issue of the Arena 37°C SPECIAL magazine which goes on sale on June 27th. Meanwhile, you can also catch Rayflower in the June issue of the standard edition of Arena 37°C which is already on sale.

By the way, did any of you hear the Rayflower single? Just as I expected, it’s pretty damned good! The riffs on “Uragiri” are gnarly and I kind of dig the vocals. And hey, while we’re on the subject of Yuki, Acid Black Cherry are releasing their second cover album “Recreation 2” on June 30th. Apparently they’re also releasing their next single “Re:birth” in the near future. No release date on that one yet.

With less than three months to go, we’re getting closer to the main event here, folks. As a sign of that, there’s several of these little guys starting to pop up on Yahoo.jp auctions:

For those of you not in the know yet, Λucifer have scheduled an additional show to their previously reported tour. The fourth show is set for 09/01 at the Akasaka BLITZ, Tokyo where they’re also playing the preceding night.

On a sidenote, I’d just like to say that I hate anyone and everyone who’s going. Alright, alright, I don’t hate you, but I do want to go. Anyone care to sponsor me the flights to there and back? Fingers crossed for at least that live DVD recording!

In other news that were deemed too minor to write up on their own:

• Yuki‘s band DUSTAR-3 released a new album on 04/28 called Trike.
• Check out the new design on Makoto‘s site.
• Also check out this cool little promo for Aucifer’s tour from TNB’s site.
• Aucifer’s site now also has little congratulatory messages written by various people such as Kaikan Phrase creator Shinjo Mayu, cool actor Hiroshi Tamaki, and musicians of MUCC, 12012, kannivalism, BREAKERZ and SHUSE. Nothing too exciting, but here’s the Google translation.
• Makoto was a guest on Towa‘s net radio show on April 20th. I managed to record it for you but I’m not going to attempt a translation right now. Be warned though that due to my internet connection being an asshole, this recording cuts off at around 1:15 and at 13:55 — in total there’s perhaps around 30 seconds of the show missing. That’s the best I could do, sorry. Still, it’s a good opportunity to hear Makoto’s voice again after a while. Here it is:

Finally, an unrelated picture of Atsuro taking a picture of himself in admiration. Or disgust. Not sure.

As you can see, the site is finally up. A couple of minutes early, might I add! I was waiting for the countdown timer to get down to zero just for the hell of it, but it opened around five minutes early. Boo!

The main news here is that they’ve announced the Rinne (“Death and Rebirth“) 10th Anniversary Live Tour consisting (so far?) of three shows:

08/25 @ Shinsaibashi CLUB QUATTRO, Osaka
08/26 @ E.L.L., Nagoya
08/31 @ Akasaka BLITZ, Tokyo

Tickets to all shows can be bought here and are priced ￥6,300 (~$68).

After you’re done with your refresher course on the members’ blood types, there’s a contact form that encourages you to send messages of support to the band. It’s simple enough to figure out, but for the nihongo-challenged, here’s how you send in your message:

Finally, a tidbit from Towa‘s blog:

Aucifer were on today’s Sponichi with a brief history and notice of their reunion, including a quote from Makoto saying he wants to stand on stage again and get together with the members as well as the fans. As for the fingers, that’d be Makoto and Towa. I’m guessing Makoto’s are the girly ones. Those two will be on net radio livecast today from 11 P.M. Japan time, so be sure to tune in if you can.

That’d be all for now. Lastly, look at this bitchin’ promo picture!

Things were looking grim after my last post, but I’m very glad to have been proven wrong!

Aucifer now has a new site that promises to open in a bit over a week from now, on April 20th. For now, the site has links to the members’ respective sites. Looking pretty snazzy! There’s also a mobile version.

Here’s a portion of Mayu Shinjo‘s announcement:

Aucifer 10th anniversary
Finally, they’ve announced it!
I already wrote about it in a previous blog, but as their website was in preparation and none of the members posted any official statement, a lot of fans must’ve thought “is it for real?”
However, after lots of fine-tuning, their site is up.
This time, I can announce it loud and clear:
For a limited time, Aucifer are back!

On a related note, and this might just be entirely my imagination (or my limited Japanese skill), but Mayu might be hinting at some possible upcoming Kaikan Phrase activity. Whether she means another game, the manga or even — dare I say it?! — more anime, I know not. But again, this could just be nothing, so take this bit with a grain of salt.

Atsuro, Towa and Santa also posted messages about this on their blogs, all basically just throwing the announcement out there and saying they’re looking forward to it. However, there is one thing of importance all of them seem to be saying. I’m sorry to say this to all those hoping for new Aucifer songs (me included!), but for now it appears that it’s going to be a live reunion in nature. I’m hoping they change their minds because while I’d love to go catch them live, I don’t see that happening.

Ah well,  if nothing else, we can at least hope for a live DVD, right? According to Towa’s blog, their rehearsals have already begun. Behold, this is where the magic (supposedly) happens:

Lastly, TNB Entertainment has also posted an apology on their site, basically saying they’re sorry for the wait. I don’t know about you guys, but considering the nature of the news they’ve just given us, I’m alright with forgiving them!

What might be an ominous sign, Aucifer’s new site has been down for a good week or two now. In addition, though Aucifer/Makoto’s new agency’s site has this flash on the top with rotating Aucifer PV screencaptures that used to have the words “Λucifer revival” slapped on them, they’ve now taken that out from all the pictures.

This does feel alarming and frankly if what I fear is true, what a huge crock of shit. However, remember that this is all just guesswork and observation on my part. There’s no official word that they’ve decided to not do the comeback. The good news is that Aucifer are still listed in the Artist-section of the agency’s site. Why would a defunct, largely forgotten band like Aucifer need agency backing seven years after they stopped all activities? So that’s a glimmer of hope for you.

I’ll keep you posted in case the site pops up or anything else happens.

Indeed they are! About damn time!

Though the news about this was originally announced a couple of months ago, I only found out about it now. Here’s a rough translation of the announcement made by Shinjo Mayu, the mangaka behind Kaikan Phrase that of course gave birth to the real life Aucifer.

Aucifer’s comeback!

“To commemorate their 10th anniversary, Aucifer are finally being revived!
For this 10th anniversary there’s a new game being released, a comeback for Aucifer…
As for the rest… it’s a secret! (lol)
We’re planning various things, so look forward to it!
Details will be found here → http://www.rinne915.com/
You can also see a few old promo pictures at the website of Makoto’s new agency here! → http://tnb-j.jp/

The members have had clashing schedules due to various projects, but they’ve finally made time for their comeback.
By the way, for all of you who don’t know…
– Makoto has been doing solo activities.
– Yuki has been a supporting member in Acid Black Cherry, solo project of Janne da Arc‘s yasu.
– Atsuro has been a supporting member in Shokotan‘s band.
– Towa and Santa are in a band together, and Towa has also been doing songs for AKB48 ¹.
– Atsuro, too, has been making songs for different artists².

Though their 10th anniversary was actually on September 15th, because of these various individual activities of the members, their return was delayed until now.
But, finally I’m now able to pass on this news to you all.
All the fans, please wait for additional info.
I really want to go see them as well!!
It’d be nice to meet old staff and assistants again.
I’m really looking forward to it!”

¹ The hell? AKB48? This is something even I didn’t know!
² Like I’ve written previously, Atsuro has worked with Hello! Project before. Interesting, it’s like Aucifer are in kind of indirect competition with the AKB vs. H!P thing, no?

Mayu’s message was posted on November 18th. It shouldn’t take much longer until we hear some more news concerning this. Can’t wait! I’ll try to keep you updated as I hear anything more.

Hello and welcome to Henkka’s Aucifer blog, hereafter referred to as Silent Melody. How original…

In case you weren’t aware, Aucifer are a band. Actually, they’re a pretty damned good band in my books. If you’ve no idea what they’re about, the Jpopstop article on them would be a good place to start investigating — I would know, I’m the one who wrote it!

I’d call Aucifer my all time favorite J-rock band. I got to know them like anyone else: through the awesome Kaikan Phrase anime. I loved it! Since I’m a huge music fan, it was a very entertaining watch: whether it was the silly animated playing scenes, the ridiculous band rivalries, the “releasing five singles on the same day” schemes or the 24-hour live shows (what the hell?!), I thought it was magnificent. More than anything though, it was the music that stuck with me. It didn’t take long for all the songs to be completely burned into my memory. I started investigating, quickly dug out their whole discography and, well, here we are.

As to why this blog exists? I have another blog where I occasionally wrote about Aucifer but I figured, why not just make a new one focusing entirely on the band? Hey, they’re my favorite after all. Some might argue that there’s not much to talk about a band that’s been dead and largely forgotten for a good seven years now, but as it just so happens, there’s very strong reason to believe Aucifer are going to be back soon (more on that in the next post.) Even if that never happens though, I don’t mind: I like to occasionally check what the members are up to and then write about my findings. And hell, even if they stop doing anything at all, there’s still all those old songs to fangirl over, right?

Please join me as I write about anything and everything having to do with Aucifer, its music, its members’ recent activities and about how much I want to engage in sexual activity with Yuki‘s hair. Please bear with the site as I try my best to not make it look like shit!