INTERVIEW: RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR

That one freaky night when you decide to get your strange on with some of that Japanese Manga and some Thrash, and the next thing you know, your love child appears, and its name is Rise of the Northstar.

 

This mosh monster has finally surfaced from the underground, and is ready to put it all out there for us. Their latest album Welcame is tearing it up, and we are ecstatic to have been able to nab a couple of moments with their very loquacious drummer, Hokuto No Kev.

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Your music sounds inspired from 90’S New York Hardcore, along with other elements of thrash thrown it. What else is it about Rise of the Northstar that you feel makes your band unique?

Rise of the Northstar is influenced by what has paced our youth. So most of our influences are drawn from the 80s/90s, through bands like RATM, Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, Machine Head, Pantera…But also hip hop acts from this era like Wu tang, Onyx, Mobb Deep… Not only Hardcore. At the same time the Japanese culture took a huge place in our lives, we all grew up watching violent animes like “Hokuto no ken”, “Akira” or “Dragon Ball”.This where this mix is born from: during the golden age of Japanese video games. ROTNS is born from the will to mix our two passions: violent music and Japanese sub-culture.

It’s been six years since you’ve released a demo EP and two EP’s. Why has it taken so long to record an LP?

Cuz we are challengers! We have many things to prove. Listen to our first EP Tokyo Assault. There is a song called “Rookies”. This is about us, we are novice rookies! Look at Demonstrating My Saiya Style everything is in the name. This CD was done to demonstrate what we can do. Today lots of CDs are written quickly and when you listen to them you only like a few songs. It’s Ok when you have reached Metallica’s status, but not when you are a challenger! We preferred to make a five track EP with five hits, than doing a full length with only five good tracks. We know now that it was a good choice. We sold 3000 copies by our own and we are pretty proud of it. Thanks to those two EPs, we learned lots of things. It allowed us to tour everywhere, to gain experience, to become more professional and we earned enough money to do the quality album we wanted to do!

What is it about Welcame that’s special to you? What is it that will make it stand out from your previous releases?

Welcame is the evolution of the previous EPs like a saiyajin transformation! We put more of everything, more solos, more thrash parts, more gimmicks, more hip hop vibes, more violence…We now master our style. We tried to put something different in every songs that will make each one unique.

The last releases were all done independently, but Welcame will be released through Nuclear Blast. What does it feel like releasing an album through a larger distributor than releasing the LP independently?

We were streetfighters armed with baseball bats now we are heading a world war armed with nukes! The most important thing for us concerning this partnership is to know that our CD will be available everywhere, which is pretty hard when you are independent.

Welcame was recorded by Zeuss, who’s produced albums for the likes of Hatebreed and Emmure. What was it like recording with him, and did he bring any ideas to the table that you didn’t think of previously?

Well, Zeuss didn’t record it. He only mixed and mastered it. We did the recording ourselves: guitars at home, drums and vocals at Sainte Marthe Studio in Paris. It’s the third CD we have recorded there. We were discussing with about 10 big producers, finally we chose Zeuss, for artistic reasons and mainly because he really seemed to be motivated by the project, which is really important! We are totally satisfied with the work he did. We sent him tons of mails, he probably hates us now (laughs), but we have the quality record we were expecting by working with him.

On an interesting note, on your press release it’s stated that ROTNS plays in Gakurans and your singer always has his face shielded. What message are you trying to convey by using these ideas on stage?

Gakuran is the Japanese school uniform. We wear them, but like Furyos: shorter jackets, huge pants and sneakers, which is totally forbidden at school in Japan. Furyo is a Japanese word for a juvenile delinquent. Furyos are bad at school, fight each other… But there is something else behind this word. If you read some Shonen Manga you’ll see that Furyos live their lives by their own rules, omitting the world around ’em. They run their lives as they want to, not as the society they live in would like! ROTNS is about that and our uniforms means that we are all five united with the same goals and against all the established code in this scene. We have our own codes, own rules, we create our own way, “The new path”.

On the band’s Facebook, it’s stated that your music is influenced by Anime and Japanese Manga. As they’re both getting a lot bigger recognition (certainly in the UK), do you feel that people from outside of Japan can easily get into Rise of the Northstar?

You know many people think that our music is about manga, but it’s not totally true. Yes there are many references to manga but the songs aren’t dedicated to manga. In the lyrics Vithia speaks about the reality of our lives through manga references. The manga is used as a metaphor. I don’t think people need to know all our references to enjoy our music. You know, I don’t give a fuck about the devil, religion, war paint…but one of my favorite bands is Behemoth.

“Welcame” video:

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You’ve mentioned the band’s interest in Anime and Japanese Manga. What Anime or Manga do you enjoy watching/reading?

The band loves shonen manga like Rookies, Rokudenashi Blues, GTO, Slam Dunk, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Akira, Hokuto no ken, Gantz, Vagabond, Evangelion, Crows…

Thoughts on “Attack on Titan”?

Yes it’s a really cool one. But i’m late I haven’t seen all episodes yet…I recommend this one too!

In 2011, you released a charity single for those affected by the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. How did the proceeds help those effected, and how does it feel having one of the first songs out to help with the disaster?

As everyone knows, in March 2011 Japan was hit by a big tsunami and then the Fukushima disaster happened. We were really affected by these events, cuz Japan is a reason to be for the band. We were watching the news everyday and it was like Japan was condemned and in the same time our dreams too. We were wondering, “What can we do? The only thing we have is a band… how can we help people with music?” And so we decided to create an exclusive song called “Phoenix” to sell it and collect money for the Japanese Red Cross. And then we decided to make a video clip to make this campaign bigger. Many people bought the song on our bandcamp and allowed us to give money to the red cross. We really thank them all. To end this campaign, a year after the disaster, we’ve went touring in Japan and we asked our promoter to play in Fukushima. At this period every foreign band was cancelling their shows there because of the radioactivity risk, we were the only foreign band playing in this area. We really wanted to play for them! And trust me it was the most emotional and authentic show we ever played.

RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR – Phoenix (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

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What else can we expect to hear from Rise of the Northstar in the future?

Step by step dude! Let see first people’s reactions on WELCAME!

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By Connor Williams, RockRevolt Journalist