Love.txt

SELF CONTROL

I really love Metronome.

I fell in love with Metronome for the first time in 2023. I had heard them at least a year or two before, and I enjoyed what I heard a lot, but it took me until the middle part of 2023 to truly fall in love with them.

They're great digital-rock. They're New Wave and Techno. They're pop and punk and even pop-punk when they want to be. They're diverse, catchy, have such a distinct appearance and best of all their discography is endless!

Despite starting without the expectation to even make it to 2005, and without the vision of becoming Visual Kei, Metronome became very very lucky and not a single release of theirs is a miss.

It has almost been 30 years since Metronome's predecessor Picopicopon formed, and the musicians involved continue to release fresh and creative music. It's hard to overstate how much I appreciate this. Many older bands I fall in love with are long gone.

For me, Metronome's activities and music can be split up into three distinct eras: Early Metronome (1998–mid-2001), Pre-Hiatus Metronome (mid-2001–2009), and Post-Hiatus Metronome (2016–present). All of these have such lovely draws that I can't simply generalise them.

What's so good about early Metronome?

As a young man Sharaku Kobayashi ruined his life prematurely: he decided that he loved the bands Uchoten and P-MODEL and Pitchshifter and Toy Dolls. He decided he admired Kera and Kenji Ohtsuki and Susumu Hirasawa and worst of all Yukio Mishima.

In 1997, with his high school best friend Fukusuke, he started the band Picopicopon for fun, carrying inspiration from New Wave bands such as P-MODEL. The music they pushed out was... subpar, but still super cute.

In 1998 they got serious: They started the band Metronome at last, with a bassist named Yagi and a drummer named Kemumaki. They come up with a concept to make things a little more interesting: They time-traveled from the distant year of 2005 because record sales weren't good. They play 21st-century religious music in all its total-techno glory.

Early Metronome was earnest and an attempt at making something new and weird via emulating other, cooler artists who loved playing with synthesisers and samples. They tried to piece together what the future might sound like. To me, early Metronome are more of a symbol than anything else: there is an ideal, in there, of a totally synthetic future.

While Metronome's lyricism revolving around machines has never gone away, the vision of Metronome as a real time-traveling band is long gone. They are futuristic, but no longer from the future. Digital music is common now—there is no longer any novelty in a synth loop—but there was a point in time when it took money and space to get any equipment at all.

A heartfelt vision of what the future might have sounded like coming from a young group of punk-rock New Wavers stuck among rock musicians, all from around the turn of the millenium, is extremely sweet to hear. And I think that's what really makes me love them.

Babylon, environment and reverberation
Babylon, feelings and form
Babylon, plainly, gradually
Babylon, born again

— translation from robot and lyrics

Wouldn't you like to visit the freaky, abstract, technological vision of 2005 too?

What's so good about pre-hiatus Metronome?

Metronome grew and evolved and changed members as is standard for any indie band. In mid-2001, Kemumaki left the band, and the drummer Yuuichirou happily replaced him. Importantly, Metronome's new bassist Riu would become a permanent member of the band.

Around this time, Metronome signed to ART POP RECORDS, a label hosting some pretty great bands. I feel like this is when their sound really shifted; they went from their weird hybrid vision of future music full of tinny synthesisers and amen breaks to a more digestible pop-rock sound full of digital elements. Certainly a change, but by no means a downgrade!

As we are, let's go far away
Push through the pouring rain
I'll forget about you so
Come and pick me up
Come here and pick me up

— translation from robot and lyrics

In 2002 Metronome left Art Pop for another label but they were by no means slowing down. By the end of the year, when they released Zannen Boku no Jinsei., they had already solidly found their new sound.

I would call it pop-rock, but I think it's something else. You can't really constrain Metronome to a genre other than a general label like "digital rock music"; while the song Hi-Fi from the album 1 metronome is undoubtedly a pop song with an attempt at a breakdown thrown in, Mittsu Kazoero from the same album, and this album's version of Planet might as well be a lighter take on the industrial stuff THE MAD CAPSULE MARKETS were doing in 1999.

It's hard even just to find someone else's categorisation for their music. In Japan, they were innacurately categorised as Techno-Pop or broadly filed under Visual Kei, and in the West, it's not like many people evolved past using the word "J-rock" for all Japanese rock music yet.

Metronome had a really strong and unique sound, but it's also like they packaged up more accessible and entirely new renditions of other genres for regular rock fans with a general New Wave touch.

Romantic, the meaning is unknown
Romantic, the significance is spacy
A bouquet in my right hand, a gun my left
Romantic, the value is unchangeable
Romantic, the key is spacy
Despair in my right hand, love in my left

— translation from robot and lyrics

I think that this is what I really love about pre-hiatus Metronome. As a band they weren't genreless, but they never had their hands tied for a single moment. They dressed up in coordinated spacesuits and bright yellow leather harnesses and hakama pants, put on dark makeup and bleached their hair, and from there the most important part of it all was making something fun to listen to. Even if they were a rock band, so what if they made pop?

Another fun thing with this era of Metronome is that, even if you heard the most upbeat song in the world, it was likely to have some pretty sad lyrics. Take the lyrics of the above song, Space Romantic, for example: it's about hurt and rejection!

It's not uncommon for that sort of tonal dissonance to exist in songs, of course, but the more you read Metronome's lyrics the clearer it is: their vocalist, Sharaku, really does believe he is a sad and lonely computer and will take every opportunity to express this.

I think that a sad and lonely computer's perspective on things is relatable even to humans.

Metronome were really the perfect band. In 2005 they made up with their ex Art Pop and released Electric Travel, an album that still stuns me with how fleshed out it feels. Zetsubou-san is a classic that was released the next year. Even when they traded drummer Yuuichirou for Shintarou in 2007, they continued to push out great music.

Foolish twilight — only tonight
Unending one night — I want to close the distance between us a little!
Foolish twilight — only tonight
Unending one night — I want you to reach my suffering heart!
Quite like a bashful boy

— translation from robot and lyrics

It's hard to get my point across to someone without pushing that they listen to a few of Metronome's deep cuts, but the only way to really get that done is to sit them down and force them to listen to a few of their albums. That's tough work for both you and me.

All I can hope to do is get you hooked on the hits.

The unfortunate truth is that all great things must come to an end; in 2009, Metronome announced that they were putting an end to things. That is, the band broke up. It's easy to see why—guitarist Fukusuke was seeing loads of success with his samurai-techno solo project ADAPTER。, and vocalist Sharaku had already been toying with many other projects. All of this time and effort detracted from what could have been spent on the band. You can't overload yourself with deadlines.

Their final tour put it in nice terms: they called it PLEASE PUSH PAUSE. For all the Metronome fans out there, it was finally time to put the video games down and go tend to regular life.

what's so good about post-hiatus metronome?

I don't know what higher powers decided the world was ready to be blessed with more music, but after seven years, somebody decided to push the the play button hidden deep inside of Metronome Headquarters.

They no longer have a drummer. Their sound is far more rock than digital-pop compared to in the past. But they are Metronome, and they have kept their distinct identity, and I could never get enough of their music no matter how much I try.

We are now in the era of Post-Hiatus Metronome. They became the first picopico band to ever go major by signing to KING RECORDS. and all things considered, they look like they are here to stay.

I'll accept the reality that is now
because I'll go on living
I won't fall into despair
Once, you held me close
and we laughed, didn't we?
Don't forget it, okay?

— translation from robot and lyrics

There's something magical about post-hiatus Metronome. It's the era that took me the longest to warm up to, even if I never disliked it, but when it clicked for me I really feel like I understood it. Music changes with the times; I think that if the pre-hiatus Metronome continued on to this day, their music would still end up sounding like this.

Despite the sparse releases, it's all magical. When I listen to present-day Metronome I feel like I'm being taken far away, I think that despite all the changes, this has been their goal all along.