[Speed Metal] Rocket Queen

[billm99uk]

So…Rocket Queen. How to describe Rocket Queen? Hmm…slightly bonkers melodic speed with a lot of energetic wailing from lead vocalist Kazuya. Oh yeah, you’re definitely going to have to like Kazuya. Not that he’s bad as such, just that he’s definitely there, if you see what I mean. If you don’t like his style, you definitely can’t just ignore him. Full current line-up:

Diechan – Drums, Bridge of Tears, ex-Knives, ex-Vomit

Tsuyoshi – Bass, ex-Knives

Kazuya – Vocals, ex-Knives, ex-RoedZak

Yu:Zi – Guitars, ex-Knives

Syacho – Keyboards, ex-Ancient Myth

Had a lot of member changes early on but the line-up has actually been fairly stable recently apart from the keyboardist – they lost theirs in 2015 so swiped one of Ancient Myth’s extensive rotating line up.
Apart from Kazuya it’s mostly about blazingly fast guitar and keyboard solos and pretty relentless drums. Drummer Diechain/Daichi actually handles most of the song writing it seems. Lyrics are mostly Japanese verses with (comprehensible) singalong English choruses in a very macho style. Feel free to join in!

Kicking off in 1999 the band actually split up in 2006, reunified for a single performance in 2008 and then from 2010 all but the keyboardist gradually ended up in another, mostly hard rock, project ‘Knives’ (which released one EP) before splitting up in 2014 at which point Rocket Queen ‘reunified’.

Release wise, they’ve had some demos, a couple of singles and two full-length albums. The first was self-released and hard to find, but the second (2005’s ‘Ground Zero’) is available pretty much everywhere still.

Fun fact: In 2000 they changed their name to ‘Berzebuth’ (a variant of ‘Beelzebub’) for all of a couple of months. And then decided they liked their old name more…

Here’s a few live tracks. I’ll kick off where I started, with this one off the ‘Samurai Metal #1’ comp:



Couple of tracks also on ‘Ground Zero’:





Finally a more recent live event: