This Is Rock.

This album began with a single sentence from a producer.

Play ROCK.

For years after that, I kept questioning the true meaning of those words, until my own interpretation was carved into this record.

Standing apart from trends and specs,
borrowing the vessel of ROCK and the language of Japanese,
it transforms the distortions of thought and the pain of emotion that arise when facing oneself
into voice and words, generated from within and elevated into sound.

The shouts are not exaggerations, and the silence is not a performance.
They are the result of choices made without turning away from reality,
acts of will accepted and carried forward,
now existing simply as music brought into being.

What exists here is neither a promise of salvation nor an optimistic answer.
It is the process of realizing, within a world that changes relentlessly,
that joy, sorrow, anger, and emptiness all emerge from oneself.

It does not preach love.
It does not encourage.
It neither affirms nor denies.
In return, what remains is time to confront your own interior.

If, even for a brief moment,
you feel confronted by this voice, these words, this sound,
then you have already begun questioning yourself.