The Piass

An amazing band with an interesting history. THE PIASS/妃阿甦 was formed around 1990 in Sapporo with the first member line up of vocalist Chihiro, guitarist Takayuki, bassist Yoshio and drummer Hiroshi. After a while, Chihiro left the band and was replaced by Takashi, who didn’t stay and did vocals only for their first release. Chihiro came back to fill the gap in the band, and this formation became noticed in the music scene. There is still not much known about the band’s first three years, except for an event they had participated in during 1990. In February 1993, THE PIASS’ first omnibus album appearance Braintrash was released; it also contained a song of MALICE MIZER. Their next few songs ended up being released on many different omnibus albums through Anarchist Records, the label which they signed their first contract with. Two years after signing the contact, they came out with their first album, which almost reached the top ten of the Oricon indies charts. Everything was going well for the young band until the October 25, 1995, which marked the end of band activities for a brief time. The members Chihiro and Hiroshi died after falling from a twenty meter high bridge during a PV shoot that day. Their deaths became a mystery with many different versions. Some fans like to believe that it was a suicide pact, mostly because of the fact that the two were tied together when they fell. However, it was most likely just an accident because of a silly stunt they had wanted to perform for the PV. Although the band was probably on hiatus at the time in 1996, Anarchist Records still released another two songs by THE PIASS. In the year 1997, a second tragedy happened: Yoshio committed suicide. The reasons are unknown, but this left a lot room for different speculations - especially among fans. Many fans like to believe that Yoshio had died during the making of a PV, which strengthened the idea of a suicide pact among fans. On October 25, 1998, exactly three years after the first tragedy, Takayuki began to rebuild the band. The new members were the former Slum Junkie vocalist Kirala, Ruiji (ex-Mazohysteria) became bassist and the lineup was completed by Shizuki as drummer. The band published their second demo tape in 1999, which was followed up by a self-titled album and a spelling change of their name. THE PIASS became 妃阿甦. The last kanji probably wasn’t chosen arbitrarily, because its meaning is resurrection. This formation stayed together until 2002, when Kirala disappeared for a while in February and then officially left the band on the third of March. The band didn’t want to search for a new vocalist, so guitarist Takayuki became the new vocalist of the trio. During this same time period, Takayuki was active as the guitarist for ∀NTI FEMINISM’s releases as well. After this lineup change, THE PIASS stopped all of its own music releases and only released music on the omnibus album Anarchist Records IV published in May 2002. From this point on, they became a live-only band, and Takayuki continued to work more with ∀NTI FEMINISM. Since September 2004, the band has been promoting their own event called hiaso kantou shuukai (piass eastern Japan meeting), which is held monthly in Tokyo. One time, they even brought their event to Osaka, naming it hiaso osaka shuukai. Some famous indies bands that have participated in the event include GHOST, kellnre, CalorZe and Izabel Varosa. In September 2005, THE PIASS had another surprise for fans. New songs were published on a collaboration CD with Ra’S TESTARS, a session band of Kenzi and Aki of THE DEAD P☆P STARS. Later in 2005, THE PIASS also became well known in France and Germany because of a news report made by the bilingual TV station ARTE. The news report featured several live scenes and even an interview with the band. The next year began with the announcement of new events and a new side-project of Takayuki, this time with Kaya of Hagakure. Even though there were very few releases for THE PIASS, their fans didn’t have to worry about disbandment as the band announced a new single release. This release was the first one in almost four years since Kirala left the band. The new single after four years was finally released on May 24, 2006 and called Kansen shou paranoia; it included a DVD clip. Later, in November 2006, their first DVD Shiiku mousou was released, containing a small collection of PVs. In February of 2007, the official website announced the addition of a new vocalist, Tetsuya, and Takayuki returned to playing guitar for THE PIASS. However, in March of 2007, before they could even perform one live with the new vocalist, bassist Ruiji and drummer Shizuki left the band, stating musical differences. The band continued on with Tetsuya, and Takayuki as the official members and made use of support members for the rest of the lives in 2007 and 2008. The duo even released a new mini-album in August 2007 called Dolei -dorei-. It went out of print and a second print was later released. In the fall of 2008, fans of THE PIASS started to notice that Tetsuya’s profile and all mention of the vocalist had abruptly disappeared from the official home page. With Tetsuya’s very sudden disappearance from the official home page, lives and the music world in general, Takayuki once again stepped up to perform as vocalist for the band. The year 2009 is a whole new beginning for the THE PIASS as they transformed into a five-member band, gaining four new members and announcing two coupling tours to start off the year. Joining THE PIASS are guitarists Thifu and Tsubaki, bassist Tenteke and drummer Toro. The first tour of the year, “GaixTokkanxNippon angya” TOUR -zenhansen-, begins in March, and the second tour of the year, beginning in April, is called “GaixTokkanxNippon angya” TOUR -kouhansen-.