Sunday, February 10, 2019

Destrose, the Metal Development Team

   On indefinite hiatus since mid-2015, but worth hearing when and where you can find material by them. YouTube has a few. However, there is a reincarnation of sorts in that former members have formed other groups. I’ll be talking about those too, below and later.
  In 2005, the group Destroya was formed. The original name may have been related to a particular kaiju, a mega-monster in the 1995 film Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, which resurfaced on TV in 1997, and in games and manga off and on ever since. In fact there was an XBox game with the character released in 2004. It eventually grew bigger than Godzilla, so you can imagine the earth-shaking reference.
Then in 2007, "Destroyah" became “Destrose”. Not sure why - copyright/trademark issues? Searching the newer name you get lots of “dextrose” hits... watch for the links like "Search only for 'Destrose'?"
They have had a number of personnel changes. So if you’ve heard one Destrose recording, No you haven’t heard them all. They changed People like a revolving door; there were several versions of the group. In the ten active years between 2005 and 2015, 23 full members came and went, including 8 vocalists.
  In 2008, four of their members formed Mary’s Blood.
  In 2015, former Destrose guitarist Minako Nakamura got together with a vocalist, Nico Shizuka, and put together Fate Gear.

This article in JAME-World describes the connections between Destrose and the several very respectable bands formed or joined by their alumni. It’s quite a story involving no less than 11 spinoffs. Their list includes Aftermath, Albion, Animeta Girl, Disqualia, Fate Gear, Mardelas, Mary’s Blood, Octaviagrace, Re:Maker, Vampire Pledge and Velvet Cherry. And since the article, it appears one of their former folk joined Lovebites which makes it an even dozen besides Destrose itself.
It was a dizzying game of musical chairs, with a partly different lineup for practically every demo, every CD, every video.
See the Metal-Archives link below, and go to their discography tab and you can see which songs were on which releases, and who was in that group lineup.
http://jame-world.com/us/articles-119663-the-destrose-connection-the-prologue-.html


Guitarist Mina put the band together, joined by Eye on Vocals, second guitarist Eri, Kayo on Bass and Mari on drums. I don't find any recordings that Kayo was on. There probably were some unreleased ones.
In 2007, they released 3 demo recordings. "Deathless Memories" and "Skykiller" were on the first, and Skykiller was on all their releases during 2007-2009 - but it should be said, with different group lineups.
They had 3 DVD releases in 2009. Headless Goddess, Roses of Destruction, and Skykiller were on all three. And all had partly different group lineups. They kept having to redo a lot of the same tunes so people could compare what THIS version of the group sounded like. My impression was that it was effectively a very extended and very public audition.
Their first DVD album was "Live at the Red Zone" in 2010, and their first single was "Roses of Destruction" - earlier introduced in the videos of 2009.
In 2011, the single "Deathless Memories" (which had been on their first demo, redone) and in 2012, "Fenixx - To Revive" and “Nostphilia" were released.
2013 brought the album "Destrose" and single "Rin/Maze" and in 2014, an EP named "The Prologue."
They appeared in 2013 in the "Tokyo in Tulsa Pop Culture Convention"  (Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) which I don't recall hearing about or might have gone. I was working in Tulsa that year. Sigh.

Final Members in 2015 included:

Narumi on guitar, later of Disqualia
Miho on bass, later Lovebites
Risa Risa, later of Disqualia   (there's a star between the two parts of the name but I'm not sure how to access that at the mo)

More on the groups formed by Destrose alumni such as Disqualia and Mary's Blood later. A couple of pages on Destrose:
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Destrose/104752

    http://www.metaladies.com/bands/destrose/

They still have a MySpace account...
    http://www.myspace.com/destrosedestrose
And I tried:
    http://destroya.nobody.jp/
 - which refers us to http://destrose.net/ which gives the cheery message "Destrose.net currently does not have any sponsors for you." Mmkay, whatever.
If anyone is interested in their lyrics, I ran the Kanji of some of the songs through the Google Translate system and can post those later. I didn't include them here because this is getting pretty long as it is.
What I see on YouTube for Destrose:
Headless Goddess
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJB_jVdkt-M

Maze Live at Shibuya O-West
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qvuJ_Cjy7o

Maze as an encore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Tyjkdxhq8

Skykiller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CivFcS3co_Y&t=0s


Sword of Avenger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Ns_l4QcZI


Destrose - album
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0XEksCh3y_ZlPY4gPrUTMEQmLDTusq1y


Aftermath with Ami  (also of Vampire Pledge)
https://youtu.be/iRbMDXOJcQ0


J

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