Envy

Envy came together at the start of the 1990s and have risen to prominence as one of Japan’s leading acts within the worldwide post-hardcore community. Fans of post-rock and alternative metal have embraced the band’s innovative, film-like style within intense melodic rock, while the powerful, emotionally direct delivery in vocals and lyrics has earned recognition among emo and screamo listeners as well. Tours alongside Mogwai, Isis, and Explosions in the Sky, together with split EPs alongside Jesu, Thursday, and Yaphet Kotto, mark their history. Core members have included Tetsuya Fukagawa handling vocals and programming, Nobukata Kawai on guitar, Manabu Nakagawa on bass, Masahiro Tobita on guitar, and Dairoku Seki on drums, though different drummers contributed to the band’s initial recordings.

Envy formed in Tokyo in 1992 as a straightforward hardcore band, and their 1996 debut Breathing and Dying in This Place, issued by Japanese hardcore/noise label HG Fact, delivered a blistering series of short thrash tracks. The next year the group put out split 7"s with Danish hardcore band Sixpence and New Jersey political hardcore band Endeavor. Envy’s 1998 full-length From Here to Eternity reflected an expanding sound, extending tracks to three or four minutes while introducing additional melodic elements and time-signature shifts. The 1999 release Angel’s Curse Whispered in the Edge of Despair contained only five songs yet presented longer, more ambitious pieces, closing with the ten-minute epic “Unrepairable Gentleness.” In 2000 several EPs appeared that returned closer to the band’s hardcore origins, among them a split 7" with This Machine Kills—whose member Steve Aoki would later issue Envy’s subsequent album in America on his Dim Mak Records label—and the group’s first international release, the 10" EP Burning Out the Memories on French label Molaire Industries.

Envy’s 2001 full-length All the Footprints You’ve Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead proved markedly more melodic and experimental than earlier work, incorporating calmer passages and both sung and screamed vocals that drew attention from the post-rock scene, notably Mogwai, who signed Envy to their Rock Action label, and American imprint Temporary Residence Limited. During 2002 the band issued a split EP with Swiss hardcore band Iscariote and a three-way split CD with Yaphet Kotto and This Machine Kills that featured a collaborative track involving all three groups. These two releases were among the earliest on Envy’s Sonzai Records label, founded to handle their own recordings as well as Japanese editions of releases by international associates. The 2003 full-length A Dead Sinking Story appeared in the U.K. via Rock Action and in America via Level Plane Records, marking the sole Envy album to include third guitarist Daichi Takasugi, who departed after the recording. The effort received wide acclaim and helped establish the band internationally; afterward they took a hiatus before assembling Compiled Fragments 1997-2003, a 2005 collection of tracks from split releases, compilations, and live performances.

The 2006 full-length Insomniac Doze became Envy’s first album issued simultaneously by Sonzai, Rock Action, and Temporary Residence, the latter subsequently making many earlier titles available in the United States for the first time. The record stood as the group’s most atmospheric and cinematic statement to date, with suite-like compositions extending up to fifteen minutes. In 2007 the band released the mini-album Abyssal and the DVD Transfovista. The year 2008 brought split EPs with New Jersey-based emo group Thursday and Justin Broadrick’s post-Godflesh project Jesu. Envy’s next full-length, Recitation, emerged in 2010 as another expansive, atmospheric epic. While awaiting the following album, Temporary Residence issued Invariable Will, Recurring Ebbs and Flows in 2013, a limited 14-LP box set encompassing the complete discography, two DVDs, and a 100-page book of photos and lyrics presented in both English and Japanese. Atheist’s Cornea arrived in 2015 as the group’s shortest and most focused full-length in more than a decade.

The ensuing years brought significant lineup changes that ushered in a period of crisis. Fukagawa departed in 2016, followed by Tobita and Seki; in February 2018 a new configuration was announced featuring Yoshimitsu Taki of 9mm Parabellum Bullet and Yoshi on guitars, with Hiroki Watanabe on drums. In April of that year Fukagawa unexpectedly rejoined. The band undertook a European tour in 2019; upon returning in June they possessed sufficient material for a new album, which they recorded at once. The resulting The Fallen Crimson appeared in February 2020.