In 2010, five wolf-masked musicians calling themselves Man with a Mission surfaced in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, where they began winning audiences with a high-energy fusion of rock, nu metal, pop-punk, and melodic pop that recalled early Linkin Park colliding with Zebrahead and Billy Talent. The lineup features vocalist Tokyo Tanaka, bassist Kamikaze Boy, DJ Santa Monica, drummer Spear Rib, and vocalist/guitarist/English-speaking spokes-wolf Jean-Ken Johnny. According to the group’s lore, Dr. Jimi Hendrix assembled the hybrid “Ultimate Life Forms” inside a Ladyland laboratory during the 1900s, then preserved the five creatures in Antarctic ice; once rising temperatures freed them, they headed to Japan to share music with humanity.
After sharpening their sound through concerts across Asia and the United States, the band issued the EP Welcome to the New World in late 2010. Their first full-length effort, Man with a Mission, Vol. 1, followed in summer 2011 and was quickly succeeded by the Trick or Treat EP, which contained a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Mash Up the World, their second studio album, appeared in 2012, after which the group paused for several years before returning with the four-song Don’t Feel the Distance EP in 2014. That set contained the single “Distance” and a remix by Slipknot’s masked musician Sid Wilson. One week later, MWAM delivered Tales of Purefly, their strongest-charting album at the time, and later that summer released the high-octane EP When My Devil Rises. While preparing their fourth album, the band contributed tracks to various anime, live-action films, and video-game soundtracks.
The World’s on Fire reached stores in 2016, boasting production from Don Gilmore (Korn, Linkin Park) along with guest work from Crosses’ Shaun Lopez on “Far” and Zebrahead on “Out of Control,” the latter featured in the Japanese edition of the film Mad Max: Fury Road. Additional singles from the project included “Memories” and “Survivor,” the latter serving as the theme for the Street Fighter V video game. In early 2017, Epic Records issued the single “Dead End in Tokyo,” co-written and co-produced by Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and marking the band’s first international promotional push. The day after its release, Man with a Mission opened the sold-out Tokyo concert on Guns N’ Roses’ world tour.
