NEMOPHILA

Nemophila (Japanese: ネモフィラ, Hepburn: Nemofira) is a Japanese all-female heavy metal band formed in Tokyo in 2019. It consists of vocalist Mayu, guitarists Saki and Hazuki, bassist Haraguchi-san and drummer Tamu Murata. After leaving the rock band Lipstick, vocalist Mayu was looking to put together a backing band to support her at an August 22, 2019 live session. She contacted her former classmate and bassist Haraguchi-san, and the two recruited drummer Tamu Murata through magazines and website posts. Mayu was introduced to Mary's Blood guitarist Saki through a mutual friend, and Saki in turn introduced them to Disqualia guitarist Hazuki. Feeling that this line-up was too good to be a one-off, the musicians decided to form a real band. When deciding the name, Mayu said that the word "sorai" came to her and seemed refreshing, but its meaning "was difficult, so we tried to soften it." Because each member is female, Mayu wanted to use the name of a flower and searched many before they found Nemophila. Saki said the most important thing in Nemophila is to play "hard music like metalcore, but make it 'yurufuwa', to give it more of a personality. A Japanese word, it means... fluffy and smooth." She elaborated in another interview, "Traditionally, rock bands have a strong, masculine image. The concept of 'yurufuwa' is to stay close to ourselves rather than forcibly portraying our female identity as masculine. We thought it was interesting to make the cuteness of something fluffy come together with intense metal parts. You can feel it in the choruses of 'Dissension' and 'Raitei', but also in our behavior on stage." Hazuki has cited the various ways in which Mayu sings as an important feature of Nemophila; "Her raw voice is very characteristic. That is why we were aiming for a heavier sound." While independently releasing three singles between 2020 and 2021, Nemophila garnered a sizable multinational following online by uploading videos to YouTube. In June 2021, British record label JPU compiled the singles into the internationally released Oiran: Extended Edition. Nemophila released their debut studio album, Revive, in December. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.