VIGILANTE

"Of Hybrid Origins: East Meets West"

Generally, their music may be categorized as "Progressive Metal". But the music has had a great deal of depth and its own style for long enough that people can't simply consider VIGILANTE a mere Prog-metal band.

In 1988, more than fifteen years ago, the band's founder, Hiroshi Omoto, decided to form VIGILANTE. The band was named VIGILANTE after the British legendary hard rock band MAGNUM's song "Vigilante".

The early influences from which they derived inspiration were bands such as SCORPIONS, SAVAGE GRACE, RUNNING WILD, to name a few. And from that point onward they kept developing and refining their sound through their succession of demos and live shows.

When they came across the sounds of RUSH and FATES WARNING, whose progressive ways to approach music totally fascinated the band, VIGILANTE's attention turned towards making their music more artistic and dramatic.

It might have been a hard time for such a band to carry on, given the music scene in the late eighties Japan. After all, at that time, People who knew even the word "Progressive Metal" were few and far between. But despite these circumstances, they got the chance to be introduced to the manager of Gibson Japan at that time, Loyd Love. And so it came to be, that once they'd borrowed some Gibson guitars from his office, within one week, they were able to complete a new demo called "FATAL SUPERSTITION". When he finished listening to their demo, Love described the band as "A perfect hybrid sound of eastern music and western music".
Soon thereafter, Hiroshi became an endorser of Gibson USA.

However, it wasn't long before VIGILANTE had to endure the serial replacements of many of its original members.The loss of its members was a crunch for the band and they had to take a hiatus for a while.

After several months, VIGILANTE resumed with a new line-up. In addition to the stable guitar team of Hiroshi and Kazuaki Horie, they had new vocalist, Hideaki Niwa, new drummer, Kazuhisa Yoshimura, and a new bass player, Makoto Unno.

In 1997, they had their first big show in Tokyo. The show was almost 2-hours long and they played more than 20 original songs. The show was a success and the band received a good audience response.

After that historic show, they started the recording of their first album "CHAOS-PILGRIMAGE".
The album was released in April 1998 with complete self sound production. Upon releasing the album, they received a good reaction throughout the world, being highly praised by renowned metal magazines like Heavy Oder Was!?, Hard Roxx, and Burrn!, in addition to various metal radio and TV programs.

In September 1998, they were given the offer to join the famous "Bang Your Head!!!" metal festival, sponsored by Heavy Oder Was!? in Germany.
Unfortunately, their appearance as a live act didn't come to be but they had an interview session on stage.

When they returned from Germany, they made a license record contract for 5 albums with German veteran label Massacre Records. And in March 1999, the "CHAOS-PILGRIMAGE" EU version was released.

The band released their second album "EDGE OF TIME" in September 1999. Its well-defined power-metal and aggressive styling was greeted favorably by fans all over the world.
And a short two months later, EU version of "EDGE OF TIME" was released in November 1999.

After the release of this album, they continued touring and composing new sounds for their next album to coincide with the replacement of their drummer with Shu Yamaichi in March 2002.

In April 2002, they made a license contract with Korean label,Ponycanyon Korea and the Korean version of their double CD was soon released. The next month they visited Korea and interviewed with Korean music magazine "GMV".

In August 2004, finally their third album "COSMIC INTUITION" was released after five years.

The band kept touring and In April 2005, they made a successful performance in Seoul, Korea. And in June 2005, they joined "Bang Your Head!!!" festival again after seven years with "COSMIC INTUITION" album as a promotional tour. They received a good reaction from German metal fans there.

In July 2005, they played together with Australian power metal act DUNGEON and in September, played with Korean prog-metal band JEREMY again since the last gig in Seoul, Korea in April.

The band are heading for the production of upcoming fourth album in 2008.

Their music can be described as "New Age Metal", achieving the perfect equilibrium between the technical features that each player in the band has and their attention to each song's theme.