This is an album Imari Tones was destined to make.
As a Christian band based in Japan, the members of Imari Tones have always wondered what Christian music for Japanese people should sound like.
To answer this question, they made Jesus Wind in 2017, a concept album revisiting Christian history in Japan. That album became a favorite for their passionate fans all around the world.
But they didn’t stop there. This time, they went even further and incorporated Japanese traditional music and cultural essence into their Christian metal music. The result is something the world has never heard before: Japanese Traditional Christian Metal.
The album title Nabeshima is derived from 17th century Japanese porcelain art. Imari Tones’ band name was inspired by historic Japanese Imari porcelain and Nabeshima was of the highest quality among those Imari potteries from the 17th century.
Ever since seeing Nabeshima pottery for the first time, Tak Nakamine, the singer and guitarist of the band, has always been wanting to make music like that: otherworldly, multi-dimensional, simple yet compelling beauty with Japanese tradition.
His ambition has become reality on this album. When he finished writing all the songs, Tak decided to call this album Nabeshima, because he was certain this was the best music Imari Tones could ever make.
Musically this album is very diverse. While it contains intense power metal, other songs are more progressive. The whole work has a mysterious overtones and Japanese traditional vibes. A double album with 24 songs, half of the songs are in English, while the other half are sung in Japanese. Nabeshima takes listeners to a mysterious journey to ancient Japan, where Samurai spirit meets Christian faith.
Japan is a Buddhist country and while its Christian population is very small, it is known that some of the Samurais and Daimyos were Christians before the Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity for more than 200 years. If there was music for those old Christian Samurais, this probably is what it would sound like. After Nabeshima, there is no doubt Imari Tones are modern day Christian Samurais, obeying Jesus’ Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20, “Go and make disciples of all nations,.”
Nabeshima album is available at all the major digital music services such as Spotify and Apple Music.
The double album CDs are available at Dead Pulse, the official store of Sliptrick Records, Latvia (who released the album).
Here are some of the songs from the Nabeshima album:
“Passion”
“Lord’s Prayer”
“God Anthem”
