摩天楼 (Matenrou)

摩天楼 (Matenrou) was a short-lived kurofuku-kei band that existed from 1990 to mid-1992. It is notable for having Mana and Közi as members, before they formed MALICE MIZER.

Matenrou is surrounded by myth and misinformation. I myself have discovered some “shocking” truths and debunked some myths about this band’s discography, all will be explained on this page.

Photograph of Matenrou, taken from the back of the NERVOUS NIGHT VHS.

Matenrou was formed in 1990 by vocalist KAIE, who had connections to the Japanese goth scene, and drummer JUN.
Before that Mana and Közi were members, there was another guitarist and bassist in the band.
This unnamed guitarist and bassist’s names were never known! JUN wrote on his website that they asked to remain anonymous afterwards, not connected to the band.
The four-piece lineup with KAIE, JUN, and two unknown members never performed any lives. They also never released any music.

Somewhere in 1991, probably very late, the two unnamed members left, and Mana joined on bass, Közi on guitar, and KENICHI as second guitarist.
They performed their first live, and only live of 1991 on the 22nd of December, at 原宿RUIDO (Harajuku).
It wasn’t a “oneman” (live with only one band), but it was part of a big event with many bands, just like all of Matenrou’s other live performances.

Throughout early 1992, they only had 5 live performances before disbanding, that all were part of events.
Only one of these lives was recorded, the one on the 28th of April, 1992 at 市川CLUB GIO (Ichikawa).
This was included on the “NERVOUS NIGHT” video tape which released on the 18th of july that year, it was an omnibus VHS, in other words, it contains many bands performing live, so wasn’t directly released by Matenrou.

Matenrou themselves just released a handful of flyers advertising their live schedules, but maybe just two or three kinds. Maybe they had some kind of merch too, like stickers, but I don’t know about that last one!

After 摩天楼 (Matenrou) disbanded, KAIE formed the band “Düne××××” in 1996 after a break(?) from the music scene, which disbanded in 2001 with moderate success. JUN also had a short break(?) after Matenrou, but formed the band “翡翠” or “HISUI” in 1994. 翡翠 (HISUI) remained active until 2002, with moderate success.

KENICHI immediatly formed a new band after 摩天楼 (Matenrou) disbanded, called “Jesus+Christ” in May of 1992, but left after just four months. In September that year, he formed “KNEUKLID ROMANCE”.

Mana and Közi noticed their musical visions were similar, so decided to bless the world by staying together after 摩天楼 (Matenrou) disbanded, and forming MALICE MIZER a few months later, in August of 1992, with Mana going back to guitar as his main instrument, just like before Matenrou. They were quickly joined by Tetsu, Yu～ki and GAZ. (the rest is history heheh)

The cover photo of “NERVOUS NIGHT”, Matenrou’s only video release.

Matenrou flyer, which was used as the cover for the bootleg demo tape by an unknown person. Scanned by me from a late 90s magazine.

Other than the VHS, and flyers… Matenrou released or recorded NOTHING.

Then why is it that supposedly, they released two demo tapes, that are freely available on YouTube, and even sometimes on sale secondhand for crazy prices?
Because these demo tapes are very old fakes, they’re made up tapes.

Theory: Somewhere in the mid-to-late 90s, when MALICE MIZER was becoming popular, some second-hand shops or sellers who wanted to cash in on the popularity of the band created these to sell to unknowing fans for high prices. Eventually, these fakes got duplicated over and over again by more and more copiers and bootleggers, which made these fakes so widespread. And finally, they got bought by foreign (non-Japanese) fans in the mid 2000s, digitized, put on YouTube/etc, and then it became widely believed information.

Fact: The thing is, these demo tapes were never made by the band!

There’s two known fake tapes by Matenrou.
1) 摩天楼 (Matenrou) (self-titled)
2) U-RA-GI-RI・・・

This is what songs are on them:
The U-RA-GI-RI・・・ demo tape is just an audio rip of the same song performed live on the NERVOUS NIGHT VHS, without any modification, but in extremely low quality. It’s nothing more.

The self-titled 摩天楼 (Matenrou) tape actually contains two songs not even created by Matenrou! Some bootlegger copied two tracks from a super rare and unknown demo tape by the very short-lived 1993 visual-kei band “Diss-CRY”, and combined it with a new cover image and logo, saying these were Matenrou tracks… This faker easily fooled buyers this way, as it sounds like it could have been made by Matenrou, and back then, without the internet, people wouldn’t have been able to find out what it truly was.

Well, nobody found out, until I bought the Diss-CRY demo tape out of my love and curiousity for early 90s unknown indie bands, and was flabbergasted to find the supposed “Matenrou” songs on them, but in high quality. At first, I thought someone accidentally swapped the actual cassette tape of my Diss-CRY tape with a Matenrou tape, but then I asked a friend of me who also had Diss-CRY to rip his copy of the tape, and turned out to be the same songs too! So no mistake here…. Diss-CRY’s two songs were disguised as Matenrous songs!

Also, more proof: The two titles written on the Diss-CRY tape correspond to the lyrics sung by the vocalist (the same words get repeated).

And as final proof, the vocalist of the two songs on the Diss-CRY tape has the same voice as songs of other bands that vocalist was in. His name is KYO, and he was also in bands such as “TELEPHONE:LOVERS” and “UNI;SEX”. It’s the same voice and person… A very different voice than the vocalist we see live on Matenrou’s NERVOUS NIGHT VHS appearance.

Then, were do the cover images of the two Matenrou demo tapes come from, that are so widespread? One is a direct copy of a part from a Matenrou live flyer, and the other one maybe comes from another flyer I haven’t seen yet, or it is made in a similar style than MALICE MIZER’s “SADNESS/SPEED OF DESPERATE” promotional demo tape. (It uses the same statue, but with text added).

A still image from a Matenrou comment video, where they announce their disbandment. It is also from “NERVOUS NIGHT”.

A part of the J-Card of the Diss-CRY demo tape (My scan), which was disguised as Matenrou’s first demo by a bootlegger!

The famous “self-titled” Matenrou demo, that actually is a fake that never existed officially!

The “U-RA-GI-RI” demo, that also never existed, and is just a low-quality dub of a song from the live VHS NERVOUS NIGHT.

Jun's Website (Archive) Matenrou Live on the NERVOUS NIGHT VHS Diss-CRY's Demo Tape