Luna Sea

LUNA SEA was a popular Japanese visual rock band during the 1990s. Formed in 1989 consists of RYUICHI (Kawamura Ryuichi) on vocals, SUGIZO (Sugihara Yasuhiro) on lead guitar and violin, INORAN (Inoue Kiyonobu) on rhythm guitar, J (Onose Jun) on bass, and Shinya (Yamada Shinya) on drums/percussion. They were discovered by X Japan's guitarist, hide, the band then known as LUNACY were signed by the famous YOSHIKI to the grandfather of all Japanese visual rock labels, Extasy Records. Their self-titled album, LUNA SEA (1991), was the first of eight full-length original albums that found LUNA SEA notoriety and superstardom.
Lunacy started in 1986 when school friends, J and Inoran, both fans of foreign music, got together and decided to make their own band. During that time, their band activity was to play on local radios. After high school graduation, the rest of the band left J and Inoran to go to college. Through the local band friendship, they met SUGIZO and Shinya, previously guitarist and drummer from the band PINOCCHIO, the two joined J and Inoran, because, at the time, they preferred taking action for music rather than going to college. To bands combined into one to play more seriously. Not long after that, RYUICHI,who at the time was active in the band SLAUGHTER (using the stage name Rayla), joined the group. This was on May, 1989. That same month, they started playing at PLAY HOUSE, a live house in Tokyo Machida.

On August 1989 they made their first demo tape LUNACY, which consists of three songs, there were 100 sets of it, and it was sold out. On November 1990, the band changed their name into LUNA SEA. They played in and around Tokyo and built up a substantial amount of followers.

They were discovered by hide from X Japan when they were playing at Rokumei-kan. It got them signed under Extasy Records, an indie label owned by X Japan's band leader, YOSHIKI, who also produced their first full-length album, on April 1991, self-titled, LUNA SEA. It was the first of eight full-length original albums that found LUNA SEA superstardom. They didn't stay very long with Extasy Records. On March 1992 they had their last indie tour; and on May 21st they released their major debut album, IMAGE.

Since then, LUNA SEA went performing around Japan non-stop, until they took a year long break in 1997 for the members to pursue and concentrate on their solo projects.

The band then returned in 1998 with a double best-of, another side of SINGLES II, and in the summer played outdoor shows. In 1999 the band made their first overseas shows, playing in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Shanghai. On May 1999, marking their ten year anniversary as a band, LUNA SEA released the live album NEVER SOLD OUT. In 2000 one of theri songs was placed on the soundtrack of the movie The World is Not Enough. The band also released a new album titled LUNACY. However, on Nov. 8, 2000 they announced their break-up and to mark the end of LUNA SEA, the band released the best of PERIOD. They finally came to a conclusion with their last concert, THE FINAL ACT, on December 26th to December 27th 2000. It was held in the sold-out Tokyo Dome.