From l to r: Jasmine You, Teru, Kamijo, Hizaki and Yuki

Courtesy of Artist Society

It’s Kamijo’s birthday, and when you ask the lantern-jawed singer how old he is, he pauses, laughs his deep, breathy laugh, and says “562.” With his vampire-white makeup and colored contacts, Kamijo certainly looks ageless.

I’m backstage at Club Holiday in Shinjuku with visual kei band Versailles as a sweet-looking but serious makeup artist begins to peel off four hours’ worth of makeup following what turns out to be only their second gig. The five members are surprisingly composed considering the potent performance they’ve just turned in. If you close your eyes during Versailles’s show, you might think you’re being buffeted by the full frontal attack of a melodic metal band. Bassist Jasmine You and drummer Yuki pummel you with their rhythms as guitarists Hizaki and Teru loose high-velocity volleys of precision-matched notes at the crowd. Kamijo’s voice rises above it all, a histrionic wail that regales and cajoles with its tales of obsession and beauty.

But if you open your eyes, you’re definitely not looking at a bunch of hormonal headbangers. So, what exactly is visual kei? And what makes grown men spend four hours putting on makeup to perform for under an hour? “Think of it like a film,” intones Kamijo. “With a movie, the soundtrack follows the drama. But with visual kei, it’s the other way around: we begin with the music and then build the visuals around it.”

The fact that Versailles’ debut single comes in DVD form underlines the importance of the visual and theatrical aspects of the band. Revenant Choir (“revenant” is a term from the Middle Ages that refers to corpses that return from the dead to haunt the living) is an elaborate mini-movie, with the five acting out a vampire-type drama in which the other four try to kill Kamijo, only to find out that he is one them. “We like vampires; the image is cool,” says Kamijo. The cult of youth has always been central to rock, so it’s not surprising to learn that for Versailles, immortality is an attractive idea. “Death is beautiful,” Kamijo adds. “But staying as you are eternally is also beautiful.”

The baroque, Louis XIV look of Versailles and the drama of their “yosushikibi (absolute beauty of form) sound and extremes of aestheticism” concept clearly hits a nerve with their largely female audience, many of whom arrive dressed to the nines. “Our fans like to come in the same kind of costumes that we wear,” says Kamijo. “Cosplay isn’t limited to anime, but also appears in other genres.” “I feel like a different person when I’ve put on my makeup,” adds guitarist Hizaki. “Our customers get off on seeing something out of the ordinary, and I get off on playing that role.”

Judging by the number of foreigners in the crowd and the fact that they’ve already been the subject of a German TV documentary (among other international media), Versailles have garnered a surprising amount of overseas attention considering they only formed in March. Part of this was thanks to a trailer for Revenant Choir that appeared on YouTube, generating proposals for overseas tours. But they also seem to be riding a sudden wave of worldwide interest in visual kei.

Guitarist Yoshiki of visual kei legends X Japan recently helped organize JRock Revolution, a festival devoted to the genre that quickly sold out in Los Angeles in May. Meanwhile “soft visual kei” band MUCC are currently all the rage in Europe. What makes Japanese visual kei distinct from its Western progenitors, bands like Kiss? Androgyny and an emphasis on melody common to Japanese pop in general are two factors offered by the members of Versailles.

But there’s also an element of fun, of play about visual kei that sets it apart from the shock tactics of acts like Kiss, Marilyn Manson or the spate of mask-wearing US metal acts like Slipknot. Versailles aren’t trying to subvert morality, and they don’t seem like the types to corrupt nice young girls from the suburbs either (or do they?). It’s more about having fun and escaping from the often-dreary realities of post-Bubble Japan. Versailles the movie? Versailles the video game? Not too far-fetched ideas at all.

Versailles will play visual kei event “The Red Carpet Day” at Shibuya O-East on Aug 30. See concert listings (popular) for details.

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