Straightener

Straightener may seem not really a group, but a sort of an overall in-house project of the Japanese rock scene, having ties with a huge number of important rock bands of the country. Hinata Hidekazu, the bassist that joined in 2003, played in one of the better Japanese U2 followers Art-School, and worked with the quirky Zazen Boys until 2007; the drummer Shinpei Nakayama has a side project The Predators with the vocalist of The Pillows and bassist of Glay; lead singer and guitarist Horie Atsushi together with Hinata has a parallel band, Fullarmor, running since 2002; and that's not mentioning the fact that Straightener is a core member of Nano-Mugen Music Festival -- an irregular but popular punk/alt-rock event organized by the indie rock powerhouse Asian Kung-Fu Generation. However, reducing the group to a sum of its friends would be unfair, since Straightener is also a proficient and successful entity capable of standing on it's own without any names-dropping. The band released their first EP Straighten It Up in 2000, gaining instant recognition with their punk-infused alt-rock sound, even if it didn't break them to the first ranks of the J-music scene. In 2002 Straightener started their own label Ghost Records, releasing a maxi disk Silver Record soon afterwards. That ‘indie' sold well enough to earn them a place in the ranks of a major label (Toshiba/EMI signed Straightener in 2003) -- an utterly crucial moment for any J-band career. Since then, the group was working on full speed: Rock End Roll (sic) LP in 2004, Title in 2005, and Dear Deadman in 2006 -- the latter being an especially successful release, followed by a big tour and a short stream of singles. 2007 saw the band churning out two big releases on the same year -- Linear in March and EP-sized Immortal in November. ~ Alexey Eremenko, All Music Guide