On Oct. 22, BAND-MAID released their latest EP SCOOOOOP. In an interview with Billboard Japan, the group discussed a wide range of topics, from the creative process behind the new release to their aspirations for 2026. The conversation began with a reflection on their first OKYU-JI performance in Bangkok, Thailand, held in August of this year.
On August 23, you played SUMMER SONIC for the first time with SUMMER SONIC BANGKOK 2025.
AKANE (drums): I was so happy to finally be able to perform a OKYU-JI in Bangkok. We also had all kinds of special effects, like flames up on stage. It’s rare to see so many special effects being used at a festival, so I had a blast.
SAIKI (vocals): The people of Thailand were so warm. From up on stage, you could tell that people loved rock—that they were really listening to our rock music. I felt really glad to have come to Thailand.
KANAMI (guitar): I’m sure for a lot of the people there it was their first time seeing one of our OKYU-JI. That made me nervous, but one of the things about a BAND-MAID show is that we love performing, from the bottoms of our hearts, so I was so looking forward to it (laughs). Misa and I got into a bit of a bass and guitar battle out on the runway. That was really fun, wasn’t it?
MISA (bass): Yeah, it was a new experience.
MIKU KOBATO (guitar/vocals): There were a lot of people there who didn’t know us, so I was worried about how it would go, po. But with each song we played, I could see more and more people with their hands in the air. There were a lot of Masters and Princesses (the names of BAND-MAID’s fanbase), so there were people sitting on each other’s shoulders to get a better view. From up on stage, you could really feel how much people wanted to see us, which made me so happy, po. It made me really want to go back to Thailand again and do a solo OKYU-JI, po.
Now, let’s turn to the EP. Had you been working on it in parallel with last year’s album?
KANAMI: The time when we were working on the demos overlapped with the album. The first melody I came up with was the one for “SION.” I had a breakup about three or four years ago, and I’d recorded a voice memo of me pouring out my feelings of sadness. I wanted to turn that into a song sometime. When I actually started working on the song, though, I didn’t want it to just be a sad song. I also wanted the song to have a bit of warmth, like the feeling you have when you look back on a photo album after several years, and to end it off with a positive feel.
KOBATO: For the lyrics, she said that it could have a bit of the same vibe as songs like “Mirage” or “anemone.” I wanted the lyrics to be a little bittersweet, and to have a feeling of gentleness, po.
Listening to the song, the melody and lyrics match so well it feels like they were written by the same person.
KOBATO: I’m glad to hear that-po. I’d just gone through a break-up myself, too, a little before working on the lyrics, so when I wrote them, I tried to weave those feelings in, po.
SAIKI: I heard what they wanted to express through the music and the lyrics, so when I sang, I was hoping that would come through in my voice. If you use too gentle of an approach when you sing a song like that, it doesn’t feel like enough of the message comes through, so I tried something a little different with the way I sang it. We were really thorough and deliberate in our recording, and spent a huge amount of time on this song.
MISA: For the bass part, I used fingerpicking, which I hoped would give it a wistful but warm feel. At the end of the song, it’s like a ray of light is coming in, so for that part I switched to using a pick.
AKANE: On the drums, there are a lot of intricate phrases, and I tried to play it in a way that would keep it from sounding flat. I used sixteenth-note phrases as hooks in different places so that the drum rhythm would match the song’s feel. I also used a subtractive approach, leaving the drums out completely in certain places. But I kept up a good contrast, really playing in the parts where I played.
What does the name of the first song, “Present Perfect,” mean?
KOBATO: It’s a reference to the grammatical term. When we were working on the song, we talked about how, since this would be the lead song, we wanted to make it like a calling card for BAND-MAID, po. SAIKI said she wanted the lyrics to look back on our past but also to point to our future, so I decided to include snippets of lyrics from iconic BAND-MAID songs and key parts of past songs, po. Also, in the part about world domination, I was determined to include the phrase “over the world.” This is our story, and we also wanted to convey that we were heading into the future together with our Masters and Princesses, so the chorus starts with “We are the story,” po.
SAIKI: It’s a major piece of music. I said we should definitely include last year’s Unleash EP and the album we released last year, Epic Narratives. We put those lyrics in with the hope that people who were just coming to us now would get curious and go back and listen to our older songs.
What’s the message of “SUPER SUNSHINE?”
SAIKI: When I’m up on stage, I see newcomers to our shows, but a lot of the time I’m also like “Huh, I haven’t seen that person around in a while,” and I wonder what’s up with them. But I’m not the type to let that get me down. I’m a very positive person, and I want to make our shows the kinds of places that welcome people back. So I asked myself “what’s something that never goes away?” And I thought “the Sun.” I hope that we can be like the Sun for someone, and when we’re performing, nothing can stop us. I love how we shine when we’re up on stage, so I linked that idea up with the concept of superheroes, and wrote the lyrics with this feeling like “We’re always here for you. We’re your superheroes.”
The song is really uplifting, right from the first notes, and I’m sure working on the arrangement was fun.
MISA: Yeah, from the very intro, it’s got this swelling feel. The chorus is just bass, but this melodious bass line just came to me, and I wanted the solo to feel like a live show, so I threw in some harmonies and slap bass in the solo. I wanted to pack a lot into that short space and make it a really rich bass solo, so it took a while to write it. (With regard to the theme of “SUPER SUNSHINE”) My style being what it is, it may not come across a lot, but just like this song, I truly love everyone and want to make everyone happy.
AKANE: That’s how I always feel, too. I have so much fun playing the drums, and I love playing live, but I owe all that to our Masters and Princesses, so when I perform I’m hoping we can give some of that power back.
KOBATO and SAIKI, you wrote the lyrics to “Dilly-Dally” together, right?
SAIKI: It goes out to all the young people who are into social media, and there’s also a message that while the world may be dark lately, don’t let it get you down. I’ve heard “dilly-dally” used when telling people who are just on their smartphones all day not to just waste their time on their phones. We decided on the title first, right?
KOBATO: We used “dilly-dally” in our song “Moratorium,” too, and I thought it would be nice to bring that in, too. We decided on the title, and then we each wrote lyrics, and then we took the best parts of each, po.
The last song is an instrumental, “Lock and Load.” By this, do you mean something like “preparations completed?”
KOBATO: Right, po. Like “all weapons loaded” or “ready to go.” A lot of people are discovering us for the first time through this EP, so we made this a song packed with our own qualities, that people who were new to us could enjoy. A song whose vibe would feel familiar for people who found us through “Ready to Rock,” po. We hoped that people would hear it and feel like “They’re ramping up to go even further.”
What’s the meaning behind the EP’s title, SCOOOOOP?
SAIKI: We hope with this EP, the people who are just now discovering BAND-MAID will come to love us, and we also wanted to share the way we feel with those who’ve been with us since back in the day, so we chose the name “scoop,” in the sense of a news scoop. We also wanted to convey the tight-knit relationships we have, and the respect we feel for each other. That all comes together to make BAND-MAID’s music, so we used five Os, to express that it’s the five of us together that make up BAND-MAID.
Following the release of the EP, you also have plans in motion for 2026, right?
SAIKI: Next year, we want to play overseas!
KOBATO: We want to cross the ocean and put on OKYU-JI. A lot of our overseas Masters and Princesses ask us why we don’t play in their countries, and we’ve wanted to go ourselves, but this year we had a lot of OKYU-JI in Japan. I want to play overseas next year, po. We don’t have the details worked out, but we’d love to be able live up to everyone’s hopes. I hope everyone’s looking forward to it, po!
—This interview by Takayuki Okamoto first appeared on Billboard Japan
