Sable Hills is a metalcore band based in Tokyo, Japan. Existing out of Takuya Mishima (vocals), Wataru Yuasa (guitar & vocals), Rict Mishima (guitar), Takuya Ueda (bass) and Keita Kondo (drums).
The band formed in 2015, right after the members graduated high school. Their first EP “RESURRECTION” was released in January of 2016, but it wasn’t until their first full album “EMBERS” in 2019 that the band really started to take off. Their second album “DUALITY” was released in June of 2022, and allowed the group to expand from Japan to Europe, participating in METAL BATTLE 2022 at Wacken 2022 and coming out as the winner. A first for a Japanese band.
Aside from playing at festivals all over Japan and Europe, Sable Hills also have their own event called “FRONTLINE FESTIVAL” which had it’s first edition in 2023 in 川崎CLUB CITTA (Kawasaki CLUB CITTA) with about a 1,000 attendees. After the interview we’ll give you some information about the 2024 edition, as well as their appearance at Motocultor Festival in France this August.
For this interview we spoke with vocalist Takuya and guitarist Rict, and they gave us quite some information about their band, their history and the metal scene in both Japan and overseas.
Are you ready for Sable Hills?
Then let’s go!
“Our music is normally more oldschool metalcore with lots of melody.”
To officially start the interview, could you please introduce yourselves?
Rict: We’re Sable Hills from Tokyo, Japan, and we play metalcore music. It’s nice to meet you!
I’d like to know a little more about Sable Hills, so I’ll start with the name. I’m sure there is a story here, isn’t there?
Takuya: We wanted to use a natural thing in our name, so we chose the hill…
Rict: What? Oh! Wait! Let me explain it! (laughs)
Takuya: (laughing) Okay, okay!
Rict: Sable Hills was named by me. Are you familiar with the game “Silent Hill”? I loved the game, and I really wanted to use the word ‘hill’ or ‘hills’ in the name for my band. So that part was already confirmed. I was looking around a lot for a word for the other part of the name, but it proved to be very difficult to find something. Until Takuya came with the word ‘sable’. I think it’s the name of an animal, but additionally it has a meaning of ‘luck’ to it. For me personally it’s very lyrical and it’s good to the band’s name. So that’s why I chose to name it Sable Hills.
What about your music itself? How would you describe the music you make?
Rict: Our music is normally more oldschool metalcore music with lots of melody. Like melodic death metal or Japanese game music, or Japanese traditional music. I don’t know what our background is from exactly. Compared to other metalcore bands we have a lot of melody in our songs for sure. Maybe that’s the music of us.
What draws you to the heavy metal genre? I’ll be going into this topic a bit later in this interview, but for now I would like to know why you chose metal specifically?
Rict: For me personally it started with music from Metallica and Slipknot. My father is a Metallica fan, and he made me listen to their album “St. Anger”. That was the very first introduction to metal for me.
I started to listen to that kind of music a lot, and when I was 15 or so years old I bought my own guitar and started to play music myself. At that time I covered songs from artists like Children of Bodom and Pantera, as well as similar artists. I started my first band in high school, and when we graduated that was also the graduation of the band. Sable Hills started to form in 2015, and that means it’s 8 or 9 years old now. That’s also the story of Sable Hills, actually!
What about your lyrics? Since a lot of people have the idea that vocalists who do growls, screams and whatnot only sing about negative things and how displeased they are with society?
Rict: We normally sing about the positivity of our lives. During Covid in particular people were very down, and the world is filled with a lot of negativity so we need some more positive things, don’t you think? We’re used to sing about positive things, and all the songs on our new upcoming album “Odyssey” are all very positive as well. We sing such things now.
Something that stands out very easily is that your lyrics are completely in English. You already mentioned having a background with American metal, but why did you choose English in a country where that is anything but standard?
Rict: We used to listen to bands from overseas a lot. I didn’t listen to Japanese metal music with lyrics sung in Japanese. My background is filled with English music, so that’s why we chose English for our lyrics as well.
Takuya: We didn’t know that metal songs in which the lyrics are in Japanese was even an option.
Rict: That’s quite difficult for us, it sounds weird when it’s not in English!
雪 (Yuki): Oh I absolutely agree, I always feel very awkward when I make the Dutch translations for Arlequin here, it sounds so weird to me!
“For us it’s the beginning of the odyssey. We’re hoping we can do this for a long time.”
You already mentioned your new upcoming album “Odyssey” a second ago, and of course I also want to talk about that! Please tell me a bit about the album.
Rict: “Odyssey” is about long travel, which is also the definition of the word itself. We have a new vocalist and guitar player, who sings the clean vocals in this new album. His name is Wataru Yuasa.
The album is like a new start for us, because aside from a new guitarist we also have a new record label, Arising Empire. It’s the very first time for us to sign with an overseas label as well. For us it’s the beginning of the odyssey. We’re hoping we can do this for a long time, have a long travel from now on. That’s why we chose this name for the album.
Your previous album “DUALITY” was released in 2022, and obviously one of the changes is the addition of a new member, but what other differences are there on this new album?
Rict: The big difference for us is the vocal. Maybe people who listen to both albums can understand what I think and am trying to say with this answer. The screams, Takuya’s vocals, have changed a lot. He changed his vocal style and how to scream. Maybe you can understand the difference too, since it has changed a lot.
The clean vocals changed a lot too. I used to sing some parts of the clean vocals up until now, but I was not a professional at it. I didn’t want to do it a lot. Which is the reason why “DUALITY” and “EMBERS” before it don’t have a lot of clean vocals on them. I didn’t want to sing a lot, but with Wataru we now have a good clean vocalist. I wrote more and more songs featuring clean vocals and added more variety to the album that way.
One song from the new album that we can already listen to is “Battle Cry”. This song features a guest vocal from Kenta Koie, the vocalist from Crossfaith. Please tell me some more!
Rict: For us, Crossfaith is a legendary metalcore band in Japan. When I was a high school student, or maybe even younger, I used to listen to their music a lot. They’re kind of a legend to us. So when we played as an opening act at SATANIC CARNIVAL, a metal festival here in Japan, where Crossfaith played as the headliner, we said hello and made some friendships.
After that we haven’t played together for a long time, but about three months ago we did. We had a live show, and Crossfaith made a special appearance in our set.
It’s like a story for us, the opening act playing together with the legendary headliner and becoming friends. We really wanted to have a feature vocal from Crossfaith, and when we asked them they said yes!
Takuya: I called Ken for the feature vocal. He is like a senpai to me. We were having a drink together, since from that moment we played together at SATANIC CARNIVAL we’ve been forming a friendship together. We made the plan, and he accepted it. I personally think we don’t have many cool scream vocalists here in Japan, at least not as many as there are in Europe and the US.
“I don’t think your average metal fan knows about the existence of Japanese metal bands.”
I’d like to continue on this subject a little longer. Since the metal scenes in Europe, the US and Japan are completely different aren’t they?
Rict: That’s right, I think that the Japanese metal scene is separated from the music scenes for other genres. We don’t have big famous artists like Metallica or other bands. I don’t think your average metal fan knows about the existence of Japanese metal bands. It also feels like the scene is a lot smaller than the ones in Europe or the US, where the genre is a lot more accepted by ‘normal’ music fans as well.
This is also where you come in, don’t you? Since you have your own festival called “FRONTLINE FESTIVAL”, right?
Takuya: OOOH! You know about it! Thank you!
雪 (Yuki): (laughs) You’re very welcome. I wanted to be prepared for this interview!
Rict: In Japan there are very few metal festivals, we need a big metal festival but no one really decided to make one on a large scale before. We have KNOTFEST and LOUD PARK, but that’s about it. If you want to enjoy one, you have to make one yourself. A lot of metal bands try to come together to organize their own festivals together, but it’s so hard! When we went to Wacken Open Air in Germany, we thought that the atmosphere there was very good, the metal atmosphere was fantastic. That was the motivation for us to organize the “FRONTLINE FESTIVAL”. We wanted to do it again this year, and we’ve also invited bands from overseas. Like UNEARTH and BLEEDING THROUGH from the US and FLOYA from Germany.
As you might know, we have a feature vocal in our song “No Turning Back” from Trevor Phipps from UNEARTH, so we are very excited to play together at this festival in Japan.
Takuya: It will be the first time we can actually play this song together instead of just a recording!
You just mentioned Wacken Open Air, which is one of the most well known festivals here in Europe. Since you have a direct comparison with festivals in Europe and Japan, what do you feel is the main difference between both, other than the organization struggles you have in Japan?
Rict: I don’t know… Everything?
Takuya: I feel like in Japan it’s the most important thing to play the biggest show in the festival. In Europe it’s more important to release good music for the band before you can play it live at a festival. I think this is the biggest difference, Europe being more focused on the music itself and Japan being more focused on the biggest stage and show.
As an ‘outsider’ I feel like the Japanese metal scene is quite difficult to get into. This is also part of the reason why I want to cover it more often from now on. Since information is a bit hard to come by, and like you said, the average metal fan won’t know about Japanese metal, are there any bands you’d recommend them to check out? After Sable Hills, of course!
Rict: Some of our close friends, other than Crossfaith of course, are PROMPTS and Earthists. They’ve both been very close friends since we started Sable Hills, and we’ve played together a lot over the years. So we’d like to introduce and recommend them!
What about your future schedule? Are there any other overseas festivals on your agenda already? Are you aiming for something like Graspop, Rock am Ring or DOWNLOAD?
Rict: We of course want to go back to Europe and do a lot of shows and festivals there. You mentioned Graspop, which is a big festival we’ve seen videos of in our childhoods already. Big artists played there, and we’d love to go to Graspop, Rock am Ring or DOWNLOAD.
Though this year we’ll play in the Motocultor Festival in France. I think it’s a huge festival, not as big as Hellfest, but Motocultor is the second one for sure. And we’d like to show our music to the audience there. We’re so excited to play that!
Up until now we’ve spoken about festivals, but what about solo shows? Some artists prefer festivals over solo shows, but what about you?
Rict: I personally like to do solo shows, because a festival is very busy. You get assigned a time slot and you have to remain in their timeframe. It’s a lot more serious. Sometimes this means we have to compress the set we’ve prepared since you can’t go over your time slot. A solo show is a lot more loose, and I like that a lot more. If the audience is really into the show we can do an extra song for example. You can’t do that in a festival.
Connecting fans of heavy metal everywhere
Our time for today is running out fast, but I do want to throw in a few quick questions before then. For starters, where can people find your music?
Rict: In Japan Apple Music is the biggest streaming option, but if you’d ask an artist they’ll usually answer that Spotify has their preference. You can find our music there, and our new album “Odyssey” is available through
Arising Empire and CDJapan starting July 19 as a physical CD as well!
What about your future plans? Other than touring, is there something else you can tell me already?
Rict: As we said earlier in the interview, we’ll have our own festival later this year. After that we’ll reveal some tour dates in Japan, and this is actually a secret still, but since I’m the main songwriter of the band I can tell you that I am working on some new music already. It’s going to be good!
Unfortunately we only have time for one more question, so I want to ask you if there is anything you’d like to ask to our readers? Since we don’t have time for a message, we’ll use this as a closing question instead.
Rict: Oh man… What should I even ask? Maybe … What’s your favorite metal band, dear readers?
Takuya: My question… For everyone… Oh! I know! Which song is your favorite? Which song would you say is your favorite Sable Hills song in our new album “Odyssey”?
The reason I’m asking this question is that I’ve noticed a clear difference in preference between overseas and Japanese fans. And I’m very curious to your answer!
FRONTLINE FESTIVAL & Motocultor Festival 2024
As mentioned in the introduction and the interview itself, Sable Hills has some activities on their agenda which they could tell us about already, starting with Motocultor Festival in France, since this is coming up first:
Sable Hills will perform on Motocultor Festival 2024, which is held on August 15, 16 and 17 in Carhaix, located in the Brittany area of France. Sable Hills is scheduled to play on the Bruce Dickinscène stage on Friday, August 16 between 15:45 and 16:30 local time.
Tickets are still available on the website of Motocultor Festival. (Mind you, the entire website is in French, so some Google Translate might be needed to navigate it since there is no English option.)
Additionally, the band will host the second edition of their own event FRONTLINE FESTIVAL on August 31st in 川崎CLUB CITTA (Kawasaki CLUB CITTA), tickets for the event are available through the website of e+.
The lineup for the festival obviously includes Sable Hills, but also Crystal Lake, DEXCORE, KRUELTY, Earthists and kokeshi – all coming from Japan. But they’re also welcoming Unearth and Bleeding Through from the US and FLOYA from Germany this time for an international touch!
Follow Sable Hills
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雪 (Yuki) is the owner and driving force behind Arlequin.
She originally started the project in 2009 as a photographer under the name of Arlequin Photography, but developed an interest in journalism and translation ever since. Because of these interests interviews and reviews were added to the project, until it eventually hit the limits as a "photographer" in 2021, and Arlequin Magazine was added to the mix.
雪 (Yuki) is a native Dutch speaker with a graphic design degree, which means she is also the main person behind Arlequin Creations.
After all these years she is still the main person who does interviews the interviews and live photos that you see on Arlequin, but also a large chunk of the reviews and behind-the-scenes work and communication goes through her.
She speaks Dutch and English on a native level, but also understands Japanese and German.