Acquaint yourself with technical power metallers Unlucky Morpheus, a band featuring Yousei Teikoku's Shiren and LIGHT BRINGER's Fuki.
The roots of Unlucky Morpheus go back to September 2007, when then-LIGHTNING support guitarist yuki formed the session band Magical☆ Ninja. The band’s line-up included his friend and fellow guitarist Kazu, plus Fuki and Hibiki of LIGHT BRINGER. Magical☆ Ninja’s career was short-lived; after just three lives, the group disbanded in February 2008, but yuki and Fuki stayed in touch, going on to form Unlucky Morpheus in August.
The vast majority of the duo’s works fall into the “Touhou metal” genre; that is, heavy metal arrangements of songs from the “Touhou Project” video game series. Their first such release was their debut mini-album Hypothetical Box, which went on sale in October 2008 at M3, a major event for self-published works known as “doujinshi”. The full-length debut album REBIRTH followed in March 2009.
Just two months later, the duo produced their second album So That A Star Shines at Night Sky, a collection of power metal covers of songs from the “Kimi ga Nozomu Eien” franchise. This release featured guest appearances by Kazu and ex-Magical☆ Ninja keyboardist Ko~He~. Unlucky Morpheus put out a further three Touhou arrange albums in 2009, including October’s Unbeatable Accomplice, a collaboration with Xi of AQUAELIE. In February 2010, yuki and Fuki both started using their full names: Hirano Yukimura and Tenge Fuyuki.
2010 was significantly quieter for the duo, as both focused on other projects. In March, Hirano launched the doujin circle Icarus’cry, a joint venture with Denshirenji Tsuyoshi, otherwise known as Shinjo Kasumi of disbanded visual kei outfit SMILE. Later in the year, Denshirenji joined Unlucky Morpheus for August’s Byougin Kishou. The same month, Hirano founded a third doujin circle named UNDEAD CORPORATION, in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Pine Tree.
Unlucky Morpheus ushered in 2011 with a trilogy of lives over three months, culminating on January 7th with Dabearuki Final ~ Lunatic East ~, a two-man live with Icarus’cry at Shibuya O-EAST. A live CD and DVD of this concert was released in May. In the second half of the year, with Fuyuki tied up in recording and touring with LIGHT BRINGER, Yukimura recorded two instrumental albums. One of these, HEAVY METAL BE-BOP, featured blues and jazz arrangements of Touhou tracks.
Fuyuki and Tsuyoshi both returned to the fold in 2012 for August’s Parallelism・α, the band’s first album to feature original songs. A companion album Parallelism・β followed in December, and was released alongside Parallelism・γ, a collaboration album with UNDEAD CORPORATION. In January 2013, Hirano joined Yousei Teikoku under the name Shiren and Unlucky Morpheus went quiet once more. Amongst their few releases that year was Visual Rock History ~Raddock & XI All Songs Collection~, a collection of songs by two visual kei bands Hirano played in until 2012.
Unlucky Morpheus reconvened in late 2014, with the release of affected, the circle’s first complete album of original material. The original mini-album Vampir followed in April 2015, the same month in which Hirano revealed himself to be Shiren of Yousei Teikoku, a position he’d held since January 2013.
