You’ve been around for 40 years and you released your first album 36 years ago. If I’m counting well, you’re releasing your 20th album. How do you view your career?
When we released the first album, I was not thinking about the future. I never thought we'd have such a long career.
I have been going through both good and bad things, but as I've been always a fan of metal music, I have been pursuing my ideal and working hard to achieve it. That's why I am who I am now. I also think I am lucky in a way.

How did you get into metal music when you were younger ?
I've been a big fan of music since I was a little kid thanks to my parents and sister. I loved anything that was good no matter what genre it belonged to. And then I heard the live album by Deep Purple and rock music became my top priority. It was called hard rock back then. I don't think the term heavy metal wasn used yet.

Who were the artists that inspired and influenced you ?
Too many to mention, but Ritchie Blackmore, Glenn Hughes, Martin Turner, Andy Powell, David Gilmour, John Wetton to name a few.

Let’s talk about the new album « Crimson & Jet Black » : how did you write your 20th album ?
We started planning this album in 2019, but we acutually started writing the songs from Autumn of 2020. However, due to the pandemic, we had to give up most of our musical activities. That was something I had never gone through, and I almost lost the motivation. Although the pandemic continued, I decided to take this as an opportunity to keep writing the new material. And even after we started recording, we had to stop it twice as I wasn't sure about the quality. I threw away the songs I didn't like and wrote some new ones. In summer of 2022, I finally felt that everything was ready, I re-started recording and finished it up in the Autumn.

In the band, who is writing the lyrics and the music ? And what about the recording ?
I mostly write both all the lyrics and music. For the latest album, I wrote everything except the instrumental one, which was written by the guitarist Akio. Also I'm in charge of production

You worked with Jens Borden to produce the album. Can you tell us a bit more about this collaboration : how did you two meet and how did you work together ?
As I loved the sound and its vision by Jens, I asked him to work with us for "Nucleus", which was our first international album with re-recorded songs released in 2019. And he liked what we were doing too. We sent the recorded files along with our request, and he mixed and mastered it based on it. I am sure Anthem and Jens share the same vision.

What inspired you for the texts ?
I used to write about the imaginary world and view by using my imagination, but these days I mainly write the things that are in my mind. Sometimes I admonish myself and sometimes I inspire people with my lyrics.

You released two singles « Snake Eyes » and « Wheel of Fire » : why these two songs as singles ?
Because these 2 songs represent the album. This shows Anthem's metal soul. They both are very straight, energetic and heavy.

What is your favorite song of the album ?
It's not easy to pick up one as I love all the songs.
But "Roaring Vortex" is very impressive. I changed the tempo and arrangement many time to make it as close as possible to the image I had. This song shows that metal does not have to be always fast. This is a very heavy track.

What about the artwork of the album ? Can you tell us who work on it and what is the meaning of it ?
This is a realization of my view.
What the eagle holds in its mouth is a ticket of our 35th anniversary tour.
The artwork shows our will that we'll never stop challenging despite our long career.

Do you plan to tour to present this album and will we have the chance to see you in Europe ?
We'll start touring to support the album from May. Probably we'll play in the neighbor countries such as Korea, but unfortunately we didn't have time to set up an European Tour. Hopefully we will be able to come to Europe next year.

A last word for your french fans ?
Hi, metalheads in France! We are Anthem from Japan. Listen to our dangerous album "Crimson & Jet Black", which will be out on April 21st, and you'll be blown away. This is Metal. This is Anthem. We'll play for you guys sometime in the future!

Thank you for your answers :-)
Thank you. It was fun.