Mass of the Fermenting Dregs is a shoegaze / post_hardcore japanese band originally from Kobe debuted in 2002. Their japanese nickname is “Masu Dore” and often are shortened to MOTFD in western. In this post I'll be talking about the band, their story, members, interviews, my impressions about the albums and why I like their work so much!.

Here's a quick summary of their formation along the years so you know who I'm talking about.

Members

• Miyamoto Natsuko (宮本菜津子) - Vocalist & Bassist (2002 - up to this day)
• Gotoh Reiko (後藤玲子) - Drummer (2002-2007)
• Ishimoto Chiemi (石本知恵美) - Guitarist (2002-2010)
• Isao Yoshino (吉野功) - Drummer (2007 - up to this day)
• Naoya Ogura (小倉 直也) - Guitarist (2012 - up to this day)

The context of this article and my first impression of Masu Dore

What is happening right now?

At the time I'm writing this, I feel like most people would consider Masu Dore one of those “internet-core” cult bands. You know how YouTube sometimes pushes super obscure music onto everyone’s homepage? I wonder if that’s what happened with Masu Dore recently. Back in 2018, I remember trying to find translations for their songs, and it was not easy. Even at YouTube, which usually has a lot of reuploads and fan content, barely had anything about them. But now, it’s common to see videos with translations or people talking about the band in essays.

I bring this up because, as someone in the west audience who doesn’t speak Japanese, it can be tough to fully connect with the music when you don’t understand the lyrics. So I’m really glad the band’s gotten more attention lately, so there’s a lot more translations available now and people to disscuss it.

Even that I can’t comprehend the lyrics, Natsuko the vocalist, really puts a lot of energy in her singing and though the complete meaning of words could not reach me directly, I have a feeling I can understand a little. Along with a strong post hardcore sound, the distortion of the shoegaze and a melodic dreamy feeling, their songs have hit me hard since I met them. I just got into listening to Masu Dore probably in 2015, my memory about this time is already fuzzy so I can’t determine exactly when I really first heard of their works. But I can remember that the first work I listened it was “Worlds is yours” on Youtube a reuploaded video. I got to hear the first work more in later time, so my first impression is based on the second album instead of the first one. Back in that time I was getting into listening more to jrock and indie rock, even though I always liked it since 2013, it was only in 2015 when I truly got into japanese rock music because of anime and many bands like Asian Kung Fu Generation, Scandal and Stereopony. Also I can't explain why, but for some reason, I’m really attracted to those subcultures that aren't necessarily known and I rapidly got to listen to a lot of Masu Dore.

So with that feeling, I had some things to say about this band and their works so finally I decided to write about it. Will be my first time doing something like that, then I can give this excuse if something goes wrong.

From now I'll be mixing part of the history of the band with information I know from my researches, news and interviews. But also discussing some songs I find important to me, I won't talk about all their songs, but pick what have more meaning to me and my favorite ones.

Masudore lyrics like a lot of post rock music have deep lyrics, It's not really clear the meaning and its up to the people that is listening to interpret what it means for themselves. So feel free to share your thoughts about the songs in the comments section.

So let's get started with Kirametal and the self titled album.

Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs and Kirametal

The first demo and the self titled album

Kirametal is the debut work of Masudore, this demo cd was launched in 2006 independent with no label and features three songs: delusionalism, I F A SURFER and skabetty. Was I said before my first contact with the band works, was with the second EP “World is Yours”, so I only heard Kirametal after, and it was not my first impression of the band. Still, this demo CD hit me different from the other works, the first song have a similar intensity with “Kono Speed no Saki e”, but my feeling hearing “delusionalism” was much heavier than I was expecting, even though the second EP still have song strong songs, this one had a different vibe.

So I got very curious of what was the first impression hearing Kirametal’s songs for the first time back then. To fill that curiosity, I’ve been looking for what people said about them around when they started as a band in 2006 and I couldn’t find much, but I’ve found on rock’in on where Hayashi Atsuko wrote about Masu Dore on “ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL 2008”[link] a rock festival in Chiba - Japan organized by ROCK’ IN ON, back in the day it was a duo only Natsuko and Chiemi with a guest member on drums, Hayashi described them as “Powerful yet supple, passionate yet somehow sad. It feels like the 21st century Alternative Girls are here. Wow, they're so cool!” I loved to read that! Since describes the vibes of their presentation and the writer included the MCs lines they used back then, so, I suggest you checking out. This day they played: “I F A SURFER”, “skabetty” and “ハイライト (highlight)” songs from the first album.

Kirametal album cover art by Ai Kozakai

Before talking individually about the songs I want to first point out the cover art for this demo CD. The art is done by Ai Kozakai, features a girl in some type of rebellious stance, swinging a guitar so throwing making the guitar flying away. Their clothing is a wrinkled dress and their hair is kinda messed up on the air. I absolutely love this art, it resembles the chaos energy of the band on this debut.

I’m talking about this first, because for a lot of people in the west, the first contact with Masudore probably was with some thumbnail on YouTube or other music service and the album covers get the attention of people before the songs could impact them. Natsuko often describes Ai as the 4th member of Masudore, because she does the art after the Natsuko lyrics and completes the work of the band. Ai had an important part in the band reunion in the future too, I will be visiting this story later.

Masudore lyrics like a lot of post rock music have deep lyrics, It's not really clear the meaning and its up to the people that is listening to interpret what it means for themselves. So for Kirametal and the other albums I’ll be covering what my favorite songs of each album means to me.

“delusionalism“: the first song starts with some city sounds, like something you would hear at an agitated street avenue people walking and talking. Then Chiemi’s guitar builds the starts of the song, coming with a low volume then growing up to the start of the song. My interpretation of this song is about a person that is lost on delusion thinking in things that would not turn into real things, but what’s the point of thinking in our regrets and always remembering like “oh the thing I did before could be much better”? Living the now is much better than get lost in your past self, since there’s no way to fix your past anyway.

I want to list what I think is cool about songs, so here I go:

The lyrics at the start of the song and the verse have an melodic “aiyaiyaiyaiya”, from videos I’ve watched it is always very cool to hear the crowd repeating along with the Natsuko vocals! the back vocals at the start singing “chu chu” (you can hear more clear at around 0:42 seconds of the song)

First chords are absolutely powerful in lyrics and arrangement
(this was the translation I found more often, theres no official english lyrics)

“Koukai wo se ni oe”
“Leave your regrets behind”

“Kirau”
“Risou ni make”
_“Hate it, laugh at it, pick it up”
“Losing to ideals”
_

the solo at around 2:36 is amazing, it finishes the song perfectly and is awesome to see the vibe of the members playing this part of the song

"if a surfer": For the next think it's really hard to put the my feelings about I f a surfer in words, this song is really intense from the start to end. But the feeling that I get mostly it's like they were saying: "Hey notice us here! We can make a really cool noise!" This is the Mass of the fermenting dregs song, this presents the band really well: powerful, noisy, but still can represent melancholy through the melodies.

"skabetty": The end of this demo and is much different from the other two songs, instead of focusing on a powerful sound, this one is very melodic and melancholic. The melodic guitar is beautiful and a little bit sad, a different vibe. This song is one of my favorites from their entirely discography, I'm always returning to this song. This song particularly is very bittersweet, I feel that the lyrics is telling a story about losing someone and longing for this person to stay, but at the same time is saying: ok you can go now, so to me it feels like about a departure song rather than just a form of breakup. Again there's no official english lyrics so in order to try understand this song I searched for most consistent translations (even though I think major of them is MTL :( ), still even if I could access to a official translate it's a deep lyrics imo, the meaning still varies to person from person, but at this moment this what I feel about this song.

This concludes Kirametal, it's a very good first single/mini-cd and very solid, even more considering this was made independent. But what did these songs turn into the next work made with a label? In this case those three songs reappeared in the self titled first EP recorded with AVOCADO RECORDS in 2007 with launch in 2008.

This post wil be updated later