I mean, they left “parabellum” in the name (the 9mm parabellum bullet is a German, Luger-designed 9mm pistol round designed before WW1 and still in use today. It blows up real good. If you are, on top of being a music fan, a gun nut and you wanna trade some rare 9mm para ammo, go here), they didn’t just call themselves “9mm Bullet” or even “9mm”. I digress, though, as Japanese band names could be an entire blog unto itself (Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, Bump of Chicken, or The Autopsy Report of Drowning Shrimp... anyone?).

Anyway, they hail from Yokohama and favor machine gun style power chords and rat-a-tat drumming in their version of heavy melodic Japanese rock. While they dwell in that overproduced, shredding, 80’s/classic/nu metal sound so popular here in Japan, they manage to stop just short of crossing the line into “wank” territory. Their production value leaves plenty of space in the songs so the guitar/drum attack seems neither suffocating or overly “nu” (check out “Butterfly Effect” from their first full length disc Termination), but there’s still plenty of angst and screaming.

They seem to moving up the J-Rock ladder pretty quickly. They played Punk Spring ‘09 this year and SummerSonic last year. They’ve even been blogged about on an ineverheardofitandidon’tknowwhereit’sfrom music blog-–so you can bet your last round of ammunition that their set is going to be popular.

Some recent pictures of them in action at Shibuya O-East are here courtesy Masuyo Hoya and Smashing Magazine.

They will be touring behind their latest album, the Gothic sounding Vampire.

Jeff