Masatoshi Ono: The Million-Selling Pop Singer Who Joined a Power Metal Band at 42

There is no career in Japanese metal quite like this one. The singer of GALNERYUS was famous seventeen years before he joined the band, for a completely different kind of song.

1992

Masatoshi Ono was born on 29 January 1967 in Adachi, Tokyo, and grew up in Kasukabe, in Saitama Prefecture. He made his debut as a solo singer in 1992.

His third single, “You’re the Only…,” came out on 1 August of that year as the theme song of a Fuji Television drama. It sold more than a million copies. He won the best new artist prize at the Japan Record Awards and appeared on NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, the New Year’s Eve programme that is the biggest stage in Japanese pop.

He was known from the start for his high notes. His range has been described as four octaves, though in practice he is said to use about three.

2009

In September 2009, GALNERYUS announced that its new vocalist would be Masatoshi “SHO” Ono. He was forty-two. The band’s guitarist and leader, Syu, had founded it in Osaka in 2001, and its first singer had left the year before.

The first album with Ono was RESURRECTION, in 2010. The run that followed, including PHOENIX RISING (2011), ANGEL OF SALVATION (2012) and ULTIMATE SACRIFICE (2017), took the band to its highest chart positions. He has been its singer ever since, through THE STARS WILL LIGHT THE WAY (2024) and A CRY FROM THE SKY ABOVE, released on 15 July 2026.

The Rest of His Work

He did not give up the other half of his career. He has taught singing since 2010, as chief instructor at a vocal school. And on 13 September 2023 he released THE TIES OF AFFECTION, his first album of original solo material in about nineteen years.

Why It Matters

Singers usually move from metal towards the mainstream, and usually when they are young. Ono went from the mainstream to power metal in his forties and stayed for more than fifteen years.

It says something about the genre as well. Power metal asks for exactly the kind of voice that sold a million singles: clear and very high.

Start with RESURRECTION, then look up “You’re the Only…” and hear the same voice in 1992.