SLOTHREAT played its first show in May 2019. The guitarist who started it had been trying to put the band together for five years by then.

The Band

SLOTHREAT began activity in March 2019. The person at the centre is Katsuya, who plays rhythm guitar and writes the music. Finding the right people took him half a decade.

One of them did not have far to come. The lead guitarist, Takaya, is his twin brother. The singer is KAZ, who writes the lyrics, and the bassist is Seki.

Katsuya has a second job inside the band. He is also its sound engineer, and handles the records from recording through to mastering. What you hear is one person’s idea carried all the way to the finished product.

The Sound

The band’s music is usually described as a blend: J-rock and ambient textures on one side, metalcore, progressive metal and djent on the other. A Japanese review summed it up as a metalcore and post-hardcore base developed in a progressive direction, with KAZ’s high vocal melodies on top.

The Records

The first release, the mini-album Allium, came out on 27 April 2019. The first show was two weeks later, on 11 May.

The first full album, THEMIS, followed on 25 September 2020. It is named for the Greek goddess of law and order. It came out on a new label run by a former member of the band girugamesh.

The first one-man show, True Colors, was on 1 May 2022.

The Long Road to the Second

The years after that were busy and unsettled. The band opened for the German band Unprocessed in Tokyo and Osaka in early 2025, and released a single, “Luminous Cave,” that June. In July 2025 it announced the departure of its drummer, and has worked with session drummers since.

On 6 May 2026 it played a seventh-anniversary one-man show in Shibuya.

Then came the second album. APARADOXIA was released on 9 September 2026 through the Avalon label. It is the band’s first release with national distribution, six years after THEMIS.

Why It Matters

SLOTHREAT does things slowly and completely. Five years to form, six between albums, and every record engineered in-house by its own writer.

Start with THEMIS, then APARADOXIA.