Mid-1980s Japan had two heavy metal scenes running side by side. Above ground, LOUDNESS, BOW WOW and EARTHSHAKER were proving that Japanese metal could fill halls and sell records. Below ground, in the independent scene, something sharper and far more unruly was taking shape in response. DEMENTIA came out of that second world.
Origins: The Underground Stirs
The band began in Tokyo in 1984 as MEBIUS, built around vocalist Geess Kosugi (GEESS; real name Shigeru Kosugi), and took the name DEMENTIA that October. Its declared concept was “HIGH POWER SLASH METAL”: the velocity of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the razor-edged riffing of early Bay Area thrash, and — the part almost nobody else was attempting — the loud, gaudy, glamorous visual flash of LA metal in the Mötley Crüe mould. In Japan in 1984, that combination was pioneering.
The band’s home turf was the rooms that mattered most in the underground rock scene of the day: Kagurazaka EXPLOSION, Meguro Rokumeikan, Shibuya Yaneura. With stage dives and boiling mosh pits as its calling card, DEMENTIA built a cult following almost immediately.
The band lasted only about four years, from 1984 to 1988. Its place in Japanese rock history is out of all proportion to that short life, because of who passed through it. Taiji Sawada — then going by RAY, later world-famous as TAIJI of X (now X JAPAN). HALLY (Yoshifumi Yoshida), who would reign as UNITED’s senior guitarist for more than three decades. U.D.A. (Takashi Udagawa), the drummer who became the backbone of TOKYO YANKEES. A band that almost nobody outside Tokyo’s live houses had heard of was quietly gathering the players who would go on to shape Japanese heavy metal, visual kei and loud rock.
Geess Kosugi: From Frontman to Architect
DEMENTIA’s founder and frontman was much more than an incendiary performer. Geess Kosugi is known as the entrepreneur and producer who built the infrastructure of Japan’s extreme-music business from nothing.
In DEMENTIA, Geess was the band’s icon: aggressive high-register shouts, venomous and freewheeling MCs, and frenzied agitation of the crowd. When the band broke up in 1988, he stepped off the stage altogether and spent about a year as an office worker at an advertising agency in Azabu. It was a turning point. Unable to settle into the routine of office life and facing a crisis of identity, he found his direction in a story from the other side of the world: Jon Zazula — Johnny Z — founder of Megaforce Records, who had mortgaged his home to release Metallica’s debut. Geess resolved to start a thrash label in Japan with his own hands.
In July 1990 he founded the independent label HOWLING BULL, incorporating it in March 1994 as Howling Bull Entertainment, Inc. The direct trigger for the label was a single band: UNITED. Geess had been devoted to their music and the sharpness of their riffs ever since the two bands shared a bill at Kagurazaka EXPLOSION in 1984, and he wanted UNITED’s records distributed around the world. He went directly to the band’s leader, Akihiro “Yokoyan” Yokoyama, made UNITED’s recordings HOWLING BULL’s very first release, and went on to back the band for years.
From there HOWLING BULL launched GARLIC BOYS and Hi-STANDARD, and drove the mainstream rise of melodic punk and loud rock in the late 1990s that AIR JAM came to symbolise. Geess also planned and promoted BEAST FEAST, one of the largest extreme-music festivals ever staged in Japan, bringing in SLAYER and PANTERA. His contribution to spreading heavy music in Japan — and to turning it into an industry — is decisive. The street-level instincts and direct band-to-band solidarity he developed in the DEMENTIA years bore fruit in a transformation of the Japanese rock business from the 1990s onward.
In more recent years, through his official YouTube channel, HOWLING BULL GEESS KOSUGI’s Bakuon Chronicle, and through his writing, Geess has become the scene’s storyteller — a first-hand witness to the 1980s independent scene, documenting realities that would otherwise scatter and disappear.
Lineups and the Web of Connections
Over its four years DEMENTIA passed through four distinct phases, with the changes concentrated in the bass and drum chairs. The list of who played in those phases reads like a directory of future masters of Japanese rock.
| Phase | Period | Lineup (Vo / G / G / B / Dr) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1984 | GEESS / HALLY / OMMY / ROLLY / U.D.A. | The original lineup at the name change from MEBIUS to DEMENTIA. ROLLY’s departure moved the band into its second phase. |
| 2 | Late 1984 – autumn 1985 | GEESS / HALLY / OMMY / RAY (Taiji Sawada) / U.D.A. | RAY (TAIJI) joins at the invitation of his high-school friend Geess. Recorded the demo tape and the first two flexi-discs. |
| 3 | Late 1985 – early 1987 | GEESS / HALLY / OMMY / JUN / U.D.A. | HALLY returns after a temporary departure; JUN joins on bass. Recorded the landmark 7-inch EP STRUGGLE FOR REBEL. |
| 4 | Early 1987 – 1988 | GEESS / HALLY / OMMY / TOKI / SHINDO (Kazuyuki Shindo) | After U.D.A. and JUN left, TOKI arrives from Yokosuka’s SAVER TIGER, with SHINDO on drums. The final lineup. |
RAY, Before He Was TAIJI
The biggest turning point in DEMENTIA’s history was the arrival of RAY — Taiji Sawada. Taiji was a guitarist by background. His high-school friend Geess pushed hard to recruit him, and he joined DEMENTIA as a teenager. This was the first time he had seriously taken up the bass, which makes DEMENTIA the starting point of the career of TAIJI, one of the most influential bassists Japan has produced. His aggressive, groove-heavy playing — moving freely between pick, slap and tight fingerstyle — already shows signs of its finished form on DEMENTIA’s earliest recordings. Taiji left in autumn 1985, passed through PROWLER on his way to X, and later, with LOUDNESS and D.T.R, made his name at home and abroad as one of Japan’s top bassists.
HALLY, the Songwriter
Guitarist Yoshifumi “HALLY” Yoshida was DEMENTIA’s main composer, writing a long run of high-speed thrash numbers. In autumn 1985 he briefly left DEMENTIA alongside Taiji and joined X, where he composed “Feel Me Tonight,” an important song from X’s earliest days, and left behind a demo recording on which he sang lead. He then returned to DEMENTIA and raised the band’s musical level further. After the breakup he joined UNITED, where for more than three decades he has refined a twin-guitar partnership with guitarist Shingo “SHINGO” Matsumoto, building backing riffs so precise that Geess Kosugi calls them “national-treasure grade.”
U.D.A., TOKI and the Rest of the Family Tree
Drummer U.D.A. (Takashi Udagawa) held the early ensemble together with galloping double-kick and a rock-solid beat. After DEMENTIA he went through ROMMEL and then formed TOKYO YANKEES, a core band of Extasy Records that led the scene in the 1990s.
TOKI, who joined on bass in the fourth phase, had made his name as a young prodigy in hide’s Yokosuka SAVER TIGER, and was a key figure linking the Yokosuka and Tokyo scenes. Like Taiji, he died young.
Discography and Musical Evolution
DEMENTIA’s official recorded output from its active years consists of self-released demo tapes, flexi-discs (sonosheets) on independent labels, a 7-inch EP and compilation appearances. Every one of them was pressed in small numbers, and today they are rare documents of the dawn of Japanese metal, with serious collector value.
| Year | Title | Format / Cat. No. | Tracks | Lineup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | HIGH POWER SLASH METAL | Demo cassette | Brain Breaker / In to the Night (Live) | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, RAY, U.D.A. |
| Oct 1984 | DEMENTIA | 8-inch translucent red flexi-disc (Explosion Records, E-7231) | A: BRAIN BREAKER / B: EXECUTIONER | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, RAY, U.D.A. |
| 28 Jul 1985 | DEMENTIA LIVE! | 8-inch flexi-disc (Explosion Records, EXP-HM702) | A: METAL MANIAC, DREAM ON FIRE / B: SEXUAL DESIRE, EXECUTIONER | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, RAY, U.D.A. |
| 1985 | HEAVY METAL FORCE NEO HARD SHOCK | Compilation LP (V.A.) | One track contributed | Phase 3 lineup (with JUN) |
| 14 Aug 1986 | STRUGGLE FOR REBEL | 7-inch EP (Buzz Records, BZ-001) | A: STRUGGLE FOR REBEL / B: RISE UP AND FIGHT! | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, JUN, U.D.A. |
| 1987 | Terror’ll Come Tonight | Demo cassette | Terror’ll Come Tonight / Dealer of Death | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, TOKI, SHINDO |
| 26 Jun 1987 | Bang Hard | 7-inch flexi-disc, not for sale (E-7993(S)) | A: Bang Hard / B: (blank) | GEESS, HALLY, OMMY, TOKI, SHINDO |
| 1988 | Far East Thrashcore Union – F.E.T.U. – Official Live Promo-Tape Volume 3 | Promo split cassette (V.A., with SACRIFICE and CASBAH) | A: Terror’ll Come Tonight, Dealer of Death | Phase 4 lineup (with TOKI, SHINDO) |
Musically, the early flexi-discs of 1984–85 are best understood as speed metal: rough around the edges but driven by tremendous forward momentum. As “BRAIN BREAKER” and “SEXUAL DESIRE” show clearly, the songs of this period were built on NWOBHM-style riff structures while keeping an approachable catchiness in the vocal melodies. That balance set DEMENTIA apart from bands simply imitating hardcore punk or American thrash.
The 1986 7-inch STRUGGLE FOR REBEL, released on Buzz Records, is the band’s landmark and the peak of its musical achievement. HALLY wrote both songs, and his instincts as a composer are on full display: the title track and its B-side, “RISE UP AND FIGHT!”, hold razor-sharp riffing, melodic choruses and dramatic guitar solos in perfect balance. Fusing a racing thrash beat with singalong sections full of melancholy, the record reads as the finished form of a distinctly Japanese thrash metal, and it pointed the way for the bands that followed.
In the final phase, 1987 to 1988, the demos “Terror’ll Come Tonight” and “Dealer of Death” lean toward a heavier sound built around authentic Bay Area crunch, and the band forged alliances with Japan’s second generation of thrash, SACRIFICE and CASBAH among them.
”Kanto’s Three Great Bulky-Garbage Bands”
In the mid-1980s underground, DEMENTIA was lumped together with X (later X JAPAN) and Yokosuka’s SAVER TIGER under a single name: Kanto sandai sodai-gomi bando — roughly, “Kanto’s Three Great Bulky-Garbage Bands.” Today the label is repeated like a badge of legend. At the time it was a vicious insult, thrown by the live-house crowd and by hardline metal fans. It is said to have been coined by members of UNITED, then the stoic standard-bearers of orthodox thrash.
Three things were tangled together behind the label: excess on stage that went beyond any accepted limit, after-show parties that went completely off the rails, and a heretical approach to both music and image.
On stage, YOSHIKI was pouring gasoline onto his cymbals and setting them alight, and hide was overwhelming audiences with fake blood and outlandish stagecraft. DEMENTIA matched them with shows so frenzied that fans queued to stage-dive, and the band was banned from a string of live houses.
Off stage, the trouble never stopped. Drunken property damage and brawls with other bands were everyday events, to the point where izakaya in Shibuya and Meguro began refusing entry to band members altogether. Signs reading “No guitars” and “No X” went up in shop windows, and it grew into something close to a public nuisance.
And within the Japanese metal world of the time, orthodox technical heavy metal and hardline power metal were the mainstream. Hair teased to its absolute limit, loud makeup and extreme thrash hurled from the stage made these bands targets for fierce attacks from music magazines and the orthodox metal community, who dismissed them as novelty acts and heretics.
History’s irony — and its logic — lay inside those three insulted bands. TAIJI from DEMENTIA and hide from SAVER TIGER both went on to join X, and through the major-label debut BLUE BLOOD created the headwaters of the visual kei movement that turned Japanese music upside down. And after DEMENTIA broke up, it was DEMENTIA’s own Geess Kosugi who supported UNITED — the band that had coined the insult — both financially and personally, while DEMENTIA’s HALLY drove UNITED forward on guitar. Those facts say everything about the depth of the solidarity and respect that existed underneath the underground’s rivalries.
International Reception and the Archives
With the spread of the internet and the digital archiving of recordings, 1980s Japanese underground metal has been rapidly unearthed and re-evaluated by dedicated collectors and metal archivists abroad. DEMENTIA is no exception, and holds a special place in extreme-metal communities, particularly in Europe and the Americas, including Latin America.
On international platforms — Discogs, Last.fm, RateYourMusic, and vk.gy, the global database of visual kei and Japanese metal — DEMENTIA is documented in detail as “a thrash/speed metal band formed in Tokyo in 1984.” Among metal listeners abroad the band is treated not as one more obscure act from the 1980s but as a decisive missing link in the formation of early visual kei and of Japanese power metal.
In English-speaking communities in particular — Reddit’s r/xjapan among them — and on overseas music blogs, DEMENTIA is widely known as the band in which Taiji Sawada switched from guitar and first played bass. For anyone tracing the roots of the slapping and fingerpicking that earned TAIJI his worldwide reputation, the early DEMENTIA recordings are considered essential study material.
The rarity of the original vinyl is just as striking on the secondary market. On Discogs’ global marketplace, the 7-inch Struggle For Rebel has traded steadily at high prices, anywhere from a few tens of dollars up to around seventy. The 8-inch flexi-discs featuring TAIJI, DEMENTIA and DEMENTIA LIVE!, survive in extremely small numbers, and auction sales above ¥70,000 are not unusual.
The absence of any official release on the major streaming services has only fed the band’s cult status. Recordings uploaded to YouTube by underground archivists — the France-based channel Obscurités Japonaises among them — have drawn tens of thousands of plays, and thrash fans around the world leave praise in many languages, calling the band “a buried treasure of ’80s Far Eastern speed metal” and “a miraculous fusion of powerful riffs and Japanese vocal melody.”
The End, and What It Left Behind
In 1988, after contributing to the compilation promo tape F.E.T.U. – Official Live Promo-Tape Volume 3, DEMENTIA came to an end. No single event caused the breakup. Exhaustion from constant lineup changes, the maturing and diverging musical directions of each player, and the departure of key members to neighbouring bands all compounded one another.
The paths the members took afterwards touched almost every corner of Japanese rock culture. Geess Kosugi reinvented himself as a producer and executive and, through HOWLING BULL, built the golden age of Japanese loud rock and melodic hardcore. HALLY went through ROMMEL to UNITED and has led Japanese thrash from the front line for decades. RAY — Taiji Sawada — rose through X and LOUDNESS to become one of Japan’s great bass heroes, leaving a long line of remarkable performances before his death in 2011. U.D.A. formed TOKYO YANKEES and defined a biker-rock style of his own. And fourth-phase bassist TOKI left a powerful impression across a career that ran from Yokosuka’s SAVER TIGER to EMPEROR, before he too died young.
There has been no reunion tour under the DEMENTIA name, and no large-scale tribute album. But at memorial shows for former members and at UNITED’s anniversary events, DEMENTIA’s achievements are always acknowledged with respect. And Geess Kosugi’s own ongoing work — first-hand recollections, shared on video and in writing — has become an important archive in its own right, guarding against a break in the historical record and handing the reality of the 1980s underground on to the next generation.
Conclusion
DEMENTIA was a brilliant flash of light at a dramatic moment of transition, when Japanese heavy metal was breaking out of its underground bunker and into the major-label world. It was never just a thrash band. It embodied the fusion of aggressive riffs with catchy melody, stage expression driven by outrageous visuals, and the runaway energy of an underground that rejected established authority.
The excess that earned the insult “Kanto’s Three Great Bulky-Garbage Bands” became the womb that later produced X JAPAN, and with it visual kei, a pop culture that would spread worldwide. At the same time, the history of HOWLING BULL, which Geess Kosugi opened up after the breakup, laid the commercial and cultural foundations of Japanese punk and loud rock.
A band that produced central figures of the scene both as performers and as producers, DEMENTIA stands as one of the most important junction points in the history of Japanese rock — and at home and abroad, its value has never faded.
