The Bad Penny (beta)

“РЛБ30011922 is a way to deal with a death, to honor a memory and create a record of a reminder that this honor must be preserved.”
-PBV of 夢遊病者

When a band decides to call itself “夢遊病者,” it exponentially decreases their chances of getting “discovered.” But, of course, that presupposes the notion that mass appeal is the top priority for every musician. From all indications, that ain’t the modus operandi for Osaka, Japan’s experimental death-metal crew 夢遊病者. Their primary goal appears to be attracting erudite music-heads who are highly selective with what tunes they choose to consume.

The Bad Penny recently came across 夢遊病者 and became instantly hooked on the trio’s original sound, which also incorporates folk, free-jazz, grind, thrash and psychedelia. You owe it to yourself to check out РЛБ30011922, which consists of one engrossing song that runs 37 minutes (divided into 10 segments) and came out in late October. Don’t dare call the song, which shares the same name as the title of the release, a throwaway track; PBV (guitars/saz/bow/vocals/effects, NN (bass/electrophones) and KJM (drums/percussion) spent three years crafting it.

After getting hooked on the kaleidoscopic track, yours truly championed it in my Treble column, “The 13th Floor,” as one of the eight best psychedelic releases of the fall season. (You’ll find 夢遊病者’s “РЛБ30011922” even more tempting to seek out because it’s available on Bandcamp at a pay-what-you-want price point.)

When all is said and done, the essence of “РЛБ30011922” seems to be a questioning of the existence of reality. Musically, it is not nearly as assaultive as one would expect it to be. Yes, the production is raw, the experimentation unlimited and the sound just about as atonal as music can get. But sing-songy guitar passages and merciful breaks allow the listener to catch their breath and, like a good workout, push through what is ultimately a very rewarding listen that will make music fans who thrive on challenging themselves all the stronger for it.

But as that’s just our opinion of the song, and because we were intrigued to learn more about how 夢遊病者 came up with it, The Bad Penny reached out to the band behind РЛБ30011922 for an interview, which PBV graciously granted to us with some of the smartest and most thought-provoking answers we’ve received from artists in years. What follows is our profound conversation, conducted via email due to language differences.

What follows is a relatively rare interview with PBV conducted approximately three weeks ago.

Can you elaborate as much as possible on this comment in your email: “We definitely see everything as a narrative sequence, so all the albums are connected, from the [October 2016] demo to [October 2016’s] 5772 to [August 2023’s] Skopofoboexoskelett to [October 2024] Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum to РЛБ30011922.”

This band is very much about the idea of family. The spark of every album starts with a story from a real life lived, their experience and how it is reflected into the pool of the world, with the ripples creating a wave unto an ocean of other faces, and places and things. So it is not only about the microcosm of a family in the sense of these related individuals, but also about the macrocosm of the universe, friends across the globe, everyone you proverbially touch, experiences you have. 5772 was a way to deal with a death; РЛБ30011922 is a way to deal with a death, to honor a memory and create a record of a reminder that this honor must be preserved. It is a certain accountability. 

What inspired the narrative? Did the whole band or just one band member develop it? When did you/they start creating the narrative?

The above felt like fertile emotional ground. Not in an underhanded way – in a cathartic way; and something that we’re drawn to in heavy music. We wanted it to feel grounded in reality conceptually, considering musically it runs a very wide cosmic gamut. This latest record specifically was something brought to the table by myself. The voice is real recordings speaking candidly, someone dear to me retelling their life before they have passed on. It was our first album without any “traditional” vocals, as it would have taken away from the words being spoken.   

This empyrean motorcycle ride has been in motion for about a decade. 

In what ways did you construct the music on the records, in particular your most recent release, so that they reflect, elevate and/or enhance the narrative aspects of your latest LP and the others?

As you can imagine, it was a difficult, affecting journey – for every nuance in the story there is a musical cue. A letter that arrives suddenly reaffirming someone’s existence that was assumed lost; a joke about the nature of the silliness of fables; the starvation of a country in the throes of war; each mnemonic is met with a thunder, or a clearing or slow passage as though tumbling through rocks. A reflection of life in its most dramatic or mundane.

How many more chapters of the narrative do you envision?

This is a good question that is still being wrestled with. In the storyline of this band and what the next chapter holds, it is simply unknown.

What date do you have in mind for the next release?

The latest album, which was nearly three years in the making, was the first time that we did not work on another album for this band in parallel. All focus went to this and only this. Life, as art, is unpredictable, and so there are no concrete dates right now.

To what extent are you planning to present this narrative in concert? What limitations will you have to work around?

Because we are scattered across the earth, there are currently zero plans for live excursions. The first step would be a gauntlet of visas then a gauntlet of rehearsals if there was any luck with this.

What speaks to you most about the narrative, what it means and perhaps what it says about society, culture, life and/or humanity?

Kindness and empathy has become a secret whispered about in tiny corridors of the ventricles of this spinning rock, in my honest opinion. It is a golden commodity floating in a lava of cynicism and the banalities of hatred, mistrust; all wrapped up in the fragility of [a] life – so, in a way, it is important to tell real stories, maybe hard stories, maybe good, things that give us some semblance of hope or understanding, something people can reflect on, something they can laugh about maybe.

The wish is for people to maintain their curiosity, figure out a way to connect to it and to others, to inspire people to tell their own stories. To believe that someone will genuinely listen and relate. Everything is too fleeting, this is why records as records exist – in our eyes at least.

Go to 夢遊病者’s Bandcamp page for more information about, and merch related to, the genius black-metal group.

This entry was posted on 12/16/2025 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Interviews with tags Sleepwalker, 夢遊病者. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.