X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 3
20. VOICELESS SCREAMING

"Voiceless Screaming" carries something nameless invited in by people's tears. This thing crosses boundaries of gender and nationality.

I haven't said anything about this until now, but this is a song that I wrote.

My motivation then was that I realized that the X of that time needed a song like this. Saying that word, "Realize," sounds easy, but this realization was actually a kind of self-enlightenment, I think.

"Is this kind of thing okay?" Whenever I asked myself this question, the results of my soul-searching would feel natural to me.

At the time I wrote the song, I didn't forget to give credit to the others. I wasn't that arrogant as to say that I did it all entirely on my own.

Of course, it did require a lot of effort to write that song, but I think that a lot of that help came from the invisible strength around me that began to join in.

"Voiceless Screaming" was written because Yoshiki's physical condition was deteriorating, so he couldn't play and had to rest. It was originally thought up between me and Toshi, but eventually it became an opera-ish piece.

We were going to put together a really really simple song, but it couldn't be helped that we ended up making it a Toshi-esque song. In the end, its scope became really broad. [trans note: literally "above all, inserting Toshi into the song"]

Before we recorded the song, Toshi would confide in me: "I'd like to sing it like this, but what would you do?" It was such a Toshi-ish question, so I'd snap: "Don't worry about what I'd do!"

The truth was, I think he knew the song was fine as it was, but Toshi didn't know how to leave it alone. After I snapped at him, Toshi kept worrying.

The origin of his question was serious, and he thought long and hard about the way in which it should be sung. "Voiceless Screaming" was that kind of a song into which the two of us poured our souls.

The question of why Toshi put so much of himself into the song was that he wrote the lyrics about the troubles he was feeling.

At that time, Toshi had lost his voice for a short period. A vocalist who can't sing is useless. All of the hurt and bitterness he felt was poured as sadness into the song.

We made the recording of the song while crying. The tears just naturally flowed.

Perhaps it was then that Toshi first began to put his true feelings into songs when singing.

I don't think there will ever be another song like "Voiceless Screaming." It is not an exaggeration to say that with that song, Toshi was singing about his own life.