With two albums on the go simultaneously outside their native Japan – new record Mozaiq and third album Idolator, from 2006, in North America – Blood Stain Child are now officially under the microscope. Their take on the Swedish melodic death metal sound, featuring odd yet somehow workable – and increasingly prominent – electronic trance elements beneath the growls and grind, has earned the band a solid international fanbase as well as its share of detractors, but the general concensus is that this new thunder in the East has something of worth to offer the metal world. Thus, while Idolator secures a foothold in North America, Mozaiq is paving the way towards world domination – or at least a much brighter spotlight – with what Blood Stain Child guitarist Ryu feels is their own unique sound.

“I think that we succeeded in establishing the direction of Blood Stain Child with Idolator,” says Ryu, “but it seemed imperfect somehow. We had to make the new album much better than Idolator. We wanted to make the new cool album with a sound that no one has hit on. We think that the desire can be heard on Mozaiq. Actually, I haven’t been listening to metal recently. I like trance, healing and ambient music, but it’s a fact that metal is my foundation, so the feeling of metal in the music will never go away. Blood Stain Child is very cool music. I think so, anyway.”

Fans shouldn’t be concerned about the increased use of electronics, however. There’s a natural metal purist tendency to balk at such a thing, but in the end they make Mozaiq a much easier album to get into compared to Idolator without sacrificing the expected aggression.

“All the songs were written by me,” Ryu states. “I wrote forty pieces for Mozaiq and the songs were selected carefully for the album, so there is no useless song on it. Aki's (keyboards/samples) arrangements on Mozaiq have a real trance colour, and they match the music. On ‘Metropolice’ for example, he uses a lot of World music elements. It’s cool.”

Mozaiq also features Blood Stain Child venturing even further into the realms of vocal nuance, something that began with Idolator. Comparisons to Soilwork and In Flames have gotten even louder, but Ryu brushes them off.

“I don't need to make a model of other bands. Of course I know Soilwork and In Flames and they’re cool, but being able to get into our music easily is the point of the BSC sound. I think the clean vocals contribute to that point greatly. I keep that in mind so that the bargaining of clean vocal versus scream vocal is something thrilling intead of predictable.”
“Thrilling” indeed. The vocal arrangements on Mozaiq are remarkably complex, featuring Ryu, new frontman Sadew, and former frontman/bassist Ryo on second string, putting in what may best be described as a Queen In Hell performance.

“The main reason for bringing Sadew into the band was that Ryo had been hoping to concentrate on his playing more,” Ryu explains. “He had been worried it for a long time because it’s hard to sing the difficult vocal lines with playing the bass live. The vocal lines are more complex this time and it’s is impossible to pull them off alone. So, we called Sadew.We played live with his own band many times and knew that his voice was cool and exciting. I invited him to join Blood Stain Child and he accepted immediately.”
“There are five singers on Mozaiq,” he adds. “Sadew sings the main scream vocals and some clean voice, Ryo does some screams and clean voice, and I sing the main clean vocal parts. Aki sings on the bridge of ‘Pitch Black Room’ and the female voices on the album are Maripu, a jazz / pop singer. I think her voice matches our music, but she isn't in Blood Stain Child. We have a new guitarist too, G.S.R., who helped us out all the time in the past. So, it felt like he was a member of the band even before he joined.”

And how is Sadew working out in the long term, and at such an important point in the band’s career?

“Our live performance has improved for sure,” Ryu confirms, “but his joining makes the band better not only in the sound itself but with kind of mental condition. Sadew’s participation is very good for BSC. He is a pacifist and has the temperament of the leader. Even though I’m the main songwriter, I’m not suitable as a leader at all because I have a quiet character (laughs).”