愛と情熱のマタドール

愛と情熱のマタドール is a three-song single issued by Gump Records on 13 August 2014. Credited to BAND-MAID®, it predates the November 2015 major-label debut New Beginning by more than a year and belongs to the band's independent period. The title song takes a bullfighter for its subject and carries a trace of Spanish melody, while the playing underneath stands squarely on the hard rock side. Even at this point the governing idea — the maid conceit and ferocious playing occupying the same song — is already audible as music rather than as a plan. The second song, 'スリル', was re-recorded the following year as 'Thrill' and placed first on New Beginning. That the song which first carried the band to a wide audience makes its debut here gives this single real documentary weight. The third, 'Summer Drive', was likewise collected onto MAID IN JAPAN in 2018. Two of its three songs, in other words, pass directly into the later catalogue. Because the official discography begins with the major-label years, this release tends to sit outside the band's authorised history — but the starting point of several later signature songs is here. Heard alongside them, it makes plain how much of the skeleton was already finished in 2014.