PaleNeØ Trivia — 146 Entries
146 sourced facts about PaleNeØ.
Trivia
The slashed O in the band's name is not a character every Japanese system can render, and the band's own site says so out loud: when the lyrics to the first album SCØRE went up on the lyric-search sites Uta-Net, UtaTen and J-Lyric.net, the announcement carried a note explaining that sites which cannot display the character substitute a plain O.
The first mini album, ØCTAVE, came out on June 16, 2024, self-produced and sold only at shows and by mail order. Catalogue number PNO-001, seven tracks, 2,000 yen. The band's discography page still carries the line saying it sold out.
ØCTAVE was a pressing of 500, sold at the band's first-anniversary show, and it went immediately. A year later all seven songs came back as a fresh remaster on the second disc of the limited edition of the second album, FORTISSIMØ. The band's own release announcement calls the mini album a phantom record and says the requests for a reissue had been numerous.
REOTO's birthday event on November 4, 2024, at Kichijoji Mandala in Tokyo was not a gig but a piano recital, billed as UNLOCK. Everyone admitted received a self-produced CD called Reoto no Oto carrying two of REOTO's own pieces: "Sea of Glass" and 「小さな詩書きへ」.
"Rain Bright," one of the two ballads on FORTISSIMØ, started life as the music played over the PA at the end of the Allegro Agitato tour shows. Words were added to it and it became an album track, as YONA explains in the band's own notes. Instruments and effects chosen to suggest rain run through it.
The standard edition of UNISØN comes with interchangeable sleeves: five cards in the case — the main cover plus one for each member — so the buyer can decide which one faces out. The limited edition instead adds a DVD holding two live performances, two music videos and behind-the-scenes footage.
PaleNeØ's official fan club, COSMØz, opened on July 7, 2025, and the band explains where the name came from. One half is cosmos, from the ancient Greek for the universe and for a thing that is one; the other is Øz, which fans had already adopted for themselves as a way of saying they were PaleNeØ fans. Half the name, in other words, was not the band's invention.
The first members-only event took place on August 16, 2026, at Music Lab. Hamashobo in Kanagawa, in two parts. The first was billed as Day of the PaleØ and the second as Night of the NeØ — the band's name cut in half and handed to the afternoon and the evening respectively. The two shows were essentially the same, tickets were 3,000 yen in advance for each, and the picture-ticket bonus carried a different design per part.
PaleNeØ's official website went live on February 12, 2025 — more than two months after the debut album SCØRE had already been released. The announcement carried a comment from each of the four members; AYARI's was that the band's tracks would be recorded here from now on.
PaleNeØ's first radio appearance came on April 21, 2025, on FM-FUJI's live programme Minna no Radio. Three of the four — Hohomi, AYARI and YONA — appeared live within one of the show's segments. The band's own announcement states plainly that this was the first radio booking.
In April 2026 Hohomi modelled a collaboration between the apparel label AMERICAN SOCKS and Ozzy Osbourne. AMERICAN SOCKS is based in Barcelona and stocked by skate and streetwear shops in more than twenty-five countries; the model Hohomi wore is called Dreamer.
PaleNeØ songs reached karaoke almost immediately after the debut album. "Allegro" and "CRAZY & NOiSY & CUTiE MAGiC!" went up on JOYSOUND on December 27, 2024, complete with the band's own footage on screen — and the announcement carried the familiar caveat: the slashed O cannot be displayed on karaoke machines, so it appears as a plain O.
On December 29, 2025, AYARI played at the guitarist ISAO's twenty-fifth anniversary birthday show at The DOORS in Hatsudai, Tokyo. The bill listed ISAO, SUNAO, SAKI, Isamu Takita, IKUO, BOH, Saori Hoshino, Mao, Koji Hasegawa and Hideki Harasawa alongside AYARI.
All three of PaleNeØ's label releases have charted. SCØRE reached number 9 on Oricon's weekly rock album chart; FORTISSIMØ went to number 3 there and number 5 on the weekly independent album chart; UNISØN took number 2 on both the weekly rock singles and weekly independent singles charts. On Tower Records' all-store weekly J-INDIES chart, counting all formats, each of the three reached number 3.
PaleNeØ's debut for VAA was announced on October 11, 2024, and the video for the album track "Allegro" was put out the same day. Announcement and lead track arrived together rather than in sequence.
Asked in their Gekirock column how a band should pick a name, Hohomi and AYARI ended up with four criteria: it has to be easy to remember, it has to match what the band is about, it has to be findable in a search, and above all the members themselves have to like it. AYARI made the search point concrete — call yourselves the Japanese for curry and rice and every result will be the food. The conclusion the two reached was that an invented word wins, because nothing else is using it.
Inside the band, songs are filed under one of two headings: Paleo songs and Neo songs. Hohomi is not sure the distinction has reached the audience, but says it certainly exists among the members and the writers, and that the Paleo side is mostly REOTO's work. AYARI adds that the split is a practical tool as well — when a set list is being built, they check that it has not tipped entirely towards the Paleo end.
Asked how much writing gets done, REOTO produced a number: 43 songs so far that year, the interview having been conducted in late October 2024. The target is 50 a year. Hohomi says the stockpile of unreleased material is large, and REOTO confirmed that the running count is posted on an X profile — kept there, the explanation goes, purely as a note to self.
Hohomi took up death growls because a teacher suggested it. The staff adviser to the high school light-music club was a devoted SiM fan, proposed trying a growl, and taught "KiLLiNG ME." Years later Hohomi says that, traced all the way back, that song is where the whole thing started.
The idea behind the first full-length, SCØRE, was to treat the album as a single sheet of music on which the band's genre-less writing could be set down. Hohomi explains it that way and then points at the artwork: that is why there are five ruled lines across the artist photographs.
"in Gloria Dei," on SCØRE, began from REOTO wanting to turn PaleNeØ into a religion. The phrasing is offered with a caveat that it sounds grandiose, and the intent explained: to get past the ordinary relationship between a band and its fans. The song was written around January or February 2024, though the idea of making the band religious had been sitting there far longer.
"Allegro," the advance track from SCØRE, is described by Hohomi as a sequel to the band's first digital single, "PANORAMA" — REOTO calls it a second debut. Because a video was already planned, the decision was to keep it immediate rather than heavy, and this is the one song on which Hohomi does not growl at all.
"Fuminhikou," the CD-only bonus track on SCØRE, had been in the live set since the band's earliest months. Hohomi says recording a song the stage had already settled was a first, and not entirely easy — but that picturing the room while singing it turned out to be a pleasure.
On the first maxi single, Raison d'etre, the sleeve came before the song. An artist photograph was shot with flowers strewn through it, and only once that image had been settled on as the cover did asanuko, the vocaloid producer credited with the music, write the title track at speed. REOTO was handed the file and asked whether a lyric could be ready by the following morning.
The slap on "Raison d'etre" is not all coming from the bass. YONA explains that a single listen suggests bass, but AYARI is slapping too — on guitar. The two play it in unison through the first pre-chorus, after which AYARI carries it alone. Telling them apart by ear is hard, YONA says, which is why the video is worth watching.
"Yomei Ichinichi" puts Hohomi on screams and REOTO on the clean lead — the first time the band had arranged a song that way round. There is also a short shout of the kind visual kei bands favour after the first verse: REOTO asked for it, and Hohomi spent something like half an hour in the booth wrestling it into shape.
Raison d'etre was announced as a surprise, and for a while it could be bought only at the venue, which meant that for a time the only people who had heard it were those who had been at the tour's opening night in Mishima. Hohomi's account of what happened next: the audience looked after each other and kept the record's contents off social media for the sake of everyone who had not yet heard it.
"Raison d'etre" was not played live until May 11, 2025 — roughly two months after the CD went on sale at shows — at the tour finale at Daikanyama SPACE ODD in Tokyo, and then only in a second encore. AYARI and YONA played their twin slap section that night as well; Gekirock's report liked that it was dropped in without any show of triumph.
The second album was going to be called Forte. REOTO reasoned that the word would be legible even to people with little musical background, but the feeling grew that it was not quite enough — was stopping at forte really the idea? — and the title was moved up one mark to FORTISSIMØ. The order matters: the title was settled before it was decided that "f -Forte-" would get the video.
"f -Forte-" was worked on under the provisional title "Prize and Prison Term." The line that arrives before the last chorus turns that same phrase into a pun on the Japanese for shortcake. Hohomi discovered it mid-recording and was audibly startled; REOTO concedes that anyone listening without the lyric sheet may simply wonder why a cake has appeared.
The costumes for FORTISSIMØ are Hohomi's design. Once the plan was for the video to carry a hard, aggressive song, the clothes were to match — but a strong woman, the discussion went, does not have to mean a swordswoman. Someone suggested going in the direction of "in Gloria Dei" from the previous album instead, and the idea that stuck was a red stole of the kind a bishop wears around the neck.
The four-part suite that closes the album, "Shisha no Sho," is a form REOTO had wanted to attempt for some time. It began from the requirement that the record carry several strongly Paleo songs; talking it over with the staff, the observation surfaced that hardly any bands put out suites at all. The work was done in the middle of the Allegro Agitato tour, alongside shows and rehearsals, on a schedule REOTO calls very tight.
The Book of the Dead that gives the suite its name is the Egyptian text buried with the dead, written on papyrus and carried like a charm: an account of the world beyond, and of what to say at the trial in order to be reborn. REOTO first met it in a junior-high social studies class, liked it ever since, and had wanted to turn it into a song for years.
"II. Judgment" was written under a rule: only notes from the oriental, or Arabic, scale. Singing it turned out to be extremely awkward for anyone not used to that vocabulary. Hohomi checked the intervals with REOTO repeatedly, and in the end recorded the vocal with everything else muted, following nothing but a metronome.
The last part of the suite, "IV. Reincarnation," brings back the Latin from the opening of "in Gloria Dei" on the previous album, this time as a chorus in a major key. REOTO calls it a payoff planted earlier, put there to say that the band's journey is still going, and hopes anyone who knows SCØRE is stopped in their tracks by it.
The one line in "Crowd Surf Rider" that REOTO is prepared to call a message is the phrase that gives the song its title: life is a crowd surf. Life is not easy and you get knocked about, the reading goes, but a show is something everyone gets through together — and it would be good if life could be got through the same way.
The title of the second maxi single, UNISØN, was REOTO's proposal. The conversation about what to do next happened during the previous tour, against a view that a band is a group of people and that shifts in commitment, or in direction, are simply what happens over time. With the third anniversary approaching there was a worry about whether everyone still felt what they had felt at the start — hence a record built around stopping and facing the same way again.
UNISØN carries three songs, but around seven demos were prepared for it. Hohomi says the three were chosen from material that had already been recorded, and that a fair amount remains unreleased. The pace was quick: some seven songs arrived in a short space of time.
The lyric to "Chocolat Maudit" was written overnight on a coach. REOTO recalls writing it on the night bus to Kyoto on a private trip, around November 19, 2025, finishing it as the bus was pulling out and sending it to Hohomi there and then. Hohomi's long message setting out the request had gone in shortly before.
"Chocolat Maudit" is the first PaleNeØ song to carry French in any quantity. The language had appeared in a title before, on Raison d'etre, but never through a lyric. REOTO explains the choice as deliberate: where the previous album, FORTISSIMØ, was full of Latin, this record is about travelling, so having several languages turn up seemed appropriate.
Hohomi's first thought on hearing the demo of "Chocolat Maudit," before there were any words, was that the key was too high. Singing it once the lyric arrived confirmed it, and a request went in to drop it five or six semitones — refused, on the grounds that the instruments were already tuned down. The solution was a vocal built on falsetto, which the band had never used as a main approach before.
"Prologue" and "Chocolat Maudit" are both tuned to drop A — the lowest the band had ever gone. AYARI describes the sensation of playing them as considerably heavier than usual and the sessions as enjoyable, and YONA notes in the band's own track notes that the record reaches below anything they had put out before.
The phrase in "Starlight Voyage" that translates roughly as a strait of fabrication is an invention. REOTO says the line had originally been something else and had even been recorded as a guide vocal, but discussion produced the view that it was not quite right; three or four days went into finding different words for the same idea. The image is of a world so full of AI-generated falsehood that nobody can tell what is true — an ocean polluted with fabrication.
"Prologue" and "Starlight Voyage" are one story. REOTO explains that the small harbour in a nameless town mentioned partway through the first song is where the ship in the second sets out from — a detail Hohomi said was news to her at the time of the interview. The plan, according to REOTO, is for the unreleased songs still to come to connect in the same way.
Nothing at a PaleNeØ show is off limits — lifts, moshing, crowd-surfing. Hohomi said so from the stage at Daikanyama SPACE ODD on May 11, 2025, adding that because those things carry risk the show only works if the audience looks after each other, and asking those who go wild and those who do not to enjoy the room together. Gekirock's report notes that no surfer ended up dropped in front of the stage.
The 2025 tour title FORTISSIMØ is written in musical notation as ff, and each of those two letters was given a meaning from the stage. One stands for the bond within team PaleNeØ; the other for the bond with the Øz, as the band's audience is known. Put together they make ff — a point made during the tour finale and reported by Gekirock.
The obi strip on the self-released ØCTAVE asked whether the band was merely cute or the real thing. Asked in a 2024 interview what PaleNeØ's strength is, Hohomi first answered, quietly, that they are all cute — then reached for that line, noting that it was somebody else's wording but seemed rather apt. The argument that followed: a girl band does trade on how it looks, and on top of that the guitar and bass parts are genuinely difficult.
The same problem reaches the record shop. When the band announced the pre-order bonuses for the second maxi single UNISØN, the notice asked anyone searching Tower Records Online to type either PaleNeO or PaleNeΦ — that is, with the Greek letter phi standing in for the slashed O.
The English half of the band's official profile is more specific than the Japanese half about where the name comes from: it describes PaleNeØ as a combination of Paleo and Neo, which it glosses as meaning ancient and brand-new in Greek. The Japanese text simply renders the two halves as ancient and new without naming a language.
An acoustic version of "In the Aquarium" exists on exactly one release: a self-produced single-track CD handed out to everyone who came through the door at Hohomi's birthday acoustic headline show, titled "Ho," at BABEL in Tachikawa, Tokyo on March 18, 2024. It was never sold — you had to be there.
YONA's birthday event, held at Kichijoji Mandala in Tokyo on June 2, 2024, was billed as 『全力休暇』. The single-track CD given to everyone who came in is called #5C1767, and so is the song: six hexadecimal digits in the form a web page uses to specify a colour. YONA sings it.
The demo of "Two Step Screaming" was packed into one thing only: the PaleNeØ lucky bag for 2024, taken on order through the band's online shop between December 2023 and January 2024. The disc holds four tracks — the same song sung four times over, once by each member.
Raison d'etre came in two forms, standard and a paid-bonus limited edition, but the CD inside is identical. The only difference is a 240-millimetre-square sleeve card, and the price gap is 200 yen. Both were sold at shows only and never stocked by shops.
The chain of musical terms is spelled out in the band's own release announcement: from "Allegro" on the previous album SCØRE, meaning fast, through the headline tour Allegro Agitato, meaning fast and agitated, to FORTISSIMØ, meaning very loud indeed. The announcement presents that sequence as the band's own growth written into its titles.
In the track-by-track notes the band wrote themselves, Hohomi describes "f -Forte-" as being about the organisations a person has to belong to, which are a kind of prison. Release comes in time, but once outside there is a pang of longing, and some unease. The song, as Hohomi frames it, hands a prize to every life that has come through those days.
Of "Gilgamesh Tousouki," AYARI writes that a PaleNeØ show cannot end without it. The tell is a low B from the instruments as the band starts working the room; when the middle of the floor begins to open up, something is about to happen. The lyric draws on the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Pathétique is not the only Beethoven in "IV. Reincarnation." In the band's own notes, AYARI describes the track as a grand, mass-like ballad built by mixing the Latin phrases from "Judgment" and "in Gloria Dei" with both the Pathétique and the Ode to Joy.
In the band's own track-by-track notes, REOTO writes that the world of "Prologue" is modelled on the weapon shop in the opening town of a role-playing game — and then turns it on the reader: PaleNeØ are warriors who fight with songs, so what is your weapon?
"Prologue" contains a call-and-response section built on a shouted chant. Hohomi picks it out in the band's own notes and asks the room to shout with them and to headbang through the breakdown. There have not been many PaleNeØ songs that get the audience making noise, which is why this one was welcome.
The DVD in the limited edition of UNISØN holds the "Starlight Voyage" video and its behind-the-scenes footage, "Moudouka" and "in Gloria Dei" filmed at Tokyo SpaceOdd on May 11, 2025, and the video for "Raison d'etre" — in a version with a different ending, which is to say an already-released clip reissued with its conclusion changed.
Membership numbers in COSMØz are assigned not by the order in which people apply but by the order in which payment completes — the band said so explicitly, and advised getting a Bitfan ID and following the site in advance. The subscription is 720 yen a month, and the listed benefits include members-only video, a blog, live streams, a birthday message and the earliest presale window for shows promoted by the band's label, VAA.
PaleNeØ hold a monthly YouTube live stream they call the teireikai — the regular meeting. The fan club announcement says archives of these streams are made available to members, covering everything from June 2025 onwards. In a member's birthday month the stream is sometimes billed as a special edition in that member's name.
The regular stream of December 18, 2025 was picked up by X, formerly Twitter, whose news section ran an item on PaleNeØ looking back warmly over the year. The band posted the pickup as news on its own site the following day.
In the small hours of August 9, 2025, FM AICHI's heavy metal programme HEADBANGERS CLUB played a track from FORTISSIMØ together with comments from all four members. The show is presented by Shinya Tange of OUTRAGE.
To mark the release of the second maxi single UNISØN, PaleNeØ produced a collaboration with GEKIROCK CLOTHING, the rock-fashion shop run by Gekirock. The band's announcement notes that the designs were supervised by the members themselves.
The UNISØN release also came with a hashtag campaign run with the hard rock and metal section on the seventh floor of Tower Records Shibuya. Photograph the display, post it to X or Instagram with the shop's hashtag and the band's, show the post to the staff on that floor, and the first arrivals received a collaboration sticker.
The karaoke releases kept coming: "Starlight Voyage" arrived on JOYSOUND on August 5, 2026, again with the band's own footage. The song had been released on May 13, so it reached the machines in under three months.
AYARI appears in the December 2025 issue of Young Guitar, published on November 10, 2025. The cover feature was on guitars and YouTube, and AYARI took part in its round-table on the state of guitar video in 2025 alongside Hazuki of NEMOPHILA, Yuto Imanishi and Tomoya Nishio.
Around the same time AYARI turned up on the YouTube channel of the guitarist Tomoya Nishio. The first video went out on November 16, 2025, billed on the band's site as the debut appearance of a guitarist worth watching, and a second instalment followed on November 20.
On September 13, 2026, AYARI is billed for the session event Jamming at Ongakushitsu DX in Takadanobaba, Tokyo. The line-up is ISAO, hibiki, Koji Hasegawa and AYARI, and the band's site describes it as a twin extended-range guitar session.
The October 15, 2025 issue of the hard and heavy rock magazine WeROCK, number 109, ran a feature on female vocalists under the heading METAL DIVA, and Hohomi appears on its questionnaire pages.
In October 2025 a video interview conducted by Alan of Dicodec went up on YouTube. Three of the band — Hohomi, YONA and REOTO — took part.
Lining up the opening-day positions on Oricon's daily album chart shows the climb plainly: SCØRE at number 29 for December 3, 2024; FORTISSIMØ at 15 for July 15, 2025; and UNISØN at 14 for May 12, 2026.
According to the release page on the site of the band's label, VAA, FORTISSIMØ came as a standard CD, PNO-004, at 3,300 yen, and a two-disc limited edition, PNO-005, at 4,400. The second disc of the limited edition carries the 24-bit remaster of ØCTAVE, bringing the set to eighteen tracks.
The name was REOTO's idea. AYARI explains it as a coinage from Paleo, meaning ancient, and Neo, meaning new, while Hohomi rates it highly for matching the concept and for being easy to turn into a logo. AYARI also admits that the Japanese pronunciation, Pa-re-ne-o, is a little awkward to say — and reckons that awkwardness is itself part of why people remember it.
While the name was still being chosen, Hohomi says, plenty of gloriously overwrought teenage ideas were on the table — AYARI's verdict is that it was lucky none of them stuck. Hohomi then argued that an extremely short name could work too, offering a single Japanese character, ho, as the example, at which AYARI pointed out that this was simply Hohomi's own name cut down. Ho is in fact real: it was the title of Hohomi's birthday acoustic headline show in March 2024.
REOTO is not the only writer. In a 2024 interview AYARI named two more composers working with the band — asanuko and Cookie — and put the range of the material down to that arrangement: not only are the writers different people, but each of them writes in a markedly different style.
REOTO's Paleo side is not only classical. The stated aim is to mix in Japanese pop of the 1980s and 90s and elements of visual kei, so that older listeners are caught off guard by a jolt of nostalgia. The reason for trying it, REOTO says, is simply that few people seem to be tying that kind of music to the music of the present day.
The line-up listed on the official profile is four people — Hohomi, AYARI, REOTO and YONA — with no drummer among them. Gekirock's report on the December 14, 2025 tour finale names who actually walked out when the lights went down: AYARI, REOTO, YONA and, on drums, the band's support player CHiHO.
Gekirock's May 2025 live report describes REOTO as a natural talent with perfect pitch who composes, arranges and writes lyrics as well as playing guitar. The same piece notes that the band's own profile lists REOTO as an android rather than a human being, and concludes that rather a lot of information has been packed into one member.
The phrase for a sentence served in full turns up in the lyric of "f -Forte-," the song that opens FORTISSIMØ, for a straightforward reason: REOTO studied law and deliberately took the lectures dealing with life inside prison. The other reason given is a wish to use vocabulary that rarely appears in music, as something distinctly PaleNeØ.
The first time Hohomi played with the other members of PaleNeØ, it was an audition. Talking with YONA in their column about how nerve-racking a first run-through with new people is, Hohomi pointed out that in her own case the first run-through was the audition itself, which did not help.
Hohomi did not start out as a singer. The first instrument was piano, in a club at nursery school; from around the third year of primary school came vocal lessons, and from the upper primary years until roughly the final year of junior high, drums. Only on joining the light-music club in high school did singing come back. Basic drumming, Hohomi reckons, is still there.
AYARI first picked up a guitar in the first year of university, having not touched an instrument since the piano lessons of primary school. With entrance exams out of the way there was an appetite for something new, and the video game BanG Dream! prompted an interest in being in a band — but the attempt was abandoned almost immediately. Encountering BABYMETAL during the pandemic brought the guitar back, and it has stayed ever since.
REOTO's first band was in a high school light-music club, and the instrument wanted was bass. Too many people in the club wanted bass, though, and the only slot still open was guitar and vocals — which is where REOTO ended up. That band barely played covers either: even then it was writing its own material.
AYARI's seven-string habit traces back to BABYMETAL. Wanting to play like the Kami Band meant drilling sweep picking and fast runs, and the first year or two of guitar-playing went on almost nothing else. Looking back, AYARI calls the attempt reckless — while maintaining that it made for excellent practice.
The training method matched. The high school club, Hohomi recalls, had a whole building to itself, with a balcony overlooking a sports shop — and the instruction was to sing in that direction. So the practice was done out there, in full view of the street. Without it, Hohomi says, none of this would have followed.
YONA came to music through Aqua Timez — that band was the introduction to what a band is, and to the bass. What actually got listened to through childhood and school, though, was visual kei, and Royz, from the wave known as neo-visual kei, drew repeated trips to the venue. Within the genre it was the bright, glittering end that appealed most.
As a child Hohomi listened to Kana Nishino and Ai Otsuka, following a parent's taste, while also playing BABYMETAL and Unlucky Morpheus — but with no name for that second genre, VOCALOID and anime songs, which could at least be categorised, took over. At university Hohomi and AYARI were in the same light-music circle, where the songs covered included Unlucky Morpheus, coldrain and BABYMETAL.
Hohomi's stated ambition is not to be merely a singer: to handle instruments to some degree, to write lyrics, to command several vocal styles and to scream — and, on top of that, to DJ and to dance. The phrase used is a vocalist who does not get lost in the crowd.
Hohomi describes the lucky-bag CD as the members recording the song the way THE FIRST TAKE does it. With the debut album out and the audience growing, the feeling was that "Two Step Screaming" deserved a proper recording — which is how it came to be on Raison d'etre in 2025.
For the re-recording, Hohomi says the aim was to make it clearly better, so that the lucky-bag version would not feel like the exclusive one. Extra voices were layered underneath — idol-style chants in one place, a Toad-from-Mario squeak in another. Hohomi's own description of the exercise: a chance to show off just how many voices are available.
The operatic passage of "in Gloria Dei" is in Latin because, as Hohomi relates it, REOTO's thought was that no band seems to sing in Latin. The opening is deliberately childlike by contrast: it takes the melody of Burgmüller's piano study "La chevaleresque." For the vocal itself, Hohomi says much of it was sung with Yousei Teikoku and ALI PROJECT in mind.
"Shichigatsu Nanoka" was written for Tanabata, the July 7 star festival — but not on July 7. REOTO says the thought was no more than that a song like this might be fun if the band ever happened to play around that time of year. Another starting point was structural: they had never had a song that opens on Hohomi singing unaccompanied.
The Bach that surfaces at the end of "Shichigatsu Nanoka" — the chorale known in English as "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" — is there because REOTO attended a Christian mission school and grew up around hymns. The other stated attraction was the idea of playing a hymn with a modern band sound.
"Allegro" was worked on under the provisional title "Speed." YONA, who saw the title before hearing the song, says the impression was exactly that, and took it as a sign the track would work. The bass line reflects it: normally YONA stays put under a chorus, and on this one the part moves, more or less at will.
According to AYARI the guitar solo in "Allegro" is built to echo the one in "PANORAMA": sweep picking to open, then a fast run, then a pentatonic passage, in the same order. Parts of the lyric rhyme with the earlier song too. As a sequel, AYARI says, a great deal of thought went into it.
The lyric to "CRAZY & NOiSY & CUTiE MAGiC!," which closes the album, is Hohomi's. The claim was staked as soon as the demo arrived — and REOTO agreed that this one suited Hohomi better. What the demo suggested was a world of magic and video games, so the theme became exactly that: unhinged, loud, cute and magical.
"CRAZY & NOiSY & CUTiE MAGiC!" was built with short-form video in mind. Hohomi explains the reasoning plainly: if the aim is to reach listeners of every age, then TikTok and short clips matter, and getting people to dance to a track and spread it is a legitimate way to be found. The song was written on that basis, with elements of video-game music folded in.
The choreography was worked out by Hohomi and YONA together; YONA says Hohomi's lyrics suggest movement readily, which made it enjoyable to build. There is a structural joke too — where a guitar solo would be expected after the second chorus, a quiet bass solo, written by asanuko, arrives instead.
Hohomi sings "CRAZY & NOiSY & CUTiE MAGiC!" in a deliberately different voice — an idol voice, as the description goes, chosen on purpose. The album shows off several vocal registers, but this is the one where listeners are expected to wonder who exactly is singing.
Asked to pick a Paleo song from SCØRE, REOTO chose "Moudouka" — unusual in that asanuko wrote it in that register. The demo drew an audible reaction. What appeals, REOTO says, is the contrast between a beautiful melody and the heavy, uneasy backing beneath it, and a sound that recalls the 2000s without pointing at anyone in particular.
During the recording of "Moudouka," asanuko is said to have broken in with unreserved praise for the vocal. Hohomi puts it down to the range fitting exactly; REOTO's verdict was that the song could be handed straight to an anime as a tie-up. Hohomi, a devoted Roselia listener, says the high notes are out of reach but this particular register is very much home ground.
Three songs from SCØRE — 「凍蝶の哭」, "Moudouka" and "in Gloria Dei" — were not played live until March 15, 2025, more than three months after the album, on the opening night of the band's first national headline tour at Mishima in Shizuoka. AYARI says the response was hardly that of a first performance.
Having the cover first left traces in the words. REOTO points out that there is water along the bottom of the sleeve photograph, and says the lyric was written to link up with it. Having the image already in view, the account goes, made the writing easier rather than harder.
REOTO says "Raison d'etre" was written with a particular friend in mind. The word that surfaces in the chorus — a boundary line — stands for a birthday that brings the age a person had thought of as a turning point, and the lyric records what goes through the mind on reaching it.
"Yomei Ichinichi," the coupling on Raison d'etre, dates from around autumn 2024. REOTO usually starts from a melody line; this one is a rare case of starting from the intro, which arrived unbidden in the middle of an ordinary day and was carried through on momentum rather than intent.
"Yomei Ichinichi" was chosen as the coupling only shortly before release, and REOTO says the fit with the title track's theme of a reason for existing was accidental. Where the A-side approaches life from the side that gradually finds hope, this one casts the present day as a lover who can never be met again, and asks how much of those twenty-four hours a person can manage to love.
AYARI files "Raison d'etre" as a new genre for the band: not quite a ballad, not metal either, with the guitar left comparatively clean. The playing follows suit — slap, slides and cut chords rather than the usual metal vocabulary. As someone who listens to EDM and programmed music, AYARI found it a pleasure to play.
On the opening night of the first national headline tour, in Mishima, Shizuoka — the show at which Raison d'etre went on sale — a crowd barrier gave way. Hohomi's summary is that the venue broke slightly, and that leaving an impression which sounds alarming to anyone who does not know the band was no bad thing. It was also a home-town show.
The provisional title had been sitting in REOTO's notes for a long time, attached to the idea of a song honouring someone who has served their sentence. The finished lyric applies that frame to ordinary life: belonging to a school or a company is cast as time inside, and everyone is eventually released to move on.
The costumes then shaped the record. REOTO recounts that with Hohomi's designs in hand the intention became to pull the album towards the same concept — and since the already-written "II. Judgment" was heavily religious, that song became the axis the whole suite was built around.
"Dare" and "Gilgamesh Tousouki" appear on FORTISSIMØ in album versions for a simple reason: neither had ever been on a disc. Both were couplings on the band's very first release, the digital single "PANORAMA," and both had stayed in the live set. REOTO's argument was that songs which always go down well, and which newcomers hear often, should not be missing from the catalogue.
One part of the suite had been waiting a long time. "II. Judgment," REOTO says, was demoed not long after PaleNeØ started, with its lyric already finished. The rest was assembled around it, with Latin key phrases scattered through, so that each part stands alone as a song while the four together tell one large story.
The phrase "Joy to the hell" in the suite's third part, "III. Crucifixion," plays on the English title of the Christmas carol "Joy to the World." REOTO's explanation is that a bright, celebratory carol has deliberately been turned into an invitation to hell — because this part of the story belongs to someone who has sinned and gone down.
Of the repeated word that arrives in the first pre-chorus of "III. Crucifixion," REOTO says it did not have to be that word at all: it was chosen for the sound, which has something of an incantation about it, and functions rather like a chanted "come on." Underneath it sits a whisper track, added after the fact in discussion with asanuko — a detail Hohomi learned about for the first time during the interview.
"I. Descent to Abyss," the suite's opening part, is the band's first instrumental, and AYARI says it feels a little like walk-on music. The tape they normally use is synth-heavy and belongs to the Neo side; this, AYARI suggests, could do the job instead. It too is written almost entirely in the Arabic scale, so that it runs straight into "II. Judgment."
The guitar figure that opens "IV. Reincarnation" is Beethoven's Pathétique. REOTO says the piece has never sounded like rock bottom despite its name — there is expectation somewhere in it — which made it the right fit for this part of the suite. The idea, put plainly, was that it would sound tremendous played as a weeping lead line.
The same phrase became the title of the column PaleNeØ began writing for Gekirock in December 2025. In the first instalment Hohomi explains that it was taken from "Crowd Surf Rider": a song about being pushed around and carried along the way you are in a pit, occasionally lifted up, and about wanting to enjoy a life like that the way you enjoy a show.
The lyric to "Crowd Surf Rider" was supposed to be Hohomi's. REOTO heard the demo, filed it as a Hohomi song and set it aside — then circumstances shifted and the job came back. What followed was several days of listening: a scream here, an elegant passage there, and no obvious world for the words to live in.
Hohomi says "Crowd Surf Rider" produced a vocal never expected in this band — the stuttered shouts REOTO wrote, in the manner of PassCode, whom Hohomi once played in a covers band. The parts were chopped and processed in the end, which prompted the observation, with some amusement, that reproducing them on stage is not going to happen.
In the last chorus of the same song there is a passage carrying something like ten layers of Hohomi's voice, including spoken lines urging the listener to run. The lyric there asks for a mosh on the stage-right side of the room — though REOTO says it was not written as an instruction, and people should move however they like.
Put to REOTO that the theme could easily alarm the audience, the answer came with laughter: nothing had happened, everyone got on, things were going well. The concern came from elsewhere — from previous bands, where various things had gone wrong. Keeping everyone in step, REOTO says, is something learned the hard way and worth stating as a goal.
The order of decisions was fixed too. The costumes and the concept of setting out came first, and asanuko wrote the lead track, "Starlight Voyage," from there. Hohomi says that song was settled before the others, and REOTO wrote all three lyrics to the twin themes of unison and departure.
The working titles for UNISØN were unusually on the nose. "Chocolat Maudit" was "Waltz Metal" and "Prologue" was "Jungle." Hohomi's reaction on first hearing the latter was, in effect, that it was indeed a jungle, and REOTO agrees that everyone thought the same thing.
"Chocolat Maudit" is a waltz because Hohomi asked for one. A devoted listener of Ave Mujica, Hohomi had been requesting a song in that vein for some time, and this is what came back.
What Hohomi asked for was a magical battle — the demo suggested magic, and a long message was duly sent. REOTO, listening further, wanted something more languid than a fight: something murky in the dark. The waltz time suggested a tea party or a ball in medieval Europe, and out of that came the idea of a cursed chocolate.
The story that resulted runs like this. Reasoning that a journey could plausibly include a scene of temptation — the serpent in Genesis is cited as the model — REOTO wrote a traveller who is lured by a witch into a suspicious chocolate shop deep in a forest, is cursed there, and by force of will seals the witch away and walks on. At one point the point of view shifts from the traveller to the witch.
One of the French lines is "Meurs où tu dois," which REOTO glosses as something close to "die as you see fit." It is reported to be a familiar idiom in France, more or less universally known, and REOTO describes it as a phrase that has hardened into an aesthetic — one that, tried against the song, simply fitted.
The finished "Chocolat Maudit" is heavily layered, including passages where Hohomi and REOTO sing in octave unison. Ideas for doubling kept arriving during the session — where a line sat too high, a lower take was recorded as well. Hohomi says that on listening back after the record was done, unison turned up in several places nobody had planned.
The dissonant figure in the intro to "Prologue" was, at first, ambiguous even to AYARI, who could not tell whether it was to be played or triggered. Once learned it refused to leave — and REOTO admits to laughing too hard to play it on several takes. AYARI's verdict is that it has character.
Of the seven demos, YONA's favourite was "Prologue." Once "Starlight Voyage" had been fixed as the lead track and the question became what else to include, YONA pushed hard for it. The stated reason is a habit: a song that strikes YONA as odd tends to become a favourite after enough listens.
Of the line in "Prologue" that asks whether the listener really intends to set out with equipment that flimsy, Hohomi reads it as a nod to a well-worn internet meme, and finds it very funny. Given how game-like the song is, the voice-from-above passage in the intro was sung in a different register altogether — as a goddess.
The long note in the last chorus of "Starlight Voyage" happened by accident. Hohomi finds high notes on the vowels i and u difficult, and this one landed on an e, which came out cleanly first time. With the rest of the chorus mostly in falsetto, dropping into chest voice at that point turned out to be a useful contrast.
Recording "Starlight Voyage" involved repeated takes because REOTO, acting as vocal director, kept asking for cleaner English. There is a song not yet released, REOTO adds, whose English is worse. Hohomi also had to fight a habit: the first note of the chorus sits high, and the tendency to slide up into it from below drew corrections from outside the booth again and again.
Hohomi describes "Starlight Voyage" as a song that took time to reveal itself. It is not especially metal, it has few screams, and although the chorus is catchy it is short. The first impression was lukewarm — until REOTO's lyric arrived, at which point it was obviously the lead track.
Of the three songs, AYARI's favourite was "Starlight Voyage." The reason given is that what feels most like PaleNeØ, to AYARI, is the band's very first release, "PANORAMA" — a mix of brightness and weight that this song shares. The guitar part is straightforward because the song is built around the vocal, but there are figures that stand out and give it colour.
AYARI rewrote part of the guitar solo in "Chocolat Maudit." All three solos on the single had come in fairly simple, and this one was uniformly relaxed in the demo; the opening bend was kept, while the second half, which runs with the drums, was replaced with a faster line of AYARI's own.
The look changed for UNISØN as well. YONA switched to a long wolf cut and shot a video with hair down for the first time; REOTO overhauled the whole visual, on the grounds that this is a new journey. Hohomi keeps to the same style for a practical reason: a singer with hair down makes headbanging look better.
Asked where PaleNeØ is heading, Hohomi named the world — then immediately scaled it back to Japan first, with the ideal being that asking whether someone has heard of PaleNeØ gets a yes. AYARI added a qualification: there are already listeners abroad, but in Japan anything with metal in it reaches a narrow audience, and that is the barrier to work on.
In a May 2026 interview REOTO mentioned that audiences at the band's shows now include people who have come from abroad, Brazil and Europe among them. The stated ambition follows from it: not to stop at Japan, but to have people around the world humming PaleNeØ songs.
Writing in the band's column, Hohomi gives the reason for imposing no rules on the floor: the point is for people to enjoy it however they like. The one condition, added in parentheses, is that the audience keep within reason. There is no wrong way to take a show in, the piece continues — start by feeling it with your eyes, your ears, your skin and your whole self.
The first gig Hohomi ever attended was DEAD POP FESTiVAL. The sound, the setting and the size of the crowd added up to an atmosphere unlike anything in ordinary life, and the nerves started before the music did. What is remembered most is the fact of it — favourite artists playing right there, producing what Hohomi describes as the worst case of goosebumps to date.
The 2026 headline tour, Voyage in UNISØN, was named by REOTO. Gekirock reported it alongside the announcement of the title, and the band's own post on X carried a line saying as much, written in the clipped katakana REOTO uses in public. The tour runs from Fuji ANIMAL NEST in Shizuoka on May 16 to Daikanyama UNIT in Tokyo on November 22 — seventeen shows in sixteen cities.
Ahead of the FORTISSIMØ release tour, Hohomi's pitch was that anyone who did not expect another tour so soon after the last one had misjudged the outfit — they are, as the phrasing went, a group that does things. The dates bore it out: the first national tour, Allegro Agitato, ended in May 2025, and two months later, on July 20, a twelve-show run through ten cities began.
One of the goals Hohomi states for the band is to establish PaleNeØ itself as a genre. In a 2024 interview the plan was to use "CRAZY & NOiSY & CUTiE MAGiC!" — described as the record's second lead track — to pull people in, and from there to spread the PaleNeØ world. AYARI picked it up from there: with audiences drifting away from band music, the idea is to draw them back by absorbing other genres, and eventually to make bands popular again.