bed are here to break the system

With their combative live performances, doom-laden rave rock and manifesto ripped from a cyberpunk novel, bed started out with one aim: to upend the music scene in their native Tokyo. Now, they are moving into phase two – taking their mission worldwide.

“We are here from the future,” cackles Sinji of Japanese industrial rave-rock band bed, flashing a gap-toothed grin from behind thick shades and a heavy, push-broom moustache. I’m trapped in a virtual video room with the talismanic bassist, along with his stoic vocalist, Une, who murmurs in agreement from a shadow-drenched bedroom in Japan.

As purveyors of metal machine basslines, big riffs and the kind of head-splitting techno kicks that recall the narco-fuelled dancefloors of fabled warehouse parties, the band have become a genuine phenomenon in Tokyo, transforming the city’s live scene with their anarchic performances. Now, amid an ongoing invasion of the UK that began with an incendiary introduction in 2025 – one earth-scorching show in London last year landed them a contract with maverick indie label Forty Miles, who were only there to scout the headliner – it’s clear they’re taking no prisoners.

Sandwiching a third set at The Windmill, Brixton, between surprise appearances at The George Tavern and LOST in the same week in March, the band pummelled through a set that reduced the crowd to a throbbing mess in seconds. With more UK and European dates coming up in May, they’re now positively manic. “We crash-landed in 2022, and according to calculations, we’ll become massively successful and somehow save the world,” Sinji sniggers. “I don’t understand the logic behind it, either. But we have to do it.”

Formed in 2022 from the dregs of several lesser projects, bed – completed by death-staring guitarist Joneu and musclebound drummer Shun-1 – made it their immediate mission to disrupt and upend the entire music scene in their native Tokyo. “I’d given up on living in the Japanese music industry,” Sinji says. “Everything is fake, like idol culture and J-Pop, and we don’t like it.” He mimics the apparent tendency of gig-goers in Japan to move “politely” and in unison, pointing delicate fingers at the sky with Une. “We’d arrive at a gig and get goosebumps,” he says. “In a bad way.”

Since the band’s intense, pile-driving sound – imagine Suicide playing Berghain or the Cramps discovering gabber, and you’re getting warmer – “is never accepted” in Japan’s mainstream industry, the band decided to reject the status quo from the outset. They initially operated with no social media, and still barely publicise their shows until the last minute, regardless of what continent they’re on. “In Japan, you have to be really nice to the fans and be quite close to them,” Une says. “We didn’t really want to do that.”

“We’d get invited to play shows with other bands who we didn’t think were cool, and we wouldn’t do them,” Sinji concurs. “We were seen as weird and lazy. We were also quite rude.”

In reality, bed were just stirring. News of their combative live performances spread rapidly by word of mouth, with a tight-knit crew of supporters amping up the buzz for any rumoured shows on the horizon. In November 2023, they put on a 600-person rave at a warehouse in the former lumber industry district of Shin-Kiba – a port-side area known otherwise for its wrestling arena, nightclubs and, er, Wood and Plywood Museum. “We wanted the sounds to be really loud so you could just pump it,” Sinji says. The downside? “Only one toilet for 600 people. We actually had to clean up shit after the show.”

On stage, bed’s reputation was solidifying. The band refuse to interact with the crowd. They often only play after midnight. And their set is usually masked with smokescreens and an unrelenting strobe. Their dirging, doom-laden songs – seek them out on YouTube performing 餑儺 (Kubozuka) to see the band at their most punishing – flow into one another in a manner influenced by techno mixes. Other cuts race through fast-accelerating BPMs. Put together, it’s a recipe for mass disorientation and hedonism that’s impossible to ignore.

At the band’s annual ‘bedroom’ parties at the three-storey Club Asia in Shibuya, the stereotype of orderly gig etiquette in Japan is smashed, as crowds whip themselves into a frenzy of mosh pits and stage-diving. At these shows, bed curate wildly eclectic line-ups of house and techno DJs to flank their “band music”, which is often augmented with thunderous covers of global pop stars like Billie Eilish or Harry Styles, “because it’s funny”. “It’s an entire new subculture,” said a YouTube video on the Angura: Japanese Underground Music channel back in 2024. “[It’s] propelled the band to stardom status in Japan’s musical underground.”

In 2026, bed are starting to strike just as hard on record. Building on the pulse-quickening beats and body-shuffling hi-hats of the previously released Kare Wa – a track driven by borderline psychobilly guitar riffs – they’re now rolling out works of even greater destructive power. With thudding rhythms, pump-action reloads and the kind of industrial feedback that would make Nine Inch Nails take stock, 蠾 (Kaze) is no joke. In 105 seconds, controlled tension escalates into pure cacophony. “When we started the band, we’d watch [Berlin-based techno DJ] D Dan’s Boiler Room performances,” Sinji explains. “But we also love Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine and Electric Wizard.”

The track was recorded in the middle of a ten-day recording session with Olivia Dean producer Zach Nahome in Japan, during which the band would take dark, rainy walks through a forested park between apartment blocks housing the local Korean community. Contrary to Nahome’s CV, they weren’t exactly cooking up the next Man I Need: “I heard the sound of a washing machine making a [chugging] kick sound,” Sinji says. “And I thought, let’s make a song like that… We were trying to make it like a soundtrack for a horror movie.”

The sentiment certainly carries over into the accompanying visualiser for 蠾 (Kaze) – a strobe-y, monochrome sensory schism that feels like the slimy midpoint between an Aphex Twin video and the cult Japanese cyberpunk film Tetsuo: Iron Man. For Sinji, the clip, directed by Domu, is the ideal introduction to the world of bed and their mythos, which “runs beneath everything from the music, visuals and artwork, to the way we exist on stage”. I receive a written copy of the band’s Unified Vision in my inbox, as if it were a manifesto.

“bed is an ongoing world-building project,” it decrees, while warning of an impending future dominated by large corruptions, where currency has been abolished and civilisations repeatedly collapse and rebuild. “A higher future humanity called ONI manipulates history with futuristic technologies,” the document continues. It repeatedly points to the year 2052 as a kind of judgement day for the band’s broader purpose. So far, so Terminator 2.

But reading it, the band’s uniform of black-out shades, chokers and cagoules, their bizarre proclamations, and a litany of event flyers drenched in the same The Matrix green as their stage performances start to make a lot more sense. “This isn’t fiction,” Sinji says. “This is how the world is at the moment. Watching the world through films and television, there are so many things [that confirm this].”

He remains cryptic on the specifics of the band’s mission. And the band’s lyrics don’t make things much clearer. “There’s no real meaning behind them,” Une says. “We want people to have their own perspective on these words.”

But 蠾 (Kaze), at least, points to continued destruction on the horizon – opening with words like chigirete (“to pull and break”, Sinji says), nagarete (“to glide”) and kaze itself, meaning “wind” or “breeze”. Are they suggesting a violent air is approaching?

Not necessarily. “Just enjoy it as you like,” Sinji shrugs, refocusing his attention on the band’s next run of shows. “We’re just playing. And trying to wake up.”