Keizo Miyanishi & The Heavy Friends – Itan Kyōso CD

Keizo Miyanishi & The Heavy Friends – Itan Kyōso

Saramandra Saramandare (Japan), 2025

Keizo Miyanish / Mondo Bohachi / Teruhisa Nanbu / George Murakami / Koutei Penguin Paradise / Louis Inage

Utech Records is honored to offer the new CD from Keizo Miyanishi, legendary mangaka and leader of Onna band since the 1980s. The album's unique voice, slow riffs and dark folk make for a heavy listening experience as Miyanishi confronts death and celebrates life.

The second track on the album, "The Song of the Gun Worshippers – To Hell at Sixteen" is a rerecording of "Security Camera" by Koutei Penguin Paradise from Subliminal Skull Palace, Vol.3. Keizo Miyanishi heard the CD and wanted to add vocals to the song.

Words from Mondo Bohachi:

In October 2023, Keizo Miyanishi was given a prognosis of just nine months to live. Upon hearing this news, all of us musicians who have walked alongside him felt a strong, undeniable urge: “We must find a way to preserve his music as a record of his life.”

At first, we braced ourselves for a fragile and tenuous work, imagining that we might only be able to capture faint groans from his hospital bed. The photo used on the sleeve was taken during that very period, just after he was discharged following major surgery.

He himself liked the photo and jokingly said it could serve as his “memorial portrait,” yet in reality, he still appeared so frail, almost as if he might vanish at any moment—capturing the very real possibility of the delicate work I had feared.

However, as production progressed, Keizo unexpectedly regained his strength, and the period of his terminal prognosis had long passed. The result is not a work of weakness, but a densely layered sound world of humor, madness, prayer, and despair—entirely unique to him.

Even while facing death, his voice and music continue to resonate, supported by the performances of his fellow musicians—this is not a “final work,” but rather a testament to the vitality and life force he sustained until the end.

We sincerely hope that many people will take the time to listen.