There’s something about the two Ks that’s kind of mysterious,” says Allen. Because Mazlum doesn’t speak Japanese, “to him it didn’t have a meaning, but he liked the sound of it and so did I. They formed a band and chose the name Kurokuma mainly because of the word’s rhythm. Upon Allen’s return from Los Angeles, he acted on that deep-seated desire to form a band that he’d been feeling back in Japan, and they started hanging out together again in person. They got speaking after the show Allen in fact declined the opportunity to play in a new project Mazlum was plotting then because he was leaving for Japan that summer, but they stayed in touch over Myspace. When Allen was in sixth form, his teenage metal band were playing at central venue Corporation and Mazlum was in the crowd wearing a Dillinger Escape Plan t-shirt. Instead, he returned to Sheffield where he linked up with an old friend called Jake Mazlum. I’m going home,’” he recalls.Īllen never left for Chile. Informed there was no chance that Chilean border officials would accept soggy paper and a blurred picture, he was forced to spend all the money he had saved to get settled in South America on an emergency replacement and a motel. He stayed in Hollywood and saw the sights, and then, three days before he was due to move on to Chile, he accidentally ran his passport through a washing machine. Looking for an out, he managed to find a job in Santiago, Chile teaching English at a university, and booked a short holiday in California enroute. “It was great, but it became this blur, and towards the end I felt like my life was not progressing in any way. “Life was great, it was the most fun I’ve ever had as a human being,” he tells tQ over Zoom, now back in his native Sheffield, “but there was always this thing in the back of my mind: ‘I wanna be in a band, I wanna make some heavy music that makes a difference.’” During a subsequent spell in Japan, when he was working as an English teacher, a culture of heavy after-work drinking among ex-pats began to take its toll. Musician Joe Allen first visited when he was living nearby, working in Japan as a translator. Kurokuma is named for a waterfall, located near the town of Ajigasawa in northern Japan and translates as ‘Black Bear’ – the waterfall resembles the animal if it were standing on its hind legs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |