DEVIL KITTY will resume activity!

If you recall, the band paused activity on 2017-08-13 due to guitarist Akina being on doctor-ordered bed rest following a stroke. The band cancelled most (but not all) of their lives through December, and postponed their new single (and the plans for PV shooting live for that single).

Today, the band announced that they will resume activity with a oneman on December 20th―although they're still not sure if Akina will be able to return by that time. Their restart oneman, 「-Fushichou-」~Tate, Tatsunda Akina!!~ (「-不死鳥-」~立て、立つんだAkina!!~), will be held at HOLIDAY SHINJUKU.

OK. Now bear with me:

When DEVIL KITTY announced their activity pause, I wondered if there might be some record label fuckery going on behind the scenes. Now that they've announced their revival, I'm pretty sure I was [partially] right.

Just as a refresher, back in June the band “rebirthed” and seemingly joined record label FORUM (aka 株式会社フォーラム). This was significant because FORUM (and its sublabel WHITE SIDE GROUP) is home to popular act MEJIBRAY.

Then in August, the band announced their pause due to Akina's health issues. As expected, they cancelled several lives through December and postponed their upcoming single (all off which were sponsored by FORUM). However! Lives that weren't sponsored by FORUM were conspicuously not cancelled―as in, even though they were “pausing activities,” they were only pausing FORUM-related activities and continuing everything else.

So my thinking at the time was this: I'm sure they're not lying or exaggerating about Akina's health issues, but they would provide the perfect cover for leaving FORUM.

Cut to today, when they announced their revival: their revival live is sponsored by a company I'd never heard of: PUNCH RECORDS. When searching for information about the company, the only other thing I found was that they're sponsoring a live on October 4th―Otokochishin (音故知新) at Ikebukuro (池袋) BlackHole―which DEVIL KITTY will participate in!

So it seemed cut and dry: DEVIL KITTY used Akina's health issues as an excuse to leave FORUM and join PUNCH RECORDS. Buuuuut here's where it gets weirder:

PUNCH RECORDS is sponsoring a live on December 3rd―Yukiame Amai~snow drop~ (雪雨甘飴~snow drop~) at Takadanobaba (高田馬場) AREA―which will celebrate the birthdays of two members of the band KRAD. Interestingly, KRAD will also perform at the October 4th PUNCH RECORDS event. So, just conjecture, but it seems that both KRAD and DEVIL KITTY are signed to PUNCH RECORDS.

But what's even more interesting is that KRAD just announced a best album, which will be published by... FORUM!

So at this moment in time―and again, this is just conjecture on my part―it seems that PUNCH RECORDS is a newly-formed sublabel of FORUM, probably made for “smaller” acts, and that DEVIL KITTY's lives/releases with FORUM were cancelled so that they could officially be shuffled to the new sublabel. I'm not sure why they would do that, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

Note that Gyakushuu no Jisakujienya。 (逆襲の自作自演屋。) released a CD through FORUM in July, so I wonder if they'll be associated with PUNCH RECORDS soon.

Feel free to comment if you have any corrections or further insight!