Japanese hardcore punk rockers with English lyrics and metal influences, Bomb Factory gained wide exposure after they toured with Bad Religion in 2000, and have since become one of Japan's premier punk acts, recognized overseas as well. The band was formed in 1991 in Tokyo by brothers Jun-ya (vocals) and Kazuya (guitar), together with Joe (bass) and Shira (drums). After three years of performing live, they debuted with the indie EP Explode a Bombshell (1994), out on the indie label MINdo; after that, however, Bomb Factory founded their own label, Monstar Records, which handled their subsequent Japanese releases, starting with the album Blade of a Knife in 1996, their first record to be sung primarily in English. The band's output for the rest of the ‘90s was anything but prolific, limited to a couple of singles and a 1999 self-titled EP, but their cred with the J-punk community continued to grow, especially after they started the long-running periodic event High Blood Pressure in 1999, and also toured England, Holland, Germany, and Belgium. In 2000 their tracks "Exciter" and "Deadly Silence Beach" made it to the soundtrack of the Dreamcast/PlayStation 2 game Dead or Alive 2; this was also the beginning of an extensive touring spell, during which Bomb Factory played not just with Bad Religion, but with Fulltrap, Crispy Nuts, Buddha Head, and many others, and toured Europe, hitting it especially big in France, where they received huge media coverage and even had a magazine cover feature. They also returned to active recording work: in 2002, the band released the all-new album Go This Way, and the EP Fat Boost, which was paired with a 2000 single on the French release Discord (2004); the next full-length, Another Day, Another Life, came in 2004, getting a French release the next year. After that, Bomb Factory were picked up by Sea Green/Toshiba EMI, which handled their 2006 album, Social Suicide. The 2007 greatest-hits collection still came out on Monstar, and in 2008, the California label N20 Records released another compilation, Moshing Through Tokyo, stateside. ~ Alexey Aremenko