Komurasaki

The guzheng is an instrument built for sustained resonance—each note hangs in the air, bends with intention, unfolds across time. Metal is about immediate impact, about cutting through everything else in the room. Komurasaki started as an experiment in what happens when you stop treating those impulses as opposites and let them actually collide.

“It's about two instruments that shouldn't work together actually demanding something from each other.”

I've built these pieces around the guzheng's natural strengths: the microtonal slides between pitches, the way you can layer melodic lines through rapid plucking, the percussive attack when you need it. But instead of floating those textures over ambient pads, I'm anchoring them to distorted guitar riffs and drums that hit harder than anything you'd find in a traditional arrangement. Pirate King and Samurai Attack both ride this tension—the guzheng moving in one rhythmic/harmonic space while the metal elements push against it from another angle. It's not about fusion in the smooth, polished sense. It's about two instruments that shouldn't work together actually demanding something from each other.

The collection moves between pure instrumental momentum (Komurasaki itself is relentless) and moments where vocals push the narrative forward, like on Captain. Guzheng Metal is the throughline—that piece is closest to what the whole project is exploring, just strings and distortion and drums building something that feels genuinely heavy even without traditional metal production. You're hearing an ancient instrument's voice pushed into a modern violence, and it works because the guzheng's tonal character is already so striking that it doesn't get swallowed by what's around it.