Nobuo Uematsu, the man who defined the sound of Final Fantasy for millions, once turned down a rock band because he was too busy. In 2002, two of his colleagues at Square Enix, Kenichiro Fukui and Tsuyoshi Sekito, had been experimenting with rock arrangements of video game music for a wrestling game. They asked Uematsu to join them, but he declined, citing his heavy workload as a composer and his ambitions as a music producer. The two refused to start a band without him, so they arranged a single live performance to prove their point. Uematsu stepped onto the stage as a keyboardist, and the experience of the crowd cheering and paying full attention to his music changed his mind. He felt a mix of stage fright and excitement that convinced him to join the group, transforming the project from a side experiment into a full-fledged band. The name The Black Mages was chosen by a Square Enix employee named Mr. Matsushita, who selected English because it would not stand out in Japanese, a decision that would later limit the band to playing only Final Fantasy music due to trademark ownership.
From Battle Themes To Rock
The first album released by The Black Mages on the 19th of February 2003 was a collection of ten battle themes from the Final Fantasy series, arranged in a hybrid of hard rock and progressive metal. The trio of Uematsu, Fukui, and Sekito arranged, interpreted, and sequenced the tracks, with Uematsu serving as producer. The album reached number 43 on the Japan Oricon charts and was described by critics as addictive and powerful, though some noted an overuse of synthesizers compared to live instruments. To celebrate the success, Uematsu organized a concert in tribute to the album, but the trio needed more musicians to perform the arrangements live. They recruited Keiji Kawamori on bass guitar, Michio Okamiya on guitar, and Arata Hanyuda on drums, expanding the group to six members. This lineup would remain consistent for the rest of the band's history, allowing them to perform the complex arrangements with real drums rather than sequenced ones, a significant shift from their earlier experimental work.The Skies Above And Original Songs
The second album, The Black Mages II: The Skies Above, released on the 22nd of December 2004, broke the mold of the first album by including pieces beyond just battle themes. It featured songs performed by vocalists Kazco Hamano and Tomoaki Watanabe, and included a non-Final Fantasy track titled Blue Blast Winning the Rainbow, an original piece created for Japanese K-1 fighter Takehiro Murahama. The album also featured a line spoken by Alexander O. Smith, a translator for Square Enix and close friend of Okamiya, in the track Maybe I'm a Lion. While the music was generally considered excellent, the album received mixed reviews, with some critics finding the vocal arrangements in tracks like Otherworld and The Skies Above to be mismatched with the instrumentals. The band's expansion to six members allowed for the use of real drums, which added a layer of authenticity to the sound that the sequenced drums of the first album lacked, though the inclusion of vocals remained a point of contention among purists.