Masaki Yamada (born 1964) is the former singer for EZO and Loudness, and currently the bassist and secondary vocalist for New York City based metal band Firesign. His band EZO holds the honor of being the very first Japanese hard rock/heavy metal band to be signed by a Western or international label (specifically Geffen Records) and the very first Japanese hard rock/heavy metal band to officially film in or tour the US, preceding Loudness by two years.
His career choice of moving from lead to secondary vocalist as well as becoming bassist is highly controversial to say the least, but Masaki has remained humble about the entire thing.
Tropes encompassing Yamada's 30 year career include!!
- After the End: Fire Fire, being a song about post nuclear war.
- Break-Up Song: Love Kills
- Guy Liner: wears this in almost all his bands.
- Grief Song: Explode is Masaki's rage and sadness about the 9/11 attacks embodied into a musical form.
- Harsh Vocals: Even more harsh than Minoru Niihara's at times.
- Intercourse with You: She's Riding The Rhythm, Love Junkie, Wild Talk, House of 1000 Pleasures from EZO, Twisted(also Obligatory Bondage Song), Nightcreepers and Jasmine Sky for Loudness.
- Lead Bassist: A surprising lot of FIRESIGN's fans are there
Just For Masaki. Masaki is best described as a Type B, as he often Vocal Tag Team s with Aya Firesign. - Metal Scream: Did a LOT of these on stage.
- Ode to Intoxication: Wrote a LOT of these in his years in Loudness.
- Protest Song
- Racing The Wind is a Religion Rant Song, and Slaughter House is an anti Animal Testing song. He also did one of Loudness's most powerful versions of their song S.D.i. which is a protest of Atomic Hate,
- Also from Loudness, Sweet Dreams is Masaki ranting about stereotyping of Japanese people, and pretty much most of the Ghetto Machine/Dragon/Engine songs can be interpreted as some kind of protest.
- From EZO, Fire Fire is a protest against Atomic Hate, and Senso is a commentary on the Japanese government's attitude on World War II.
- EZO's early works fell between thrash and hardcore punk, before they started singing in English.
- Racing The Wind is a Religion Rant Song, and Slaughter House is an anti Animal Testing song. He also did one of Loudness's most powerful versions of their song S.D.i. which is a protest of Atomic Hate,
- Rearrange the Song: Rewrote In The Mirror with different lyrics.
- Visual Kei: Pretty much is a Visual Kei musician still, however his style emphasizes the more metal side of Kei rather than the "pretty boy side".
- Vocal Evolution: When Yamada was in EZO, his voice was rather high-pitched and screechy, but almost punk-rock esque. By the time he exited Loudness, his voice took on a much more varied tone, ranging from reverberating medium ranged on songs such as Babylon and Jasmine Sky, to high-pitched banshee wails, like on Twisted.
