Hide Your Face


Hide Your Face is the debut album by Japanese musician hide, released on February 23, 1994. It reached number 9 on the Oricon chart and was certified Platinum by the RIAJ for sales over 400,000 copies. It was named one of the top albums from 1989-1998 in a 2004 issue of the music magazine Band Yarouze.

Overview

hide embarked on a solo career in 1993 due to the downtime in X Japan. Initially wanting to hire several different vocalists because he was unsure of his own voice, he eventually began taking vocal lessons from Toshi's coach and sang the material himself.
The song "Frozen Bug '93 " is a remixed version of "Frozen Bug", a song that hide wrote and performed with Luna Sea members J and Inoran, under the band name M*A*S*S, for the 1993 compilation Dance 2 Noise 004. Wanting to contrast something unusual with a pop background, hide hired Yukinojo Mori to pen the lyrics to his first two A-side singles. As a kid, hide was fond of Bow Wow's 1982 album Warning from Stardust, where the A-side songs had lyrics in English and the B-side in Japanese. Liking the Japanese lyrics better, hide only realized Mori was their author afterwards. Together with the music for "Frozen Bug", "Eyes Love You" and "50% & 50%" are the only songs hide released for his solo career that he did not write himself.
The album's cover art features a reproduction of a mask, originally created by H. R. Giger, by Screaming Mad George and Joanne Bloomfield.
Hide Your Face was re-released on the Japan only format SHM-CD on December 3, 2008.

Reception

Hide Your Face reached number 9 on the Oricon chart. The 2008 re-release reached number 223.
The album was named one of the top albums from 1989-1998 in a 2004 issue of the music magazine Band Yarouze.

Track listing

Personnel

Main artist
Musicians and production
composed a piece based on "Psychommunity Exit" as the intro for the 1999 hide tribute album Tribute Spirits. American bassist T.M. Stevens, who plays on the album, recorded a cover of "Blue Sky Complex" for his 1999 album Radioactive. Nightmare guitarist Hitsuji covered "D.O.D. " for Tribute II -Visual Spirits-, while Dezert covered it for Tribute III -Visual Spirits-. Both albums were released on July 3, 2013. The Cherry Coke$ also recorded a version of the same song for Tribute VII -Rock Spirits-, released on December 18, 2013. "D.O.D. " was covered by FLOW firstly at hide present MIXED LEMONed JELLY 2016 in Maihama Amphitheater then recorded the studio version for June 6, 2018 Tribute Impulse album.