EVE

Eve is a project of the South Korean vocalist Kim Seheon, who led the band to success on the domestic rock scene in the 2000s despite frequent lineup problems. The band is labeled visual kei and even draws comparisons to X-Japan, although it prefers to balance the harder alt-rock songs with plenty of ballads. Kim Seheon first scored on the Korean rock charts with his indie band G.I.R.L., which recorded the successful single "Aspirin," but this group split after two albums, leaving the singer alone. He first hatched the idea of a new group on Christmas Eve of 1997 (hence the name), and the project began to take shape soon, when Kim Seheon found G. Gorilla (real name Ko Hyun Ghi), who became Eve's producer and songwriter. The local underground scene provided guest musicians Park Woong (guitar) and Kim Gun (bass), who became full-time members after the release of Eve's eponymous debut album (1998), which made people pay attention to this collective, not the least because it was one of the few Korean visual kei groups. This lineup lasted over the course of three more albums (Eros, 1999; Fly to You, 2000; Swear, 2001), but imploded in 2002: G. Gorilla established G. Gorilla Band and Park Woong and Kim Gun formed Virus. Kim Seheon released the fifth album EveR (2002) as a solo project, and then recruited four new members: guitarists Ha Sebin and Jung U. Hwa, bassist Kim Seungjoo and keyboard player Choi Minchang. The new Eve went on recording new material -- Welcome to Planet Eve (2003), Seventh Evening (2006), Play Me (2007) -- although it didn't attain full stability: in 2005, Ha Sebin returned to his former band Nemesis for a while to get its debut record out, and after that most of the new members had to take an Elvis-like break from music, being drafted into mandatory military service. ~ Alexey Eremenko, Rovi