X Japan October 10, 2010

They've sold 30-million records and DVDs, filled the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome a record-breaking 18 times, they pioneered "Visual-Kei," the Japanese music movement that helped spark the current Anime craze, and their leader has been referred to as "the Bono of Japan." But the one thing this Guns N' Roses meets-Queen-meets-'The-Matrix' rock group has wanted to do for years but has never done, is tour America. That's about to change, as X Japan will make a small seven-city North American trek. X Japan - Yoshiki (drums, piano), Toshi (vocals), Pata and Sugizo (guitars) and Heath (bass) - has its roots in the life-long friendship of Yoshiki and Toshi, who met when they were four years old. While still in high school, they formed the band, known at the time simply as "X," and over the next 13 years, X Japan released five studio albums as well as six live albums, 10 compilation albums and 15 video albums, and attained iconic status in Japan. With the late-90s breakdown of Yoshiki and Toshi's friendship, combined by the sudden death of then-guitarist Hide, the band called it quits. It wasn't until 2007 that Toshi and Yoshiki reunited, that X Japan was reformed, and that the band put America back in its sights.