Crush 40

Crush 40 (originally Sons of Angels) are a Japanese-American rock band who are best known for making music for the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

Biography
Jun Senoue (the band's guitarist) was first hired by Sega to write two songs for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. After this, he recorded more songs for other Sega games, including songs for Sonic 3D Blast. He eventually contacted singer from Hardline, Johnny Gioeli, and recorded the song Open Your Heart, which would later be featured in Sonic Adventure. They soon released their first album, titled Crush 40.

Later in their career they hired Katsuji and Takeshi Taneda on drums and bass, respectively, and recorded Live and Learn for Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic Heroes featured two new songs by the group, the theme song, "Sonic Heroes" (a "bright, melodic song"), and "What I'm Made of..." (a "distinctly dark, hard rock song with metal sensibilities"). When Shadow the Hedgehog was released, they recorded "I Am... All of Me" and "Never Turn Back". For both these songs, Katsuji was replaced with Toru Kawamura.

They also contributed to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), recording a cover of "All Hail Shadow", previously performed by Magna-Fi, and recorded a version of "His World", the latter only presented on the soundtrack. They covered "Seven Rings in Hand". They recorded several songs for Sonic and the Black Knight, including its main theme "Knight of the Wind", the ending theme "Live Life," "Through the Fire" (which plays when Sonic battles a Knight of the Round Table), "Fight the Knight", (which plays during the boss fights against King Arthur) and their own version of the boss battle theme "With Me."

Recently, some of their material has been released onto iTunes, including The Best of Crush 40: Super Sonic Songs and Song of Hope, their new charity single which is dedicated to the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami incident. The iTunes edition of The Best of Crush 40: Super Sonic Songs contains three bonus tracks, "Free", "With Me -Massive Power Mix-" and "Seven Rings In Hand".

In June 2012, three songs which were intending to be released on an EP scheduled for July 4 were leaked onto iTunes. The songs were "Sonic Youth", "One Of Those Days", and "Rise Again".

Current members

 * Johnny Gioeli – vocals (1998–present)
 * Jun Senoue – guitars (1998–present)
 * Takeshi Taneda – bass (2001–present)
 * Toru Kawamura – drums (2005–present)

Previous members

 * Naoto Shibata – bass (1998-2001)
 * Hirotsugu Homma – drums (1998-2001)
 * Katsuji – drums (2001-2005)
 * Mark Schulman – drums (2003)

Discography

 * Thrill of the Feel - 23 March 2000 (as Sons of Angels)
 * Crush 40 - 18 March 2003
 * The Best of Crush 40 - Super Sonic Songs - 18 November 2009
 * Rise Again (EP) - 1 August 2012
 * LIVE! - 3 October 2012
 * 2 Nights 2 Remember - 13 May 2015

Trivia

 * At the Summer of Sonic '10, Johnny explained to Gareth Spriggs, a.k.a. Fastest Thing Alive, that he never wanted to turn 40, which is where Crush 40 came from; because he wanted to "Crush 40". The "Crush" part also came from the fact that Jun likes Crush soda.
 * In an interview with Nintendo Power magazine, Jun confirmed that Crush 40 songs would be coming to Rock Band Network, but these plans eventually fell through due to licensing issues.
 * Crush 40 mentioned on their Twitter page that they did not intend to create a remix of "Endless Possibility" and/or "Escape from the City" for Sonic Generations.
 * Jun Senoue said "Live and Learn" and "Escape from the City" are his favorite composed songs.
 * Jun and Johnny's favorite song to perform is "What I'm Made of...".