Shoji Meguro’s music is coming to Hammersmith. On Friday 22 January 2027 the Metaphor: ReFantazio Orchestra Concert brings a full orchestra and choir, with several vocalists, to the Eventim Apollo to play his score for ATLUS’s 2024 fantasy role-playing game.
Many people buying tickets will know his name from Persona. Meguro wrote the music for Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 during 25 years at ATLUS, and the rap verses and acid jazz grooves of those games became part of how the series sounds.
This profile follows him from his first ATLUS credit in 1996 to the Buddhist chanting at the heart of Metaphor’s battle music.
Shoji Meguro's Songs, From Persona to Metaphor
Shoji Meguro’s 25 Years at ATLUS, From Revelations: Persona to Persona 5
Meguro was born on 4 June 1971 and joined ATLUS as a composer in April 1996, according to the profile on his official website. His first credit that year was Revelations: Persona, the game that started the series.
The decade that followed was spent on ATLUS’s darker titles. His list of works runs through Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers (1997) and Maken X (1999) to Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (2003) and the two Digital Devil Saga games.
In 2006 he scored Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, a supernatural detective story that ATLUS has since brought back as RAIDOU Remastered. Persona 3 came out the same year, with Persona 4 following in 2008 and Persona 5 in 2016.
Composing was never his only job. Between 2009 and 2012 he directed the PSP versions of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, and he also wrote music for the 2011 puzzle game Catherine.
Lotus Juice, Lyn Inaizumi and the Sound of Persona
Persona 3 brought a rapper into the series. Sega bills the rapper Lotus Juice as the “rapper and vocalist of Persona 3 & Persona 3 Reload”, so a hip hop voice has been tied to that game since its 2006 release.
Persona 5 came with a clear reference point. Meguro told RPG Site in September 2026 that the aim was “music influenced by Jamiroquai”, the British acid jazz band. Sega bills Lyn Inaizumi as the singer of the Persona 5 series.
Lyn took that sound to The Game Awards in 2020, performing with the Persona music band.
Both singers are still on stage with this music. Sega named Lotus Juice and Lyn Inaizumi, along with Persona 3 Reload singer Azumi Takahashi and ATLUS composer and guitarist Toshiki Konishi, for Persona Live 2026: Awakenings at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in January 2026, according to RPG Site’s report.
Leaving ATLUS in 2021 to Make Guns Undarkness
Meguro left ATLUS in September 2021 to work independently, and his official profile says he began making his own indie game alongside his composing. He set up his company, Meguro Works, on 28 June 2022.
That game is Guns Undarkness, a stealth-based science fiction role-playing game in which you try to catch enemies off guard before turn-based combat begins. Meguro told Gematsu at Tokyo Game Show 2022 that the idea went back to 2005, and that almost all of it had changed since apart from the plan for a science fiction role-playing game with guns.
He applied to Kodansha’s Game Creators Lab, which did not select the game but awarded him 500,000 yen, and a Kickstarter campaign in September 2022 raised the rest. When we checked the Steam page on 13 November 2026 it listed Kodansha as publisher, Lotus Juice among the collaborators and a planned release in 2026, with the game not yet available.
Kodansha Game Lab’s teaser for the game credits Meguro as its creator.
Going independent did not end his work with his old employer. “I have a good relationship with ATLUS,” he told Gematsu, and his name is on the music for Metaphor: ReFantazio, which ATLUS released in October 2024. Our Metaphor: ReFantazio review covers the game itself.
Buddhist Chanting in Metaphor: ReFantazio’s Battle Music
Metaphor asked him for a fantasy kingdom, a setting Persona had never needed. The director, Katsura Hashino, first wanted music that was “orchestral and distinctly fantasy-like”, Meguro told RPG Site, and as work went on the request became “Make it bigger! Bigger!”
Writing for a full orchestra meant going back to the theory books. “I had to re-learn some composition and musical theory,” he told Inverse in April 2025, explaining that this score is built on an orchestra where the Persona soundtracks use a more modern style.
At first he tried to avoid electronic instruments altogether, Automaton reported from his interview with Famitsu. He later relaxed that rule and reworked almost every track from the early stage of development.
The development team asked for a battle theme that was “commanding and eccentric”. Meguro’s answer was a voice close to the chanting of Japanese Buddhist sutras, and he found it in Keisuke Honryo, an abbot who also performs with the Nam Jazz Experiment, a group that sets sutras to jazz. In the game Honryo chants in an invented language based on Esperanto, at a pace Automaton described as close to rap.
ATLUS’s own music channel has posted that battle theme, Warriors in Valour, as a karaoke video.
The soundtrack album appears in record shop listings under the name ATLUS Sound Team, the company’s in-house music group, while the game’s concert tour bills the score as composed by Meguro. ATLUS and iam8bit also put it out as a four disc vinyl set, with one disc for each party member, opening pre-orders in April 2025.
Metaphor: ReFantazio Orchestra Concert, From Tokorozawa to Hammersmith
The concert began in Japan. Two shows in Tokorozawa on 19 July 2025 sold out during the presale, Famitsu reported, and an extra show the next day at the city’s MUSE Ark Hall sold out as well. Meguro appeared as guest composer, alongside conductor Yuki Takai and an orchestra billed as the Euchronia Royal Symphony Orchestra, named after the game’s kingdom. Honryo was among the singers, and a second Tokyo run followed at Bunkyo Civic Hall on 6 June 2026.
ATLUS has posted a digest of the Japanese concerts.
ATLUS took the show on a world tour of eight cities, which opened in Texas on 9 October 2026. London’s date is Friday 22 January 2027 at the Eventim Apollo, with Paris following two days later at Le Grand Rex. Those are the only two European dates.
Meguro has been to London for his music before. On 27 June 2026 he gave a talk, Shoji Meguro: Composing the Soul of Persona, at the Southbank Centre’s Game Music Festival, ahead of Persona Grooves, an evening of music from Persona 3, 4 and 5 played by the London Mozart Players and the Bartosz Pernal Jazz Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Six days earlier, the composers of Square Enix had their own night at OVO Arena Wembley.
Tickets are on sale through the Eventim Apollo, linked at the top of this profile.
Shoji Meguro Questions and Answers
Yes. Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024) is on the official list of his works, and the orchestra concert is billed as composed by Shoji Meguro. The soundtrack album is released under the ATLUS Sound Team name.
He left ATLUS in September 2021 and now works independently through his company, Meguro Works. He has kept composing for ATLUS since, including Metaphor: ReFantazio in 2024.
He was born on 4 June 1971 and turned 55 in June 2026.
Lotus Juice. Sega bills him as the rapper and vocalist of Persona 3 and Persona 3 Reload.
Lyn Inaizumi, whom Sega bills as the singer of the Persona 5 series.
Yes. The Metaphor: ReFantazio Orchestra Concert plays the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith on Friday 22 January 2027.
