Gig Reports

For many months there was no gig around Tokyo that would have caught my interest but then there were two only three days apart – Loud & Metal Attack (Finland Fest) and Kamelot.

On the 25th it was Finland Fest time which happens in Tokyo once a year since 2005. Since next to Nokia, heavy metal seems to be one of the major exports of Finland the Finland Fest here, sponsored by the Finnish embassy, sports a heavy metal event with Finnish bands.

This year’s menu was Omnium Gatherum, Mokoma, Jessica Wolff, Turisas and Nightwish. Another band, Crash Diet was announced but had to cancel their participation.

The gig happened in Studio Coast – a lavish live house in Tokyo’s east (Shinkiba station).

Start was at 15:00 and I planned to be there around 14:30 but three-quarters to the train station (3 km by bicycle) I realized I had forgotten the bloody ticket at home! Ahhhh…

I turned around, pedaled back like a madwoman and dashed again to the station. Luckily I realized that I forgot the ticket before getting onto a train.

I arrived maybe ten minutes late due to this mishap but did not miss any of the Finnish bands. The first act of the day was the only Japanese band of the event called Liv Moon: A female vocal band singing in a Japanese/English mix. I guess I missed one or two songs. During MC the lady said she had been inspired by Nightwish to form this band. They had a good sound, and she had a nice and powerful voice despite being rather tiny. Even not considering the language there were some distinct Japanese riffs in there which reminded me a bit too much of Japanese pop music. The gig was rather short – which turned out to be characteristic for the day. Every band got only some 35 or 40 minutes, which was a bit too short for my taste. During Loudpark every band got an hour, which is a much better time frame for a festival like that.

Since Studio Coast has only one stage, there was always quite some time between the gigs due to stage rearrangements, meaning that waiting time and band time almost reached equilibrium, which added to the “short” feeling of each gig.

The first Finnish band up was a death metal act called Omnium Gatherum and they are clearly a live band and managed to heat up the audience big time evoking the first “maelstrom” of the event = moshpit with mostly guys running in circles and shoving each other around. I stayed at the side and watched the spectacle.

Next up was Jessica Wolff and I must admit I stayed only for two songs, since it was more rock than metal and since the lady seems to have had a “bad hair day” – her voice was a bit strained and not exactly hitting the tone… I checked out the goodies in the meantime and chatted with a girl I had met at Loudpark the year before and who had come to this gig too – the usual suspects

The next band was Mokoma and my, that’s a fun band. It’s thrash metal and they are singing in Finnish which sounds very interesting! The coolest comment of the singer during MC was – you know, we’re from Finland where we have lots of snow and where it’s bloody cold and you know what, sometimes we have also snow in summer and the next song is about that. They knew how to heat up the audience and caused lots of maelstroms. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a heavy metal musician coming on stage with glasses on his nose. The singer of Mokoma provided this first time experience

Between Mokoma and Turisas I watched some fans getting ready for battle metal = painting their faces in red and black like Turisas. My, these guys are loud! I think a bit unintentionally though, the bass sounded “over-steered” as we say in German and unfortunately drowned out the guitar and the violin and pretty much everything else. That didn’t deter the painted crowd though from the most intense maelstroms of the gig and lots of crowd diving. The guitarist had the most trouble with the heat and his make-up. The red and black warrior paint completely dissolved, lol. Amazingly the other guys’ make-up more or less stayed on. The time for Turisas felt especially short, they had just warmed up and the make-up was oozing when it was already over. Of course they played Stand up and Fight and Battle Metal was their last song.

Between Turisas and the final act, Nightwish, I had a bite to eat at the excellent food stalls outside the hall. Nightwish’s front lady suffered a bit from a hoarse throat since Nightwish had done a full headliner gig the night before. Despite Floor being double in size from Liv Moon, the voice sounded thin and strained, but nevertheless the singing was leagues better than Jessica Wolff.

Bassist Marco’s best comment that night was – oh, we have been having fun here in Japan but alas, tomorrow we have to return home and some of us will go back to their wives and husbands where they will get cooked socks for dinner… lol.

I had sort of expected that Nightwish would get some more time since they were the main act, but also Nightwish had only some 40 minutes and the show was over without encore.

Thus the entire event was finished at 20:00 already. Since they also had one act missing (Crash Diet) it would have been kinda nice if they had given each band a bit more time.

Anyway, it was a fun event with interesting bands and let’s see who will come next year.

Kamelot had their first gig of their short Japan tour three days later. If my calculations and information are correct it has been six years since their last visit to Japan for the Ghost Opera tour.

Their support act was a Japanese girl band called Cynthia. While the girls were all highly professional and had good sound and a good lead singer, they did not really fit to Kamelot in my opinion, being a bit too J-pop. That was reflected in the crowd as well, who gave them a rather cold welcome for Japanese standards and there were only very few hands in the air for the poor girls.

That changed entirely of course when Kamelot appeared and the crowd in Shibuya’s On-Air-East 1000 people venue was right with them from the start. I guess that because of the long break between their Japan visits, they played a lot of their old songs and only four from the new album Silverthorn. That of course means Kamelot’s new singer Tommy was singing Roy Khan songs all the time, which caused me one or the other cringe. Tommy did a great job but I hope he will develop his own style soon and sing more new songs that were written for him. I was very positively impressed by Kamelot’s support vocal lady Alissa White-Gluz from Canada’s The Agonist. The lady has great charisma and does rough as well as clean vocals and her rough vocals for March of Mephisto were superb. I’ll definitely check out her band.

The next gig on the horizon for me will be Avantasia in July and then it’ll be off to the ultimate festival: W.O.A. (Wacken Open Air), yeah!