October 21st, 2004
Machida Playhouse

Bands in order: Danger Gang. XecsNoin, IN/Sanity

I attended this live with Tracy, who wanted me to see XecsNoin with her. Neither of us had been to Machida before, and she didn't bring a map, so we got kinda lost. Really lost, actually, and ended up coming in 20 minutes after starting time, missing the first band. No real loss.

Playhouse is a small place with a door that's impossible to open. Watch as all the staff people and band guys working the goods tables laugh at the two white girls who can't get into the livehouse! There's a big hallway where all the tables are, and then the audience area closed off by soundproof doors, which is pretty small. There's a bar in the back, some scattered café tables, and the left side has a counter with some lights overhead. I still had a pretty bad cold and wasn't up to fully participating in a live, so I hung out on the side and watched. There were only about 10 people there.

The first band we saw was Danger Gang. They had flags on the stage announcing they were Danger Gang, the "Ladies' band". Yes, they are all girls, contrary to popular belief. I give them major credit for looking as androgynous as they do. Vocalist Waka has a strange voice, it's much preferred to the screetchy vocals of many females, but not quite as appealing as the metal girls like Eva from Cerberos. They were really fun either way, they were all jumping around and happy to be there. The few fans were headbanging and having fun too. Waka at one point went to stand on the speaker and slipped, her leg falling off stage and her almost going with it. She took the MC to say how embarrassing it was.

Next was XecsNoin. They were worlds different from when I saw them at Gio's final! Zakuro (ex-Cerberos) had joined as guitarist, and they had no drummer. They ditched their vinyl kimonos and visual duds to wear "costumes" of jerseys and other street clothes. It fit them fine though, because they're more into the metal side like Bang-Doll. In fact they sound a lot like Bang-Doll, and apparently all their fans are Bang-Doll fans too. Loki had a big dorky wrap thing on his head with a dot on his forehead, and Zakuro had some bandages and fake blood on his face. They were good, headbangy and everything. However they used the super bright lights in back of the stage WAY too often, which just blinded me. I made a point of telling them that on their enquette too. Har har harrr.

After them was IN/SANITY, they had about 6 fans at stage and all of them were crammed onto the left side because the guitarist was a hottie and the other two weren't. They were young guys, and they MCed that they were playing at a college festival coming up, most likely one of theirs. They were half-assed punk visual; the guitarist was the only one who pulled it off totally. The band might have been good if they had a bassist and a drummer, but they instead had a recorded track of both and they couldn't keep in synch with it. Kinda unpleasant. They were giving out a free CD at their goods table; maybe that will be a better experience.

We didn't stay for the last band, but went to the goods tables and collected the free stuff. Outside the livehouse there were a lot of kitties (and hootchie girls curling their hair) and we being kitty freaks were petting them, as the members of Danger Gang and several staff people stared at us through the door.