Bands in order of appearance: THE ASK, Aliza Marie, 12012, DEViL KiTTY, Sinkro, Karen, Mar'derayla, RusH, Schwardix Marvally, Se'ikspia

Wow, two nights in a row where live houses were situated upstairs a department store. So weird. I attended this live with Cari and Chiharu, along with Cari's friend Mariko. We were the gaijin pack of the night with a Japanese ambassador. There were a good number of people milling around the lobby, as the staff were calling ticket numbers. Since I had a Lawson ticket (god forbid), I was let in with the people who didn't have tickets. It didn't matter much anyway, because no one was standing in the front. Boomin Hall is a fairly big area ( especially deep and spacious from the stage to the back), with a bar in the back near the sound system, a few café tables scattered about, and square tables lined up side by side along the side walls, as a place to put bags and (although you weren't supposed to) sit on. The stage was waist-height and uniquely shaped: an additional piece jutted out in the center about 10 feet to serve as a catwalk. They also had two curtains that closed together in the middle.

Fan report: Many from all fashion styles. A large amount of visual punk/goth girls. Also a large amount of hootchie-type "I don't really listen to the music I just want to get laid tonight" girls in revealing clothing, long nails, and high heels. Rawr. They gave us something to talk about, at the very least. There were a lot of younger, middle-school aged girls too .... And one very tall, very fat girl in a kindergarten school uniform. I don't know what the hell that was about but it was freakin weird.

As none of the fans seemed to care for the first band (we were clueless as to who it was as usual), we went to the front, about 2 rows back from the right side. Fans claim that you can tell the order of the bands by the order of the enquette, so according to my packet, Aliza Marie was first. But alas, my packet was sorely lacking in enquette, and therefore I did not know the order.

The lights went down, and of all things to play, the Dropkick Murphys' song "For Boston" came on. I LOVE the Murphys, and it was just the funniest and coolest thing to me hearing it as opening music. The band behind the curtain sorta played along, and then the curtains open to reveal THE ASK. Four guys, dressed in traditional punk outfits. Not the trendy pop- punk, but ripped old clothes with patches and pins and stuff. The guitar was covered in stickers, as were the amps. Biohazard, the Misfits, the Ramones, etc. These kids liked their punk (well, Biohazard isn't punk but still). They each had a pair of ripped and painted jeans I guess as an attempt to tie their 'costumes' together. The guitarist's pants were scrawled with all sorts of random statements and punkish things in multiple paint colors. The bassist had "THE ASK" painted on his pantlegs, one word on each leg. Their hair and makeup was rather boring, but didn't look too bad. Their music, on the other hand, definitely fit their image. They played straight punk, then mixed it with ska at points. Then they played punk, and rapped to it, and then went into hardcore screaming. Very, very unique.

As soon as the vocalist walked on stage he went nuts and started yelling happily, then tripped on the mic cord and fell on his ass. The guitarist had a plastic ray gun and was pointing it at the girls in front. There were few people there to see them, it almost made me feel sorry for them. Someone threw a pick and the girl who caught it looked like she didn't know what to do with it, and ended up putting it on a table behind her. The vocalist tried to get everyone to sing a few lines of one song, but only about two people put effort into it so he gave up. During his MC, he was talking breathlessly from jumping around so much, making it almost impossible to understand what he was saying. He joked with the audience, and kept saying he had more time, and continued talking. Then he said "I saw there were some foreigners in the audience somewhere? Over there?" and points to the other side of the room. Mariko shouts "Over here!" and holds her hand up. The vocalist sees us and starts babbling in English to himself "How are you? Good. Thank you. Uh-huh." And so on. Nothing like that has ever happened before, it was kinda embarrassing. o_o; Altogether, they played about 4 songs but the MC made it quite a long set. They were pretty cool.

So, one of us asks a random girl who is next, and she replies Aliza Marie. We stayed in the same place. Then one girl asks me if I like Aliza, and I tell her I love them, and she lets me take the front. Aww, I love it when fans are nice! Lights down, queue stripper music. Much less interesting entry to stage. They all wore the exact same costumes and makeup as yesterday, except Kichiku who had a different t-shirt (with nonsense about chaos sucking, or something) along with the bloody furry arm- and leg-warmers. His short-pants were rather tight, magnifying the fact that he is, well... chubby. And has a HUGE MASSIVE ASS that could put J-Lo's to shame. He was also barefoot. They start with the same song they did yesterday, and everyone screamed "OI!" and stuck their fists in the air, and clapped. Everyone being uhh about 10 people showing interest. They continued playing the exact same set.

Now, I've realized they are very picky about who they give attention to. It's usually only the first two rows. Yet, Kichiku was VERY OBVIOUSLY avoiding the three foreign girls in the front row. Rather rudely. He divided his attention equally between the three sections of the stage, yet when he was on our side, he stood right in front of us (Cari complained that his crotch was in her face) and sang/yelled/touched at the girls behind us. He looked absolutely terrified of us. Hiroki stood fairly distanced, flipping everyone off whenever he took his hands off his guitar. Kyouhei just stood on the left side the entire time and didn't move. There is something about him that detracts from the band. He's so boring, and as much as I hate to say it, his bass playing skills just aren't up to the level Takumi's were. Oh, and I have to mention, Kichiku messed up on the same line in Murasaki Sanatorium that he always does. The FIRST line. He always sings "Saa, kono yubi tomare, obieteiru koneko mo", which is the first line in the SECOND verse. You would think by now he'd be able to sing the lyrics better than I can.

So, Kichiku is a virtual whirlwind on stage, flailing himself around and running back and forth and in circles. He was being an ass and ignoring us, so after he did it a few times, when he came over to our side, I stuck my hand up in the air a few inches from him and waved and smiled like an annoying fangirl. And he actually waved and smiled back. Amazing. Maybe he just needs a little work to realize foreigners aren't really scary or bad people? For god's sake, I probably spend more money on them than any other girl there. Anyway, there was a lot more fan interaction than yesterday, we headbanged some, and did the fist-thrusting thing, and bounced up and down. I almost got the hang of the Amatsubu hand dancing. Most complicated I have ever seen for any band's parapara. Here are the parts I can remember:

Oshiete kudasai - Grab the air, then clasp your hands together at your chest, in a pleading motion, move hands back and forth to the syllables in "kudasai"
Shiawase tte na~ni? - Make your hands into a heart shape, wave it back and forth, then fan your hands out like you're asking "what?"
....te ne ireru koto - Grasp an invisible something in your right hand, then your left jibun yori ototteiru - Something involving pointing to yourself, and moving your hands back and forth to the last word
hito ga fuetanara - Put your hands out, palms up, and for each syllable on the last word, pull one finger in, so you end with your hand in a fist
...ah ah! Daisuki na ame - for each "ah!", fist in the air, then making some cheesy motion for loving something, and then wiggle your fingers going down as the universal symbol for rain.
ah ah! Boku ni kimi ni - Fist in the air again, then hands to your chest for "boku ni", and fan hands out towards the stage for "kimi ni"

That's about all I can take of that. And there was much, much more of it, believe me. So, then it was over, and they all ran off-stage except for Satsuki, who walked to the front to hand out drumsticks. He stood on the amp to reach out, and the amp toppled backwards (which was towards us, because they were triangular shaped and the wide angled side was pointed towards the stage), causing him to slip and lose his shoe in the crowd. He ran off without retrieving it, and I fixed the amp. Then a bunch of girls stood confusedly with the shoe in their hands, until the staff girl ran out and took it.

We leave stage front to allow fans of the next band to move up, and ask someone who is next. They say 12012 (pronounced ichi-ni-zero-ichi-ni), who we did want to see, but had just sacrificed our space. So we collect our bags and go to the other side of the stage. We got about 4 rows back from the far left side. From their pictures, 12012 looked really bizarre and... I dunno, just weird, but I was pleasantly surprised at their act. Although they were practically screaming "Look at us, we're visual kei!!!" with their looks, their posing, and their music, there was something different about them that made it fun. They seemed to get their costumes from an instruction manual on "How to be visual kei in ten easy steps", and as a whole, included: black, tight things, black, fishnets, ripped fabrics, black, buckles, fake -leather, fake-fur, black, Victorian-era frilly shirts, colored contacts, lip piercings, and lots of hairspray. Typical, but somehow cool.

They also did the thing I call "twitchy visual" - when they move very robotically, as if they were switching between one pose to the next with no fluid movement between, exaggerating every little thing. It's hard to explain without physically being able to imitate it, but many bands trying to be sexy and cool copy it. The bassist did it the most, and he was also wearing the least amount of clothing. Which I'm definitely not complaining about.

The guitarists were the most bizarre ones. Right-side guitar wore a vampire trenchcoat cut open in the back and held together with giant buckles. He had long, crimped hair, and two different eyes. In pictures I was disturbed by him, but he was quite intriguing. The left-side guitar was just strange, with stuff drawn all over his face. He would come up close to the audience and point at the girls in the front row while moving his mouth like he was saying something (but wasn't). I was watching him as he did so, then he looked up, and as an afterthought, pointed at me and grinned and turned around. They moved around a lot on stage, although didn't do much position switching. Their music was, well, typical visual. Hard metally rock with some screaming and then some soft parts. It was good, just not remarkable, but I'm sure better on CD. Their act and audience interaction was the main draw, GREAT stage presence. I would see them again.

So suddenly there's a lot more people at stage than there were before. Someone said it was DEViL KiTTY, who had many more fans than they should. Now I've heard a few mp3s before, and they sounded like your typical talent-less American local hardcore band. Screaming layered upon noise. But I was NOT expecting anything close to what appeared before me. Vocalist Yuuga looked something like Kichiku gone bad, plus 50 pounds. They all had the WORST makeup jobs I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't imagine them looking in the mirror and saying "This looks cool!" or even "This is so stupid it's cool!" It was just GOD AWFUL. Yuuga had these big exaggerated crescents drawn starting at his top lip and arcing up to his cheeks, and then a mirror image on the bottom. On his cheeks were painted multiple kanji. The bassist had a swastika drawn on his cheek, along with black eyemakeup smeared everywhere, and black lipstick that looked like a starburst drawn all over his lips... and chin... and cheeks. One guitarist had some ridiculous character that looked like Sanskrit, drawn over most of his face. The other guitarist didn't seem to belong at all, and was not only REALLY hot but had normal makeup that looked professional, as opposed to the rest of the band hiring a toddler to do it. He was wearing tights and big boots, and a skirt and tight top. With a big kitty bell around his neck. Shoulder-length blonde hair... sexy pout... mmm.

Yuuga had on an h.NAOTO hoodie with nothing underneath, and big baggy black pants with a half-skirt type thing that kept sagging and showing his gross boxers that looked like a Louis Vuitton knock-off print. The worst possible clothes he could wear, as they made him look quite fat. The swastika guitarist had on something that could maybe be considered a cool outfit, but I kept looking at his face and losing all respect for him. He also was a pretty good bassist, but again, I could not bring myself to like him.

Their music wasn't quite as shitty as it is on CD, but still pretty bad... yet catchy enough for me to have one of their riffs stuck in my head, like some twisted form of torture. Yuuga was totally power-tripping, and his behavior was appalling. Most of their fans were the hootchie type chicks that dress just to get laid (one of the girls I saw later curling her hair. Yes, CURLING HER HAIR in the audience, sitting on the floor). They did a lot of headbanging and stage rushing. They even tried stage diving, which was ridiculous because they'd climb up, everyone would see they were about to jump and move out of the way, so the girl would land flat on the floor. Yet they KEPT doing it, like some sick form of sacrifice to the band. So Yuuga starts ordering them around. There is this thing fangirls do, I don't quite understand why, but instead of applauding, they stick their arms in the air and fan their hands outward. It's something like "I LOVE YOU!", and is used basically to show your devotion. Yuuga called it what sounded like "sakae", and would command the audience to do it over and over, making them worship him. Then he ordered everyone to sit down, and then to stand up... and so on. Rawr. I don't like him. Then girls started climbing on stage, and a bunch of them got on their hands and knees in front of him, bowing, in the middle of the stage. I just... could not believe it. What the hell was the appeal of them?! Their music was shit, they looked like shit, Yuuga's a fat asshole. I just DON'T understand it! To make it worse, the played the longest set of the night.

This experience lead me to despise their very existence, and their fans' too.

After they left, we took guesses as to who would play next, as we had no idea and no one else seemed to know. And when the next band came on stage, we still had no idea. Afterwards, we asked around again and one girl said Se'ikspia, but after the live we realized Se'ikspia played last, and it was actually Sinkro that played. So during their set, I had no idea who they were. Sinkro's latest photosets show them looking painfully normal in white dress- shirts, black ties, and black slacks. This band, however, was quite visual. The vocalist looked like a fetish store exploded on him, covering him with leather and straps and grommets and so on. He had glittery crap smeared all over his eyes. The guitarist had somewhat of a schoolgirl uniform on. I honestly can't remember what the rest of them were wearing or even looked like, but I do remember making a comment as to how they covered nearly every silly costume role within the band (as in, bondage-boi, girly-boi, punk-boi, etc).

They were CUTE. "Cuuuute times 5000", I wrote in my notes. There was tons of hand dancing, and the vocalist stage dived a few times. He actually reminded me of a little Sanaka, minus the sex god attitude. He did this dance, which was a lot like the one Sanaka did, turning sideways and doing these crazy arm movements. And they had the same haircut and same glittery eyemakeup. Their music was happy and bouncy, but they didn't play any of the songs I knew, which is why I had no idea it was them. I was confused, but they were really adorable and fun .

Then Karen had to go and upstage them. We couldn't help but scream with joy like the rest of the audience did as they walked out. One guitarist, Setsuki, had a girl's school uniform on, complete with a big blue satin bow. The other guitarist, Erize, was the cutest thing on two legs. He had a full-on black lolita outfit, trimmed with white lace, with a capelet and little hair-bun covers. Vocalist Nao had on a black suit and red tie, which wasn't too exciting, but he made up for it by just being adorable. The bassist's outfit was a little weird, but consisted of a long flared skirt and a bolero-type jacket over a top. The material used to make ALL their costumes was a black with thin white pinstripe design, so they all matched. I could not get over their cuteness. And not only were they freakin adorable, but they were one of the most talented bands of the night. Totally full of energy, jumping, dancing, they were amazing. Their music was very hard, fun rock (which is odd because they're a lot quieter and softer on CD). For the MC, the vocalist called upon "sensei"; Setsuki put on glasses and announced their live schedule, while Nao acted like a rowdy student, interrupting him. So freakin cute.

For their last song, they dragged it out like all good bands should, and then quickly switched instruments, and continued playing. It was SO FUN. I had to resist buying ALL their merchandise later on, and just bought one photoset.

Following Karen was Mar'derayla. I wasn't all too excited about seeing them, but wanted a good look anyway. Cari and I decided we would hang around the left front area, and if they were bad, go sit in the back. They took an awful long time getting ready, and by the way the staff people arrange the curtains around things, you could tell they were putting props in. The curtains opened to reveal the band, and a big white box. Music starts, singing starts but vocalist is not in sight. Then an arm punched out of one side of the box, then the other, then the vocalist rips through the front, and a roadie drags the box away. That was about the extent of their uniqueness. Everything about them was cookie-cutter Matina band. Their costumes were black and heavily flowy-type dresses, their hair was poufed and dyed (although were in dire need of re-dyeing). There were fake flowers hanging off the mic stand. Blah blah. Their music screamed of recycled and/or stolen riffs of Matina bands past. It wasn't bad music, it was just completely cliché and unoriginal in every possible way. One thing, however, was unusual. The vocalist's hair. He had a little bit of the left side of his head shaved, and his hair brushed over towards the right. On the shaved part, he had drawn these tentacle-like designs creeping all over, onto his face. They were also on his arm. Very weird. One of the members had big blonde hair, and looked a bit like You from Bang-Doll. Him and the weird vocalist had their arms around each other in a very love-love way. It was cute (jeeze, can I say 'cute' any more in this live report?!). They were all fairly attractive, but nothing too special. Cari and I left Chiharu at the stage and decided to take the rest of their set's time to go out in the lobby and look at band merch.

Almost all the bands had stuff, some more interesting than the others. Aliza's were the same, RusH had TONS of stuff, CDs and stickers... Most of the other bands just had photosets, but Sinkro had the most random collection of things ever. Stickers, pins, photos, a cel phone strap, a mirror, and an alarm clock. What the hell? I got the mirror; it's such a useful piece of merch! Once Mar'derayla seemed to be ending their set, we made our way back in and entertained ourselves in the very back with a broken glow-stick bracelet that was leaking glowing orange crap. A lot of girls were wearing them that night, the reason why still vaguely unknown.

So next up was RusH, who after hearing Bruce's review of them, I had no interest in watching. But there were no places to sit, so we wandered back up front and remained in the general left front vicinity. Bruce (and apparently their production manager) said that they needed serious work on their performance to make it more interesting, but tonight they seemed to do everything to make their set as ridiculous as possible. First, the vocalist had a pad of paper with different things written on each sheet. It looked to me like a list of things to do, but I couldn't quite tell because he was going through it so fast. The band was playing, and he would read a page quickly and energetically, then rip it off and throw it in the audience. That continued for a good long time, until he used up the pages. Then he brought out a tambourine. Don't even know what its purpose was, I didn't really notice any use for it. After the 2nd song, some freakish guy with silver face paint and a strawberry hair tie ran out with a bag, and handed out "flags" - pieces of fabric taped to straws - to everyone in the front. Then the vocalist did a cheesy dance with the flags, and had everyone do it too. Following that, the guitarist got a big hard foam finger on a stick, and started poking people with it. Quite the interesting act. Their costumes were fairly normal clothes, except one of them had the ass cut out of his jeans, and it was kinda scary. Ok, really scary. Their music was pretty shitty, but it was only live, because they're good on CD. Still, very bizarre... I don't know what to make of them.

I was about ready to fall over asleep from standing up this long (about 6 hours have gone by since the concert started, after getting... oh, 2 hours of sleep the night before and been walking/standing ever since I stepped off the plane which was less than 48 hours prior) but I really wanted to see Schwardix Marvally. So I stuck it out, and stood near the front. They had another long setup time, because of flowers and stuff on the mic stands. But wow, were they ever gorgeous. Vocalist Hisui had his blonde hair curled so it flipped up. Guitarist Airi had braided pigtails, and a full PVC gown. Other guitarist had a velvet prom dress, with his blonde hair curled in cascading ringlets down his back. Support bassist Ko-Zi wore some PVC tanktop built for a girl, and the tiniest shorts ever. He was rather manly and it didn't seem to fit him well, but it matched the rest of the band. They were the prettiest men alive. Except the drummer, who was totally out of place.

Their music was a hard-soft mixture, and they reminded me more of Lariene than any of their previous bands. A few times they seemed to go out of sync, messing up parts or something, but it didn't really affect their performance much. The strobe lights, however, nearly made me pass out and I had to go sit down through some of it.

Near the beginning, I was staring at Ko-Zi (ex-Doremidan), and he looked at me and this glimpse of terror flashed on his face. I don't know if it was a "Oh god there's a foreigner in the audience" look, or a "Oh god I remember that foreigner" look, but I was amused. Don't have much else to say about them, but I liked them. Definitely room for improvement, but they are a new band so... They get a thumbs up from me.

So at this point, the only reason I was still there and not asleep, was because we thought Sinkro was next. And I like Sinkro a lot and was hoping they'd play the song from Yougenkyou 2 that I'm obsessed with. So Cari and I go up to the catwalk and sit, waiting for the last band. Of course we know now that it's Se'ikispia (pronounced "Shakespeare", believe it or not, although I'm compelled to pronounce it "Sex-pia" which is what it looks like) that was playing next, but at the time I was like "Yay, Sinkro!"

I said before the curtain raised, that they were very good but not much to look at. Then this amazingly visual band in TONS of PVC and gothy awesomeness and... wow... walked out. The vocalist had this PVC trenchcoat covered in spikes, goth makeup, and two glow bracelets. Underneath he had only the teeniest little PVC shorts. The bassist had a skimpy little outfit on, with a pair of bat wings strapped to his back. Guitarist was wearing a gorgeous h.NAOTO Blood floor-length dress. They ALL had glow bracelets on, and I assume the reason some girls had them on was because they were fans of the band and it was some little cult-ish thing, but I dunno really.

Anyway, the vocalist loved the catwalk, and sat/moved around on there for most of the entire time. Poor guy, though, happened to be wearing blue English-print boxers under his itty bitty little shorts, and they were peeking out of the bottom. There was nothing hiding them, either, as most of the fans were eye-level with his crotch and bright blue is quite a contrast to an entirely black outfit. At one point he was kneeling down with his head lowered, and seemed to notice, covering his left side with the trenchcoat (which helped for about 8 seconds).

Thinking this is Sinkro and not some random band I knew nothing about, I went nuts. They were serious headbanging music, and the entire set we did so. The vocalist would sit at the end of the catwalk and everyone would just headbang at him, like a car wash or something. Haha. His spiked cuff kept getting caught in my hair when he'd move his arms around. We were begging for bat-wing boy to come on the catwalk, but he only did once. The guitarist did several times, lying down and impeding my headbanging with the guitar neck in my face. At one point, all three members stood out there, posing and playing, while we all gave ourselves whiplash. It was so totally sweet. I LOVE these guys now. They only played 2 or 3 songs, but dragged one out so long it was great.

I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout of this event. All the bands were great in their own ways (except Devil Kitty who should die), and I found a lot of new favorites! If only I weren't so tired...

My money went to: Aliza Marie
My money should have gone to: Ehh...
Goods: Karen photoset, Sinkro mirror