Report from Tokyo Metropolis

March 19th, 2008 featured many great visual kei acts in Tokyo Metropolis. The event was headlined by Versailles to commemorate their release of their new single, “A NOBLE WAS BORN IN CHAOS”, which was released on the same day. The lineup for the night included chariots, 12012, Vidoll, GALNERYUS, Duel Jewel, Matenrou opera, Moran, and more. To read about the performances of Versailles and Vidoll, skip to the middle of the report. This report will highlight some of the performances of some of the artists from last night’s concert.

Moran

Moran made had their first live last night, which was a secret up until the performance. This is a completely new band, but don’t be fooled. This band has roots in some of the great Visual Kei bands like KuRt, Malice Mizer, Fatima, and more. The second they started playing the band broke out with a hard riff, but quickly moved towards beautiful vocals accompanied by twinkling synthesizers, only to be followed up by a hard riff again. The band’s visual appearance was very interesting. They all wore plain black dresses with white and black striped leg tights. The vocalist, Hitomi stole the show. When he was not singing, he would go into spasmic dancing during heavy parts, and move around like L from deathnote during softer parts. During an intermission between songs, he commented on how he didn’t bring an umbrella and how it just started raining. He offered someone in the audience to let him under their umbrella when the concert was over. Many of the girls went crazy over this proposition. Despite this being the first time anyone could get a taste of this band, the audience was clearly loving them and seemed to show more excitement towards them than some of the more veteran bands of the night. At one point Hitomi grabbed the mic stand and made provocative movements like an innocent girl getting it for the first time. Hitomi is truly an excellent singer, his voice range was amazing and he hit every note perfectly. His voice would go from beautiful singing, to intense screaming, and back again without any problems. Even when he was jumping, his voice never wavered. His voice was so good that I questioned whether or not he was actually singing. During the 4th song, he dropped his mic which made a loud banging noise, but confirmed my doubts that he was actually singing. However this slight mishap killed it for the audience. During the second intermission between songs, he said how blessed he was to see the light shine off of everyone’s face in the 1200 person crowd. Their last song finished with a sad number. The last part finished with “kimi mo waratteta (and you smiled)” and then the stage went completely black and their concert was finished. This band definitely holds a lot of promise and if you have the chance, you should check them out. This is their Homepage.

GALNERYUS

Galneryus came out with their classic metal style blazing through guitar solos utilizing insane finger tapping. Although they used to tour with metal bands like Mastermind, it seemed odd that they are touring with visual-kei bands. They did seem a tad out of place with their ripped jeans and t-shirt appearance. The lighting of the stage was also simplistic (just white light with no colors), Despite this, they put on a killer metal concert. Later on it was revealed that they also released a single on the same day (as Versailles), so they ended up playing at the concert. They played their new single that day which was a slow ballad type song, but had two one minute blocks reserved for a full blasting chorus and relentless solos. All in all it was a flawless metal performance, but seemed out of place. At the end of the show, the guitarist trashed his guitar reluctantly.

Vidoll

At the start of the concert, Jui held up what appeared to be a black cross with a skull and repeatedly banged it with a stick. However once the song started he moved in with a slow hypnotic verse and mimicked a puppet master with his cross and stick. Red lighting masked the stage creating a dark atmosphere. Jui whipped out his high pitched squeeling and heart wrenched growling perfectly. They were dressed in their naval inspired clothing. Shun wore a white laced tank top corset under his naval jacket. All of the members jackets were threaded/chopped up on the cottom. Jui wore full length pants, Rame wore a skirt of course! The members moved around the stage replacing each others location throughout most of the show. The members made sure that they focused on each portion of the audience equally. Rame would often go to the forefront of the stage to rock out. In fact, for most of the performance everyone except the drummer was at the forefront of the stage, almost on the verge of falling off. The audience was obviously going crazy at such close interactions. There was also an elevated platform in the center of the stage that they would jump onto to give everyone a good look at the member. At the end of songs, Jui would place the mic up to his chest just as the music would go quiet so you could hear his heart beating. It was amazing to hear this and worked perfectly with the songs in which they did this! During an intermission, Jui spoke about the bands recent excursion to America. Can you guess the word he used most in America? It was “sorry”! Everywhere he went he was making mistakes and bumping into people, so he had to continually say sorry, sorry. At one point he was in a tourist shop and he saw this cute black thing on the floor, he went up to it and touched it and it turned out to be a kid who started screaming for four hours when he saw Jui. Jui profusely apologized to the mother by repeatedly saying, “sorry”. They played a bunch of songs from their new album, Bastard as well as some older classics. The crowd was going berserk with everyone’s hands in the air. The very last song was followed by the mic on the heart only to be followed by them bowing out to the bright lights.

Versailles

Being the headlining band, Versailles had more freedom with ornamenting the stage. There were roses strewn across the set; interweaving the drum set, on top of the amps, etc. They opened with choral music and came out on stage as their band name was chanted. The entire performance was extremely dramatic, with a real focus on performance and made you feel like you were at an opera. Kamijo, the vocalist had a cape cloaked over him with leather pants and high heeled boots. He sung in an incredibly deep voice, while Hizaki and Tero rocked out in dresses. The performance felt like a drama or play being acted out in front of us. In fact, Kamijo acted as the narrator, narrating in between songs. The band would often twist and do a full 360 and the second the completed the full circle, the song would flow into a new movement. These movements with capes were very dramatic and were beautiful when they were followed by Hizaki soloing. At one point though, there was a technical problem with Hizaki’s amplifier. He was decommissioned for a few minutes and the greater part of an entire song. Three technicians worked furiously trying to fix it during the performance, as no sound would come out. However after it was fixed, he galloped right back with a big smile. On the 4th song, Hizaki came out and rocked a 4 minute solo. Everyone was waving their arms in desperation to get to touch him. Overall, the performance was incredibly dramatic and beautiful. Despite the technical problems, they still put on a great show. The set list was as followed:

1. The Love from a Dead Orchestra

2. Shout & Bites

3. Beast of Desire

4. Forbidden Gate

5. Aristocrat’s Symphony

6. The Red Carpet Day

Encore: The Revenant Choir