12/19/2014: Hyper Sonic Vale Tudo 3 @ Okubo Earthdom

For personal reasons, the line-up on this one was kind of out there. Hitting shows in general is pretty much a must-do, as its the best way to maintain relationships and get things done (a quasi-lamentable fact that I'll address in a subsequent post), so to that end this show had the potential to be just as good as any.

So color me surprised when the turnout wasn't so great, despite the lineup, it being Friday, and the show being held at Earthdom. Oh, you want that lineup, too, don't you. Here you go:

The Neurotic Spiders
Crucem
O.G.D.
Omawarisan
Extreme Schrek Terror

Totally missed The Neurotic Spiders, and I don't believe I've ever seen or heard them before, so I can't really comment on that. Retch has played with with Crucem a number of times and they're all pretty good guys. Their brand of black metal is a little too keyboard heavy for my tastes, but they've got a decent sound overall. I distinctly remember their keyboardist giving a wasted dude in the pit at our Halloween show with Satanic Warmaster at Bushbash a very tough time getting up. Hilarious.

3rd up was Orgasm Grind Disruption aka O.G.D., one of Tokyo's greatest grind acts. Well, maybe - its kind of tough to legitimately hold that title when you're up against the likes of FiD, Sete Star Sept, Self-Deconstruction, Sobbed, and all the rest. Regardless, their chainsaw riffs, pummelling drums, and blistering, frenetic on-stage attack is always a blast. If I'm not mistaken, they've been around for about 10 years now, don't know if that qualifies them for veteran status or not, but its a good chunk of time they've spent honing their type of destruction.


Now for where things started to get important. I'm currently putting a show together for sometime in April hopefully for a Tokyo-based black noise act known as Legion of Andromeda and am now in the process of getting other bands on the bill. I've spoken with Melt-Banana and the afore-mentioned Self-Deconstruction about it, and keep meaning to get in touch with Endon. I also wanted to hit up Omawarisan about it because I had seen their videos before but never seen the real deal in a live setting. Fortunately, Kenji from Zothique provided me with an introduction during our interview with them, and I quickly got in touch with them about another show coming up on January 17th of next year, Blood Rite Vol. 7. That conversation ended with them not being able to perform at that specific show, and had been wanting to get them on a bill ever since.

So I called their vocalist over at the show and sat down with him over a street beer about playing an April show. No date set, nor venue, so its all still very up in the air (as it always is) but it sounds like they'll be open to play then. Awesome, man. Really awesome, because not only is Omawarisan's noise-driven Jane-Doe-esque powerviolence a sound to be reckoned with, their live show is absolutely harrowing.


But the headlining band was absolutely what everyone came for. The actual band name is Schrekwürmer and is comprised of jazz bassist Yoshinori Mochizuki (望月芳哲,  can't say I know him from other bands), noisest Kazuhiro Matsuyama (沫山数汎, again, I've no idea) and Ironfist Tatsushima (Ssorc, G.I.S.M., Die You Bastard!, Crow, and millions of other bands). However, every time I've seen them live, they're collaborating with at least one other band, and the name changes accordingly. This time around, Schreckwürmer was joined by Kouichi Udagawa of Terror Squad on vocals, and Kuzuha of Self-Deconstruction on guitars, thus forming Extreme Schrek Terror.

If you know anything about any of the bands that comprise Extreme Schrek Terror, you know that this is possibly the closest to a perfect storm of blasting, raging, power-hardcore-noise fury. Ironfist really is a living legend, and with every time I've seen him play I'm more and more convinced that he's not just any living legend, but THE living legend if there ever was one. He doesn't stop playing for a single second, and if there's ever a change in tempo its very likely that it will be for the faster. Pair with this Kouichi's rabid-mongoose vocal stylings and stage presence, and Kuzuha's nimble fingers and guitar squealing like a stuck pig and you have something very special indeed. 40-ish minutes after they began their set, it ended, with not a second wasted throughout the entire thing. Musical marathoners, these guys, in the most furious way possible.