2013/05/12 OzzFest Japan - 幕張メッセ; Chiba, JP
OzzFest Japan!
Continuing the catch up posts: OzzFest! Luckily the Voivod order I'd placed several months earlier finally showed up a few days before, so I got to wear the shirt- sadly I didn't see any others. Originally we'd planned on arriving around 1 or so to catch MUCC and AA=, but as usual we ended up running behind, & the confusion w/ the event being in a different set of buildings than I'm used to for Summer Sonic, and the additional inner-venue check that DID NOT ALLOW BACKPACKS (and yes I saw several other people with bags as least as big as mine was, not to mention a guy w/ a glass bottle of Jack, which was most certainly not allowed in either, grumble grumble), thus forcing us to to back up & around & down a loooong-ass hall to pay $10 to check my backpack, we didn't get inside until partway thru the next band's set. A band I'd never heard of before, but had skimmed their bio & knew only that they were a complete parody of 80s hair metal bands.
Yup, we stumbled in halfway thru Steel Panther. XD They'd just started up a song about being warned about VD when they were 3, which culminated in the chorus "Fuck all night, party all day." Next up was an over-the-top power ballad, which featured the tender refrain "My heart belongs to you, but my cock is community property." >_<; The banter that followed was equally amusing- something like "This stage is so big- we're running around with our feet- it's so hard. We're so old. I think I just shit my pants a little." And then another member proclaimed his astonishment, "I can't believe it, I just saw oh-py!" Which took me a minute to figure out he was trying to say "oppai", the Japanese word for "tits". XD So either someone actually flashed them, or they were just working it into their act, since another member followed it up with "I hope in this next song I see 34 oh-py!" / "Oh, you mean 17 girls?", which led, naturally, into a song called "17 Girls in a Row" (as in, "I fucked 17 girls in a row last night..."). Oh, teh humor. I really wonder how much of the crowd knew wtf they were saying, though. XD
- Eyes of a Panther
- Tomorrow Night
- Asian Hooker
- Just Like Tiger Woods (we came in around here)
- Party All Day (Fuck All Night)
- Community Property
- 17 Girls in a Row
- Death to All but Metal
Up next was 人間椅子 (ningen isu), who were dressed out of an old Kurosawa samurai film, & apparently have songs like "Feast of the Death Gods" and "Hell's Mountain of Needles". Don't remember much about the music, just the visuals- a bald guy w/ whiteface and a monk robe, and a goateed guy in a samurai/kendo outfit. They seemed worth checking out, though, so I'll have to try to remember to do that. XD
- 相克の家
- 死神の饗宴
- 深淵
- 人面瘡
- 針の山
After that was Stone Sour, another band I knew nothing about, but which apparently includes members of Slipknot, who were the headliners the previous day. They ended up being pretty decent, I suppose, considering the members looked like they came from at least 3 different bands- a 90s grunge-looking lead singer, a bald, tux-&-bowtied dude with a pink polka-dotted guitar (!), a goateed drummer, and 2 über metal-looking guys with huge black Drogo beards, denim vests, & tons of tattoos. XD Oh, and the vocalist had some kanji tattoos that were visible on the screen- 火 (fire) on one side of his neck, & 死 (death) on the other.
- Gone Sovereign
- Absolute Zero
- Mission Statement
- Made of Scars
- Do Me a Favor
- RU486
- Say You'll Haunt Me
- Nutshell [Alice in Chains] (First verse/chorus)
- Bother
- Through Glass
- 30/30-150
Up next was the start of the main 3 acts we were most interested in- and the one I was most afraid of. XD We'd seen Dir en Grey at the hide memorial summit 5 years earlier, during which Kyo scratched & his chest & fish-hooked his own mouth until both bled. >_>; So when the lights went down and the entire crowd around us suddenly started to move back, forming a huge open circle, I wondered for a bit if I'd make it home without any injuries... XD Fortunately only a small handful of people made use of the "circle pit", alternating between running laps around the open area and just general moshing, with quite a bit of roundhouse kick/jumping... and then one guy (who had his shirt off to reveal a full-back Senju Kannon tattoo very similar, if not identical to Kyo's) who held up his hands in prayer during one of the songs, and even got on his knees for part of it. I mean, I suppose music can be a religious experience for some, but Dir? lol.
Anyway, with the circle pit mostly well-behaved, I was able to (mostly) focus on the stage & screens, which provided the expected dose of horror imagery, with plenty of footage of flies crawling over photographs of people, writhing maggots, time-lapse of a decomposing rodent, and even x-ray footage of someone digging into a piece of maggot-infested pie with a knife & fork (fortunately they spared us from showing any ingestion of it). So yeah, pretty much what I expected. Wasn't expecting the completely rearranged version of Tsumi to Batsu, though, which was almost entirely unrecognizable except for the "1 sad sexually, 2 sad sexually" lines. o_O; Oh, and TIL that the title is written "backwards" using the kanji for "mitsu to tsuba", (honey & spit), instead of the actual characters, which would mean "crime & punishment".
- OPENING MOVIE～狂骨の鳴り
- DIFFERENT SENSE
- 業
- THE BLOSSOMING BEELZEBUB
- -INWARD SCREAM-
- 蜜と唾
- 羅刹国
- 冷血なりせば
Up next, the band I've actually listened to the longest- TOOL! Listened to them on & off since Ænima came out in '96, but had never seen them live before. Fortunately for me, half the set was from that album, which I've listened to far more than any of the others, a fact attributed to having the CD on repeat for days at a time in college, vs. having the newer albums on my iPod/iTunes, which has contributed greatly to my musical ADD- when it's way too easy to listen to any of ~25,000 songs, it's much easier to move on after 1 or 2 listens of a new album & then forget almost entirely that it's on there. >_>; Anyway.
TOOL ribbons! (well, bits of, at least)
The screens were pretty much dedicated to playing clips from the music videos & other crazy imagery (CG-rendered flames, lots of floating eyeballs, spirals of spinal bones, and a neverending double-helix of naked men sitting on each others' shoulders), so there were no live closeups of the band playing as most of the other bands had. But what I missed in seeing the actual band members very well (couldn't get all that close w/o losing view of the other stage) I made up for w/ ribbons! Well, small pieces of ribbon, which were shot out at the end. We were a bit further back than they went out, but there was plenty of it on the floor afterward, which cleared our fairly quickly as people went out & back around to the other side for the final act...
- Hooker With a Penis
- Sober
- Schism
- Lateralus
- Jambi
- Forty-Six & 2
- Ænema
- Stinkfist
MOTHERFUCKING BLACK SABBATH!
Yep, it was time for the headliner. The band that's been around the longest, the band that practically invented metal, the band whose frontman was the name of the freakin' festival, motherfucking Black Sabbath! We side (the gap between the 2 stages was about another stage-width, to allow for all the side-stage gear for each side to be hidden behind the curtains). Fortunately the screens were in full force & were close enough on some of the shots to see Tony's fake fingertips! XD
After Tool, the between-set PA had started off by playing Beck's "Devil's Haircut", which really didn't seem to fit in a metal festival (well, aside from maybe the title, but still), but eventually we got Ace of Spades, which was far more appropriate. The lights dimmed as the side screens announced the band, the crowd going wild even before Ozzy's maniacal laugh came from offstage and the sirens started blaring. The band came out & launched straight into War Pigs, w/ the screen showing footage of various marching armies, dictators, politicians, etc. Everyone was pretty much in all black- Ozzy w/ a long-sleeved shirt w/ a skull outline, Tony in a black leather jacket, Geezer in a black buttoned shirt & vest, and then their current drummer, Tommy- a full 3 decades younger than the rest of the band (and even younger than me, lol) w/ a bandanna & no shirt. Actually, the bandanna & beard combo totally reminded me of old pictures of Jim Henson. XD
MOTHERFUCKING OZZY OSBOURNE!
Ozzy announced the next few songs, which I wasn't familiar with (yeah, I only really got into actually listening to them wayyyy too late & still really only know the 3-4 really famous ones... >_>;), one of which had accompanying video footage of various religious protests against the band, cut with footage of "nuns" doing naughty things. XD Snowblind, in case the title itself wasn't obvious, ran footage of practically every cocaine scene from every movie as far back as Charlie Chaplin. After that, Ozzy announced "We're gonna take you back to one of the first songs we wrote together"- the band's namesake, Black Sabbath! Sweeeet.
A few more unfamiliar songs followed, including bass and drum solos, before a lone half-note kick drum kicked off Iron Man. This was followed by a new song, from their upcoming album "13", called "God is Dead?", and then "Children of the Grave", before Ozzy informed us all that they were about out of time, but if we clapped & cheered enough, they'd play more. A short encore break later, just as I was starting to realize "Hey, they haven't played Paranoid yet", they started up Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, at which point I was like "Oh yeah, this song! Awesome!" But no sooner had I gotten into that one than they stopped playing it & switched into- Paranoid! OK, well, I suppose if you're gonna cut off a good song, you'd better cut it off w/ an even better one, but it still would've been nice to hear both. Oh well. The time constraints of festival shows... -_-;
MOTHERFUCKING TONY IOMMI!
Anyway. Wasn't surprised to see Tony using nothing but SGs- mostly his own signature model (one of the few signature models of any guitar I can actually recognize, even w/o the artist themselves holding it), and a couple of non-sig models- at least one was so "road worn" almost no paint was left. He even had his own custom strap on a few, w/ IOMMI in huge letters. Both he & Geezer had eight 4x12 stacks each- Geezer's had crosses on them. The kick drums each had a black skull w/ a triforce on the forehead and a facehugger-esque gasmask.
All in all, an excellent day of music. Certainly better than most of the Summer Sonics, which generally only have 1 or 2 bands I'm even remotely interested in, which are usually spread so far apart from each other that it takes ages to get between the various stages. Should probably have arrived earlier & seen more- apparently the first opener of the morning was Jon from YFC's other band, which I didn't notice until the other day. And while we'd planned on seeing Mucc & AA='s sets, we'd seen them both recently enough at the B-T On Parade thingy... But anyway. Cross another great band off the list of ones I never thought I'd see live. :D
- War Pigs
- Into the Void
- Under the Sun
- Snowblind
- Black Sabbath
- Behind the Wall of Sleep
- N.I.B.
- Fairies Wear Boots
- Symptom of the Universe (instr)
- drum solo
- Iron Man
- God is Dead?
- Children of the Grave
- Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (intro only)
- Paranoid