2014/03/15-16 Voivod @ Thrash Domination: Club Citta; Kawasaki, JP
preparation!
HOSHIT HOSHIT HOSHIT HOSHIT VOIVOD VOIVOD VOIVOD VOIVOD VOIVOD VOIVOD!!!!!!111eleventeen
OK, let's back up a bit. I've liked Voivod since 1988, when I read an article in RIP magazine & went out & bought Dimension Hatröss. That & the next album, Nothingface, were pretty much on auto-reverse in my tape deck all through middle school. I forgot about them for a while, then picked them back up again in college w/ Angel Rat & Outer Limits, then Negatron happened (new growl/scream-y vocalist-bassist) & I lost interest for a while. Randomly looked them up a decade later & found another new album w/ Snake back on vocals again, but guitarist Piggy had died. He'd already recorded enough for 2 more albums, though, so I eventually ended up with those.
Then at work a while back (2008), I randomly googled them again, and found out they were playing a show right here in Japan! Oh but wait- it was a COUPLE WEEKS AGO? NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!1111 After that I vowed never to lose track of them again, & added them to my eplus notify list. 4 years of constant checking later I'd find they were playing a festival that had a show in Milwaukee right around the time I was planning on visiting home anyway, so I pre-ordered tickets to that, only to have the entire festival tour cancelled. MARGH.
timetable
So this year, with eplus, twitter and facebook all poised to give me info, I found out they were playing the same Thrash Domination show they'd done in 2008, so I pre-ordered the crap out of those & swore if this one got cancelled, I'd.. be.. really, really, REALLY mad, or something. XD Fortunately, it did not!
Ended up hitting the first day w/ a fellow Rokkyuu photographer/fellow metalhead, which was probably good, since I doubt Girl would've lasted through that much metal. The goods line was ridiculously long, and it looked like it wouldn't get up to the counter before the show started, so I decided to skip it & come back later, only to go put our stuff up in a locker, come back down & find the festival shirt, which Away had designed, already sold out in several sizes. So I ended up going back up to get in line, only to reach the front when everything but Ladie's L, XL and XXL were gone. I'd have normally gone for S or M, but LL was a bit too tiny, so I went w/ the XL. Margh. Oh well. Still managed to get inside w/o missing too much.
First up of 4 bands was Artillery, whose vocalist (who looked kinda like a young, long-haired Lars Ulrich) seriously looked like he could be the son of one of the other members (who all looked like 50+ year old dads XD)- I ended up wikiing them & noticed 2 members w/ the same last name, but then sighed in disappointment when I realized they were the 2 guitarists, most likely brothers. Oh well! XD
setlist day 1
Next up was Sanctuary, who ended up doing a cover of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit (which I don't only mostly know cuz SP sang bits of it during Heavy Metal Machine for a while, nope, definitely not just that XD). At some point a guy in the crowd managed to get up on stage, hug the vocalist, & dive back into the crowd. After that the singer pulled 2 more people up on stage. And one of their songs had a chorus that #totallysoundslike that Ozzy/Lita Ford duet. XD
After that was Voivod, so I pushed my way up to the front, where I managed to squeeze in about 1.5 people from the front bar right in front of Blacky (bass), whose pictures I still remember having up on my wall way back when (and who rocked the long-with-one-side-shaved hairdo long before Skrillex was even born! :P"). Even got to watch him putter around with his gear for a bit before the set even started, while the crew was still out setting stuff up, & Chewy (new guitarist) watched from the sides (& exchanged evil hands :D). His t-shirt was a simplified graphic of the head & hands from The Scream, but with the radiation symbol for a face.
pick that I juuust missed ;_;
The setlist was great- a few tracks from the new album, 3 from Hatröss, & a few from Nothingface and earlier- nothing at all from Angel Rat thru Infini, but I didn't mind too much. :D Didn't hear Brain Scan, but hey- can't have it all, I suppose. And I have a bunch of recent live recordings of it anyway, from their last JP show on DVD, etc. Before Voivod (the song), Snake said "Now it's time to sing together! One word! *points to giant banner* That one!" lol. And then for Astronomy Domine, I saw a large, bearded bald guy on the side of the stage singing along, & figured it was one of the roadies, but it ended up being the singer of Exodus, heh. Most of the band came out & hi-fived the crowd afterward, & I managed to snag Chewy & Away's hands, but then Blacky ended up handing his only (?) pick to the guy standing right next to me. MARGH. So close. At least the guy let me take some pix of it! XD
After that was Exodus, which was the only other band I'd heard of, but had never listened to them. They were pretty much as I expected- growly death metal w/ strong anti-religious overtones (which, in 80s/90s press meant SATANIC, of course *eyeroll*). Song titles were kinda LOL-worthy, including "Children of a Worthless Fucking God" and "Death Amphetamine". XD Anyway. We ended up leaving a bit early to beat the crowd out.
stage view, day 2!
Day 2 was a bit more relaxed, as I already knew I wasn't terribly interested in the other bands anyway (and neither would Girl), so we got there fairly late. As we walked by the goods line, Girl asked if I wanted anything else while the other bands were still on, & pointed at the other shirt, which I hadn't gotten the day before, so I decided "why not" and did so (and had a similar "only these sizes left" bit- meanwhile, all of the Away shirts were gone). It was only after that that I noticed a sign on the wall listing a bunch of numbers for some kind of autograph signing- apparently if you spent more than ¥4000 on goods before 4pm, you got a "lottery" ticket for a signing of whichever band- and every single band, except Exodus, had "all numbers" listed for the signing. Which means if I'd noticed the sign the day before, & bought both shirts then, I could've gotten something signed (and, more importantly, completely fanboyed out XD). Margh. Oh well. NEXT TIME, GADGET! Hopefully it won't take another 6 years 'til they come again. >_<;
setlist day 2 GET! :D
This time we moved up to the left side, in front of Chewy. At one point in the show he moved forward & held his guitar out, which a bunch of people reached for, & I got to touch the headstock for a second LOLOL SQUEE DON'T JUDGE ME. XD Set was mostly the same, but w/ a couple songs swapped out. Afterward I asked one of the roadies for a setlist, & thought for a second that he hadn't heard me, until he replied "when I get back" a few seconds later. This move paid off, since when he did come back & peeled it from the stage floor, a bunch of other eager hands reached out for it, but I already had DIBS. :D Thank you, roadie! XD
So that was that- 25 years of listening & I finally got to see them. Still kicking myself for not trying to see them back in SF when Piggy was still around, but I wasn't quite as concert crazy back then (except for SP >_>)... Anyway. Hoping they play somewhere I can see them again soon, 'cause I sure don't want to wait another 25 years! XD
2014/03/15
- Kluskap O'Kom
- Tribal Convictions
- Target Earth
- Psychic Vacuum
- Chaosmöngers
- Warchaic
- Forgotten in Space
- Ripping Headaches
- The Unknown Knows
- Mechanical Mind
- Voivod
- Astronomy Domine [Pink Floyd]
2014/03/15
- Kluskap O'Kom
- Tribal Convictions
- Target Earth
- Nothingface
- Corps Étranger
- Psychic Vacuum
- Chaosmöngers
- Ripping Headaches
- Overreaction
- Mechanical Mind
- Voivod
- Astronomy Domine [Pink Floyd]