Seeing kamomekamome

Last Sunday night, I was able to go see one of my favorite Japanese bands, kamomekamome ("kamome" is "seagull" in Japanese). kamomekamome is an awesome hardcore/metal group, and the singer's home town is Kyoto! I was pretty ill at the time, so I was unfortunately able to mosh during only 5-6 songs.

kamomekamome played at the Socrates Live House, which is about two blocks from my house. The venue is extremely small (perhaps 30-50 people were squeezed into what is basically a little room with some instruments), which lends to quite intense and compact moshing. I was actually surprised to see many, many people crowd-surfing, despite the venue's small size. Actually, to call it "crowd-surfing" is kind of generous; the participants were generally flailing on the tops of the other patrons' heads, while being pushed into the low ceiling. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. The clientele were very diverse, and I would say about 30-40% of the attendees were women, which was pretty cool to see. As I've noticed before, it seems like when it comes to heavier music in Japan, there is not a strong gender divide compared to the US. This is a really cool aspect of the Japanese music scene. Although kamomekamome is all male, many of my favorite Japanese bands have at least one female member and often more.

As soon as 向達郎, the singer, belted out (unaccompanied) the first few lines of the first song (which I believe was "EXCUSE ME" - here's another video of the same beginning), I could feel the energy of the crowd emanating around me. In such a small venue, the energy the band fed the crowd translated into an incredibly involved and active experience for all. The band entered soon thereafter, pummeling my face with an awesome sonic fury. The band cuts, and the singer releases a primal roar, "RAAHHHHHHHHHGGGHHHH". That was the cue to the crowd -- it's on. The fans explode into an uncontrollable fury of hardcore moshing (which is quite different from punk, metal, and death metal moshing), into which I was eventually sucked (to my pleasure, of course). The rest of the concert followed this successful format for about 1.5 hours, as the band played through a lot of their most recent full album, Happy Rebirthday To You. I was incredibly excited to hear one of my favorite songs, "病棟駆ける息", in the setlist! Another highlight was 事切れ手鞠歌, which my layman friend described as her favorite.

Something that I think makes kamomekamome a fantastic band is the diversity in their sound. Although they've moved a bit more into the world of hardcore in Happy Rebirthday To You, most of their music contains elements of groove metal, punk, speed metal, and even techno. They pull it all off with an incredible virtuosity and complexity that is absolutely captivating. kamomekamome have this wonderful ability to seamlessly bring you from a face-melting hardcore section to an ambient, groove-oriented almost prog-like jam. Just check out how they make one of these transitions in "EXCUSE ME" (see above). At ~1:30, the band moves into a completely different style than the one that preceded it. This band is very talented and definitely one to keep an eye on!

I had the privilege of meeting and speaking with 嶌田"MARCY"政司, the drummer (who is a total beast on the skins), who was an extremely friendly and enthusiastic dude. Although I began the interaction in Japanese, we quickly switched over to English, as his ability proved to be very advanced. We spoke for a bit about the show he just played, and I promised to see kamome again soon. He also plays drums in two other bands, which are more on the pop side of punk. I'm really glad to have met this great guy, and I hope I'll be able to talk with him again and maybe get an interview in after the next show. We'll see!

I will upload a pic or two soon! I didn't have my camera at the show (I was locked out of my room), but my friend took some pictures.

Marcy and Walker!