Nuclear War Now/Hospital Fest, Osaka 6-7 April 2024
Machine Parts 2 Fest, Tokyo 13-14 April 2024
I could not find this topic for a while so I posted this first to the Scream & Writhe forum. This is pretty much the same, slightly edited.
What a trip! Out of my 9 full days in Japan I went for gigs on 5 and they kinda already start bleeding into each other in my mind. All the beers make it even more so. The start of the trip was promising, slightly jetlagged (I tried to prepare and adjust beforehand) arriving at my hotel in Osaka and finding out it was a love hotel. These are the places to where people usually take prostitutes. Also visits to a local brewpub and the club that was supposed to be the after party club for the weekend.
Saturday's metal menu was solid, the ones I liked the best were Departure Chandelier and Beherit. The after party was NOT at the same club and we could not find any updated info so we just went to an izakaya for beer and food. I was looking forward to Sunday much more than Saturday and it did not disappoint. Skin Crime, Thirdorgan, Yellow Gas Flames, Prurient, Linekraft, Genocide Organ and Masonna all in one night, incredible. Masonna's 3-minute rock star noise freakout was perfect. There was no way Beherit's electronic set would feel like much after that (and it did not). I met so many people during the weekend it was insane. Even Dominick had time to stop for a chat despite he must have been super busy organizing a fest like that and performing on both days. Also bought a collage from Kristian Olsson that fittingly had a piece from an old Swedish porn mag talking about "dreaming of moose cock". Also heart warming was that two people wanted to take a picture of my Moozzhead shirt with the Revenge ripoff design AND send the picture to members of Revenge. The remaining days in Osaka were "filled" with kinda disappointing sex shops, awesome record stores and more beer.
In Tokyo we did not even get out of the railway station before parking ourselves at the Antenna America craft beer bar that had like 20 meters of fridges full of yummy cans. The following few days were filled with tens of bookstore visits (I was staying in Jimbocho so it was super easy), better sex shop visits (found a Hitomi Tanaka DVD box set with 23 hours of censored greatness) and more beer. Even ended up going to a bookstore asking for Namio Harukawa books and when the lady said she did not know the name I googled some pictures for her and then she said "no, this is a children's bookstore". Also visited the awesome Vanilla Gallery that this time had SIGNED Trevor Brown books for like 25 EUR each. On my previous Tokyo trip I managed to miss NEdS but this time I made it. International noise freaks had bought "everything" already during the two weeks before but it was still great to feel the intimacy of the place, especially with 6-8 people inside. Afterwards beer in the Golden Gai district's Deathmatch In Hell which was an awesome tiny bar with horror movie VHS tapes, props and posters everywhere plus two screens playing horror movies. All drinks were 666 yen.
On Friday I got my ass to Yokohama for the pre-fest gig which was organized in a tiny punk/hardcore basement with a bar. Again a solid night with most memorable sets being Anti Itch Cream delivering great one-woman noisecore, Deterge blowing the whole place up and finally Nikudorei doing 15min feedback and then like 200 songs. I seemed to be the only one not returning to Tokyo after the gig and ended up in a love hotel. Again. By myself.
On Saturday mister Government Alpha was our guide in Tokyo and he took us to a record store that had not been raided dry. I already had my luggage at the weight limit with all the books and magazines I had bought so no LPs for me but my friend found Hijokaidan's Limited Edition LP and No Paris/No Harm LP originals for a nice price. Then it was time for the main reason I decided to go to Japan, the Machine Parts fest! A legendary venue (Ochiai Soup) in a small basement (70 people max) with cheap beer. Shitstorm and Suppression started the evening with super intense hardcore. And it had to be super compact as I heard they were going to play in Yokohama still that same night! Other top moments for the evening were Deterge (this time with more gabber/hardcore techno in the set that made the place go wild), Mo*Te the fragile Japanese gentleman who still conjured some great noise, and K2 who was totally amazing to see live as his stuff is some of the earliest Japanese noise I ever heard. Ended up in a small "semi-private" bar in Golden Gai and bumped into mister Ames Sanglantes while Death Race 2000 was playing on the tv (the cover of VMS Elit - Todesrennen tape is from this movie). Only in Japan!
On Sunday it was time for the best night of the whole trip. I had the pleasure to see (among other things) Scum as 50% of Malformed Gentlemen, Facialmess do perfect cut-up stutter assault, Napalm Death Is Dead doing a long guitar intro that sounded like Gerogerigegege's Piano River (which I love) and then a super short burst of an "actual" set, Cracksteel playing total '90s Japanese noise and finally Killer Bug playing a great noise set with minimal stutter (I was afraid it might have been like recent Kazumoto Endo solo stuff which is a bit too much for me). Don't get me wrong, everything else was great as well but these were my absolute highlights. I had many great chats with great people (like discussing the finer points of early Finnish death metal with Ben of Ebola Disco), heard great music (even between bands!), and drank lots of average beer. What's not to love?
Super mega thanks to Kenny for organization and helping out people with problems with Japanese websites and for being such a gentleman!
