OWARINAKI TABIBITO – No Make Girl’s Endless Journey

Girls on speed… metal!

I went to see an indies live yesterday night, at a punk live house called Heaven’s Door in Sengenchaya. The theme was “Heaven’s Icecream”, featuring female-centric bands playing hard-edged rock, metal, punk and such (although I didn’t know it at the time – I only knew about the event because one of the people on our music SNS wacca.tv was playing, and invited me). To my utter delight, it turned out to be one of the most enjoying events I’ve been to!

First of all, the music was really good, very high level. In fact, these guys aren’t amateur, they are all half-way pro, with some radio coverage. Of course, they aren’t signed and cut their own CDs, which still makes them indie.

There were five bands, in this order.
1.ロイヤルキャバレー (Royal Cabaret)
2.熊猫 (Xiong Mao)
3.BO-PEEP
4.MEXICO
5.東京ピンサロックス (Tokyo Pinsalocks)

My friend played in MEXICO. These girls were heavy, really heavy Pantera style. That bassist was unbelievable!! Absolutely amazing lightning fast bassline, god I thought I had died and gone to base heaven! Drums rock, but damn a good bass line tops it all.

My favourite band, music and presentation-wise, was probably XiongMao. It’s a 5 member band, drums, bass, guiter, and two cute female vocalists. The drummer looked like a geek, the girls wore chongsam-like thingies over pants. Then, they kicked in, and shit these girls blew the house with their energy, jumping screaming alternating vocal styles… hell one of ‘em even started rolling on the floor in front of the stage! Great show, didn’t like their lighter stuff but they had some really nice hard riffs and beats. Go to their homepage and get a listen!

BO-PEEP, a 3 girl band + a guest guitarist, was okay, nice and hard and heavy, but maybe not my style.

Royal Cabaret was a Shiina Ringo wannabe… vocal had a great voice, and the drummer was incredibly hard-hitting, but didn’t quite do it for me.

Tokyo Pinsalocks, 4 girls, was probably the most commercially advanced of the bunch, they played poppier stuff that I didn’t really like… but damn, their bassist was really really really pretty. To me, anyway. At first, she had this boring bass line for the intro song, and I was like, great, pretty face, but girl can’t hold a candle to the t-shirt and cargo pants speed monster from MEXICO.

Then she starts playing some good stuff, and she starts swaying and getting into the music, and dude I couldn’t take my eyes off her. For some reason, she was just incredibly hot jamming that bass. So, I hate to say it, but I’m gonna buy their DVD, even though I thought the music was a toss, just so I can watch her play the bass again :D

So, that was the night. Good night.

Hmm, good thing Hekiru doesn’t play the bass. I might fall in love and never climb back out LOL