CODA
Gaiz, I finally did it. I achieved my dream.
I saw the GazettE just over three weeks ago
wow. wow. wow. wowowowowwowowowowowowowowoow.
I went with my boyfriend and my really good friend who so so so luckily happened to be in Japan at the time! Our seats were reeeeaaaalllyyyyy far back, but by the end I didn't care that I couldn't see any of the members' faces. For one, our heads were down pretty much the WHOLE time, and then just the atmosphere and Ruki's voice... Oh man, his voice is absolutely perfect. Every note and growl and scream was just perfect.
The beginning was really scary... for the record, the only concert I've been to is Jay Park's. Everyone was just sitting there chilling and it was about 15 minutes after the concert was supposed to start and then BAM THE LIGHTS WENT OFF. Some lights came back on, MALFORMED BOX started playing and the WHOLE population of Yokohama Arena stood up and started slowly clapping. I seriously felt like I was part of some cult, it was amazing. So there we were waiting for the song to end... I actually thought I was going to die from suspense... and then INSIDE BEAST started to play and /dead. Everyone just flipped out and obviously the members appeared on stage and Ruki and his damn super perfect voice, and OH MAN THE FURI. Those little hand gestures that accompany the songs were the beeeeeest. If we weren't frantically waving our heads around, we were frantically waving our right hands. I took my shoes off three songs in because the head banging made me almost fall over the chair in front of me... I knew I should have worn creepers and not chunky heels. I've completely forgotten the order of the songs so I'm going to paste one from the namelessliberty tumblr:
01 MALFORMED BOX
02 INSIDE BEAST
03 UNTIL IT BURNS OUT
04 FADELESS
05 KARASA ( 鴉 )
06 HEADACHE MAN
07 13STAIRS[-]1
08 DEVOURING ONE ANOTHER
09 LOSS
10 REDO
11 LAST HEAVEN
12 IN BLOSSOM
13 THE STUPID TINY INSECT
14 ATTITUDE
15 KUROKU SUNDA SORA TO ZANGAI TO KATABANE
16 COCKROACH
17 DISCHARGE
18 TO DAZZLING DARKNESS
19 CODA
-EN-
E01 Ride with the Rockers
E02 TOMORROW NEVER DIES
E03 Hyena
E04 SLUDGY CULT
E05 Filth in the beauty
-WEN-
WE01 KANTOU DOGEZA KUMIAI ( 関東土下座組合 )
WE02 Linda ~Candydive Pinky Heaven~
My memory's kind of fuzzy on half of these because I'm still not 100% familiar with songs on BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY/DIVISION/TOXIC.
I'm not a huge fan of UNTIL IT BURNS OUT, but it was a lot of fun dancing along to it! FADELESS was REAALLLY good, plus because it's a slower song we were able to just sort of bop around while still actually being able to watch the stage. We actually heard FADELESS playing in the Lawson convenience store across the road from Yokohama Arena about half an hour before that when we were buying food... Oh maan that pumped me up so much =w=
Karasu, I was not too familiar with, but then HEADACHE MAN came on and my friend and I completely flipped out and auiguleifgwefer and ughhhhh... I was screaming out the chorus. AND THEN 13STAIRS[-]1 CAME ON AND JHDGWIEUFGWELFG. Guh, I'm sorry this is so pointless but oh my jesus that song is one of my absolute all time favourites, and when the heavy guitars came in... hhhhhnnnggghhhhhh /breaks neck
DEVOURING ONE ANOTHER... wow, Ruki's screams were PERFECT. I swear to god he sounds better in the actual live than on the live DVD.
LOSS I, again, haven't listened to that much, but again it's a 'slower' song so it was more watch the band being perfect on stage with their perfect strumming and drumming and singing. REDO was much the same.
THEN LAST HEAVEN CAME ON. Oh dear god I love that song so much... it was exquisite, and Aoi and Uruha were so beautiful with their acoustic guitars, Aoi more so because I have bias.
IN BLOSSOM I don't really remember... but I'm pretty sure there was head banging and us doing mysterious hand movements above our heads.
THE STUPID TINY INSECT was sooooo much fun, especially during the chorus where we just kept thrusting our fists into the air during the 'yeah!'s
And then... and then ATTITUDE started playing. Nope. Nope. I just couldn't. Definitely flipped out more than any of the previous songs before. We clapped really fast during that part (bridge?) before the chorus, and the lyrics popped up on the screens and then the heavy guitar part came in at some point and so many creys of happiness. The image is embodied until die...
BREAK! Abandon fear.. BREAK! Abandon fear...
So yeah that was one of my top three favourite performances... or five... so many good ones ;A;
Kuroku sunda sora to zangai to katabane... I know I'm a terrible fan, I didn't really recognise this one... well, I did once the chorus came on and it was a lot of fun o3o
Now... this song. Since seeing a performance of COCKROACH live on the Youtubes, and then subsequently watching more and more... it has been my dream for about five years to see this song live, so when it came on... I nearly started crying... oh lord, it was spectacular. The crowd singing along, those heavy guitars worming their way into you, and that break in the middle when everyone just went absolutely INSANE. That there is one of the defining moments of my life. It was just so incredible finally seeing the GazettE live and hearing that song. Uggghhhhh.
And then DISCHARGE came on and I was like nope. My friend and I lost it. My boyfriend continued doing his own thing which he had already been doing since the beginning of the concert ahaha... What's that, there are set hand movements? Nope, nope *punches air*
SO yeah. DISCHARGE. If I hadn't encountered whiplash before this, I definitely encountered it during this song. I'd seen so many video performances of this song and thought 'woah, no way man, if I was there I could NOT do that, I would break my neck!' But apparently I can do that. I SHOULDN'T have, as I discovered later, but I did. Ohhh man the slow head banging was probably my favourite part. It happened it songs other than DISCHARGE but it was probably the most obvious during this song. And then it reached the end of the song and... we waited for it and... it started up again, as expected and it was MAGICAL.
TO DAZZLING DARKNESS was a really big change... very slow and dark. Everyone just stood quietly watching in fascination and at the end of the song curtains came down... and then the eerily beautiful CODA started to play. After that ended, the lights came back on. Now, this being my first concert, first Vkei concert, and first concert in Japan, I was confused. Some people left, many people started clapping and chanting ON KO RE! (our group included), many people just sat around. We eventually assumed that it was an intermission, but I had this fear that if I stopped clapping and chanting they wouldn't come back... so we chanted and clapped for what felt like forever... and they came back *u*
Well, Kai and Reita did... and they riled up the crowd of course! Reita had bandaged his whole face though... he must have been super warm... RIDE WITH THE ROCKERS!!!
TOMORROW NEVER DIES had really cute furi... lots of flailing hands and wrists and stuff... ahhh it was just a really cute song to partake it!
UGHHHH THEN HYENA CAME AND RUINED MY LIFE. Another top song. MAN WHEN THAT DRUM BEAT STARTED I WAS JUST LIKE NOOOOOO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. And he let the audience sing so much of the song ohhhhhhhhhh yes it was so good. I used to hate when I saw artists doing that but... KYOUMEI WA HAI YE NA! It made me feel ridiculously happy seeing so many people who love the GazettE, who have learned all their lyrics, who were willing to snap their necks for them. Mad feels.
I didn't actually recognise SLUDGY CULT at all... I've heard it maybe a couple of times before so I was super lost the whole time and had to rely on the crowd more than usual. I can't say much about it because I was dazed the whole time >n<
And then this magnificent gem came on... I was so hoping that they'd play this one, and they did... FILTH IN THE BEAUTY. This was the first song that I EVER heard from the GazettE, so... well, it did things to. And the chorus... I was screaming that thing out. Ruki handed the chorus to the crowd to sing, and it was just all so inexplicably fantastic, and that anticipation just before SEXUAL DISGRACE! *flings head in both possible and impossible directions*
AND THEN THEY THANKED US AND LEFT. But it's okay, they heard our voices! This time many more people joined it to chant ON KO RE! ON KO RE! ON KO RE! Eventually I had no idea what I was saying and no idea where I was, but again, I had a fear they would not come back if we didn't cheer. Being a tour finale, part of me knew 'well duh, of course they'll do an encore' but... it was really important that they heard as many voices as they could ;A;
I don't really think Kantou and Linda really need explanation... there were a group of girls on the floor behind us pretty much face planting the ground during the song... ahhh they were so cool... and Ruki went around spraying smoke on the audience, as he does, flocked by security guards. There were two women in the Arena in wheelchairs, and he went up to them and sang to them! It was ridiculously cute, they must be so happy!!
Then they did their final goodbye, and it was super cute even though I understood only bits of it with my terrible Japanese comprehensibility. And the credits were playing on the screen and then... this super creepy video started playing, and eventually it turned out that the GazettE are doing a set of fan-only tours where they'll play songs from DISORDER/NIL in March, STACKED RUBBISH/DIM in Summer and then TOXIC/DIVISION in autumn... man I am so jealous, I really want to see the STACKED RUBBISH/DIM one... but there is no way I'll have enough money to go to Japan by then, and I should probably join the fan club already...
And now for my SUPER MEGA FAVOURITES OF THE EVENING (in no order because I just can't with all the hnnngggghhhhhs)
So, uh, yeah. It was pretty awesome. Incredible. Spectacular. Life-defining moment.
There was a Korean woman and her 12(?) year old son in front of us and... oh man she was sooooo cute! She head-banged during songs, I assume due to etiquette, but she looked like she was bowing really humbly and fuuuu so damn cute, taking her son to a rock concert and participating too! There was another girl in front of us who was INSANE. Wowwwww she knew all the furi perfectly, head banged incredibly and I was in awe of her skills.
As to my neck... it was hurting when we left, it hurt when I slept, it hurt more on the plane to Korea the the next day and... well, it was well below zero when we got to Korea (compared to about 10 degrees in Japan), so I got sick, feverish, and I think that increased the pain levels and... it was actually agonisingly, horribly painful! If I moved my neck slightly incorrectly, bolts of pain shot threw me. So that's how about 4 out of our 6 days in Korea were spent... I was sick, downing cold and flu pills, had no appetite and had terrible neck pains. I'm so angry that my appetite left and I felt sick no matter what I ate! Korean food is so good ;A;
I also wore a wig which was REALLY dumb because it started falling off about half way through...
Oooooooooooooh, and... in the foyer area of the arena where it had balloons and wreaths and things, we noticed that one of the wreaths was gifted from Plastic Tree, and one was from T.M. Revolution! Ohhh it was so cute! Interband/intergroup friendships and aquaintances always make me so happy!
So yeah... that was a really pointless entry, especially after not posting to this site for however many millenia but I had to write this down because I am still SO EXCITED. I desperately want to see them again... Hopefully they'll have some sort of tours going on in April 2014 when I go there next!
I saw the GazettE just over three weeks ago
wow. wow. wow. wowowowowwowowowowowowowowoow.
I went with my boyfriend and my really good friend who so so so luckily happened to be in Japan at the time! Our seats were reeeeaaaalllyyyyy far back, but by the end I didn't care that I couldn't see any of the members' faces. For one, our heads were down pretty much the WHOLE time, and then just the atmosphere and Ruki's voice... Oh man, his voice is absolutely perfect. Every note and growl and scream was just perfect.
The beginning was really scary... for the record, the only concert I've been to is Jay Park's. Everyone was just sitting there chilling and it was about 15 minutes after the concert was supposed to start and then BAM THE LIGHTS WENT OFF. Some lights came back on, MALFORMED BOX started playing and the WHOLE population of Yokohama Arena stood up and started slowly clapping. I seriously felt like I was part of some cult, it was amazing. So there we were waiting for the song to end... I actually thought I was going to die from suspense... and then INSIDE BEAST started to play and /dead. Everyone just flipped out and obviously the members appeared on stage and Ruki and his damn super perfect voice, and OH MAN THE FURI. Those little hand gestures that accompany the songs were the beeeeeest. If we weren't frantically waving our heads around, we were frantically waving our right hands. I took my shoes off three songs in because the head banging made me almost fall over the chair in front of me... I knew I should have worn creepers and not chunky heels. I've completely forgotten the order of the songs so I'm going to paste one from the namelessliberty tumblr:
01 MALFORMED BOX
02 INSIDE BEAST
03 UNTIL IT BURNS OUT
04 FADELESS
05 KARASA ( 鴉 )
06 HEADACHE MAN
07 13STAIRS[-]1
08 DEVOURING ONE ANOTHER
09 LOSS
10 REDO
11 LAST HEAVEN
12 IN BLOSSOM
13 THE STUPID TINY INSECT
14 ATTITUDE
15 KUROKU SUNDA SORA TO ZANGAI TO KATABANE
16 COCKROACH
17 DISCHARGE
18 TO DAZZLING DARKNESS
19 CODA
-EN-
E01 Ride with the Rockers
E02 TOMORROW NEVER DIES
E03 Hyena
E04 SLUDGY CULT
E05 Filth in the beauty
-WEN-
WE01 KANTOU DOGEZA KUMIAI ( 関東土下座組合 )
WE02 Linda ~Candydive Pinky Heaven~
My memory's kind of fuzzy on half of these because I'm still not 100% familiar with songs on BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY/DIVISION/TOXIC.
I'm not a huge fan of UNTIL IT BURNS OUT, but it was a lot of fun dancing along to it! FADELESS was REAALLLY good, plus because it's a slower song we were able to just sort of bop around while still actually being able to watch the stage. We actually heard FADELESS playing in the Lawson convenience store across the road from Yokohama Arena about half an hour before that when we were buying food... Oh maan that pumped me up so much =w=
Karasu, I was not too familiar with, but then HEADACHE MAN came on and my friend and I completely flipped out and auiguleifgwefer and ughhhhh... I was screaming out the chorus. AND THEN 13STAIRS[-]1 CAME ON AND JHDGWIEUFGWELFG. Guh, I'm sorry this is so pointless but oh my jesus that song is one of my absolute all time favourites, and when the heavy guitars came in... hhhhhnnnggghhhhhh /breaks neck
DEVOURING ONE ANOTHER... wow, Ruki's screams were PERFECT. I swear to god he sounds better in the actual live than on the live DVD.
LOSS I, again, haven't listened to that much, but again it's a 'slower' song so it was more watch the band being perfect on stage with their perfect strumming and drumming and singing. REDO was much the same.
THEN LAST HEAVEN CAME ON. Oh dear god I love that song so much... it was exquisite, and Aoi and Uruha were so beautiful with their acoustic guitars, Aoi more so because I have bias.
IN BLOSSOM I don't really remember... but I'm pretty sure there was head banging and us doing mysterious hand movements above our heads.
THE STUPID TINY INSECT was sooooo much fun, especially during the chorus where we just kept thrusting our fists into the air during the 'yeah!'s
And then... and then ATTITUDE started playing. Nope. Nope. I just couldn't. Definitely flipped out more than any of the previous songs before. We clapped really fast during that part (bridge?) before the chorus, and the lyrics popped up on the screens and then the heavy guitar part came in at some point and so many creys of happiness. The image is embodied until die...
BREAK! Abandon fear.. BREAK! Abandon fear...
So yeah that was one of my top three favourite performances... or five... so many good ones ;A;
Kuroku sunda sora to zangai to katabane... I know I'm a terrible fan, I didn't really recognise this one... well, I did once the chorus came on and it was a lot of fun o3o
Now... this song. Since seeing a performance of COCKROACH live on the Youtubes, and then subsequently watching more and more... it has been my dream for about five years to see this song live, so when it came on... I nearly started crying... oh lord, it was spectacular. The crowd singing along, those heavy guitars worming their way into you, and that break in the middle when everyone just went absolutely INSANE. That there is one of the defining moments of my life. It was just so incredible finally seeing the GazettE live and hearing that song. Uggghhhhh.
And then DISCHARGE came on and I was like nope. My friend and I lost it. My boyfriend continued doing his own thing which he had already been doing since the beginning of the concert ahaha... What's that, there are set hand movements? Nope, nope *punches air*
SO yeah. DISCHARGE. If I hadn't encountered whiplash before this, I definitely encountered it during this song. I'd seen so many video performances of this song and thought 'woah, no way man, if I was there I could NOT do that, I would break my neck!' But apparently I can do that. I SHOULDN'T have, as I discovered later, but I did. Ohhh man the slow head banging was probably my favourite part. It happened it songs other than DISCHARGE but it was probably the most obvious during this song. And then it reached the end of the song and... we waited for it and... it started up again, as expected and it was MAGICAL.
TO DAZZLING DARKNESS was a really big change... very slow and dark. Everyone just stood quietly watching in fascination and at the end of the song curtains came down... and then the eerily beautiful CODA started to play. After that ended, the lights came back on. Now, this being my first concert, first Vkei concert, and first concert in Japan, I was confused. Some people left, many people started clapping and chanting ON KO RE! (our group included), many people just sat around. We eventually assumed that it was an intermission, but I had this fear that if I stopped clapping and chanting they wouldn't come back... so we chanted and clapped for what felt like forever... and they came back *u*
Well, Kai and Reita did... and they riled up the crowd of course! Reita had bandaged his whole face though... he must have been super warm... RIDE WITH THE ROCKERS!!!
TOMORROW NEVER DIES had really cute furi... lots of flailing hands and wrists and stuff... ahhh it was just a really cute song to partake it!
UGHHHH THEN HYENA CAME AND RUINED MY LIFE. Another top song. MAN WHEN THAT DRUM BEAT STARTED I WAS JUST LIKE NOOOOOO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. And he let the audience sing so much of the song ohhhhhhhhhh yes it was so good. I used to hate when I saw artists doing that but... KYOUMEI WA HAI YE NA! It made me feel ridiculously happy seeing so many people who love the GazettE, who have learned all their lyrics, who were willing to snap their necks for them. Mad feels.
I didn't actually recognise SLUDGY CULT at all... I've heard it maybe a couple of times before so I was super lost the whole time and had to rely on the crowd more than usual. I can't say much about it because I was dazed the whole time >n<
And then this magnificent gem came on... I was so hoping that they'd play this one, and they did... FILTH IN THE BEAUTY. This was the first song that I EVER heard from the GazettE, so... well, it did things to. And the chorus... I was screaming that thing out. Ruki handed the chorus to the crowd to sing, and it was just all so inexplicably fantastic, and that anticipation just before SEXUAL DISGRACE! *flings head in both possible and impossible directions*
AND THEN THEY THANKED US AND LEFT. But it's okay, they heard our voices! This time many more people joined it to chant ON KO RE! ON KO RE! ON KO RE! Eventually I had no idea what I was saying and no idea where I was, but again, I had a fear they would not come back if we didn't cheer. Being a tour finale, part of me knew 'well duh, of course they'll do an encore' but... it was really important that they heard as many voices as they could ;A;
I don't really think Kantou and Linda really need explanation... there were a group of girls on the floor behind us pretty much face planting the ground during the song... ahhh they were so cool... and Ruki went around spraying smoke on the audience, as he does, flocked by security guards. There were two women in the Arena in wheelchairs, and he went up to them and sang to them! It was ridiculously cute, they must be so happy!!
Then they did their final goodbye, and it was super cute even though I understood only bits of it with my terrible Japanese comprehensibility. And the credits were playing on the screen and then... this super creepy video started playing, and eventually it turned out that the GazettE are doing a set of fan-only tours where they'll play songs from DISORDER/NIL in March, STACKED RUBBISH/DIM in Summer and then TOXIC/DIVISION in autumn... man I am so jealous, I really want to see the STACKED RUBBISH/DIM one... but there is no way I'll have enough money to go to Japan by then, and I should probably join the fan club already...
And now for my SUPER MEGA FAVOURITES OF THE EVENING (in no order because I just can't with all the hnnngggghhhhhs)
- ATTITUDE
- COCKROACH
- DISCHARGE
- HYENA
- FILTH IN THE BEAUTY
- KANTOU DOGEZA KUMIAI
So, uh, yeah. It was pretty awesome. Incredible. Spectacular. Life-defining moment.
There was a Korean woman and her 12(?) year old son in front of us and... oh man she was sooooo cute! She head-banged during songs, I assume due to etiquette, but she looked like she was bowing really humbly and fuuuu so damn cute, taking her son to a rock concert and participating too! There was another girl in front of us who was INSANE. Wowwwww she knew all the furi perfectly, head banged incredibly and I was in awe of her skills.
As to my neck... it was hurting when we left, it hurt when I slept, it hurt more on the plane to Korea the the next day and... well, it was well below zero when we got to Korea (compared to about 10 degrees in Japan), so I got sick, feverish, and I think that increased the pain levels and... it was actually agonisingly, horribly painful! If I moved my neck slightly incorrectly, bolts of pain shot threw me. So that's how about 4 out of our 6 days in Korea were spent... I was sick, downing cold and flu pills, had no appetite and had terrible neck pains. I'm so angry that my appetite left and I felt sick no matter what I ate! Korean food is so good ;A;
I also wore a wig which was REALLY dumb because it started falling off about half way through...
Oooooooooooooh, and... in the foyer area of the arena where it had balloons and wreaths and things, we noticed that one of the wreaths was gifted from Plastic Tree, and one was from T.M. Revolution! Ohhh it was so cute! Interband/intergroup friendships and aquaintances always make me so happy!
So yeah... that was a really pointless entry, especially after not posting to this site for however many millenia but I had to write this down because I am still SO EXCITED. I desperately want to see them again... Hopefully they'll have some sort of tours going on in April 2014 when I go there next!