Emotional Night for DEATHGAZE
(From Virtual Japan)
A few hours after DEATHGAZE had their last interview with their bandmate Naoto, the band was set to take the stage. While the audience was waiting there were a few of the band’s influences playing on the speaker system, including Metallica. The audience started to reach a fevered pitch before the band was anywhere in site and were chanting “oi! oi! oi! oi!”. There was a lot of built up anticipation for tonight’s concert. It had been a long time since DEATHGAZE had last stepped foot in Tokyo and it was the last concert with the guitarist Naoto. Naoto announced on the band’s homepage that this would be his last show which resulted in an instant sell out of the tickets.
The band walked out one by one; fist the drummer Naoki, second the guitarist Naoto, third the bassist Kosuke, and finally the vocalist Ai, who would swirl his tongue around like an escapee from a mental institution. With little ado the band went straight into -l off their newest album, Awake -evoke the urge.
DEATHGAZE
This was filled with furious screams and growls that replicated the intensity of the CD perfectly.
Ai
His screaming technique was perfect and had added surprised like licking his lips with his tongue in between screaming like the Joker did in the recent Batman film.
Ai
Ai
For most of the song Ai was out front crouching on a stand while screaming.
Ai
Meanwhile the rest of the band members stood in the back ground only to come out a bit during the instrumental portion of the song.
Naoto
Naoto
Their next song, Evoke the world from AWAKE -evoke the urge wasn’t a straight forward scream fest and had multiple transitions. However the vocalist nailed each transition with grace. Ai could go from intense screaming to beautiful singing evocative of visual kei singing all while doing a crazy moshing dance on stage.
Ai
Fog came bursting out and made everything extremely dark. In fact the entire show was extremely dark. This was complemented by the band wearing all black with black make up.
Naoto
The audience was eating up every last second. There was furious head banging from the mostly female audience. Towards the end of the song, Naoto had a guitar solo which he seemed really happy and emotional while soloing. He looked as if he was fully taking in his last show, smiling at times (which was a little out of place for DEATHGAZE) and really getting into the music at others.
Naoto
Naoto
“Show me your energy” proclaimed the vocalist to a flurry of “OI!” from the audience. Before the audience could even finish, DEATHGAZE had alread started unchain wing from AWAKE -evoke the urge. The audience heeded to Ai’s commands and went into a forray of headbanging creating an image out of a Van Gogh painting.
Ai
Kosuke started screaming into the mic as well and amazingly, everything sounded exactly as it did on the CD. Kosuke played impeccably and would occasionally smash his fists into his chest in between verses.
Kosuke
The bassist and guitar would even headbang while playing complicated verses and would never miss a note. The fifth song could only be described as chaos because that was exactly what it was. The stage went completely red.
DEATHGAZE
As the music was building up, Ai went around greeting friends and fans in the audience. The atmosphere seemed very friendly until he started to scream “CHAOS!” furiously. The audience was all jumping up and down for minutes with pure energy. With lots of abstract guitar work coupled with that machinegun sound, the audience was going nuts. When they slowed it down a few knotches, the audience started to rock back and forth and then the song finished. During the sixth song, Ai would lick his lips again in the most freakiest of ways. The seventh song, quench from AWAKE evoke the urge went right into fast guitar work by Naoto. However it was the next song, domestic pig #1013 from AWAKE -evoke the urge where the audience came alive. The vocalist would rile up the crowd with chants while Kosuke and Naoto would brood around stage like hunchbacks.
Throughout the past 7 uninterupted songs of unrelenting screaming, Ai’s voice was still perfect. Unbelievable. This wasn’t to last as he demanded a break with pure agony after the eighth song. The intermission was brief. Ai said, “We’re DEATHGAZE,” followed by the audience saying “It’s nice to meet you” and him replying, “It’s nice to meet you too. This is Naoto’s last live.” Then immediately afterwords they went into Shizakura with little ado. This song was more melodic and gave the band the opportunity to rest a bit, but the song was mostly hard.
Ai
For DOWNER from DEAREST, the stage went red again and that machinegun sound came back as Kosuke held up his bass vertically while playing the ascending portion of the song. Song 11, Memento Mori was a soft song that went quite well and displayed the band’s full range. After this song, the band took a one minute break without saying or doing anything. They merely stood on the stage while fans screamed “Yada!” and “Doushite?” to Naoto.
After the break, the band played forsaken from AWAKE -evoke the urge. This song was softer and more emotional and as a result Ai would clench his hands in pain as he looked down, visibly in pain. At the end of the song he screamed into the mic in agony. The next song SINNER from I’m broken baby, was also soft but played into the emotions of this sad day. Naoto was singing out loud (not into a mic) and the whole song was really in the moment. The next song, Shishuu was also another soft song. In this song the entire band was looking down and didn’t show their face, some members looked like they were crying. Ai looked like he was going to break down. As the song ended the entire place was dead quiet. You could hear a needle drop.
DEATHGAZE finally took down the veil and started to talk. “Welcome. This is a very difficult live to do. Today is our tour final at AREA. Thanks for coming to see us. It’s been a long time since we had a ‘one man show’. The last time we were in Tokyo was in May of last year.” A roadie came out who also had the same look as the band (all black clothing and black makeup) to fix Naoto’s cords. Ai commented on how they always get tied up. Naoto dryly replied by saying, “You’re cool.” The crowd started to scream “Yada” in complete disgust that their favorite guitarist was leaving. Ai screamed at them, “SHUT UP! I’m sorry! Everyone looks so happy that it’s making me sick.”
After a nice break, the band went into their harder material again with ‘paranoid parade’. The crowd started to jump up and down with everyone head banging. Naoto was hopping around and doing a funny dance. Meanwhile, Ai and Kosuke were screaming into the mic creating an earthquake. For the next song, fuck me from AWAKE -evoke the urge, Ai looked down at the audience while screaming, “FUCK ME!” The females in the audience most surely would have. The band was really laying down an impressive performance. For music that is this aggressive and heavy on distortion, everything sounded so clear, from the heavy parts to the solos (Kosuke had a nice bass solo on this song). However during abyss the vocalist seemed to be slightly out breath but still held on to that raw intensity. For the second to last song, the band played I’m broken baby. The crowd was riled up by the vocalist screaming “Iku Ze!” The ferociousness of DEATHGAZE was back! There was double bass drum insanity, relentless screaming and an audience shoutfest of “oi!” The song ended with just the bass and drum while Naoto screamed into the mic while holding his fist in the air with his middle finger flanked out. The last song, genocide and mass murder was relentless. The music was incredibly fast and seemed to be the song the band enjoyed playing the most. The audience also seemed to love it as well. The band departed the stage while thanking everyone.
The band came out for an encore but something strange was happening. The members all took up different instruments. The vocalist picked up a guitar, the guitarist picked up a bass and the bassist became the vocalist. While Kosuke certainly had charisma he didn’t have as powerful of a voice as Ai, but looked like a mad scientist with his crazy hair and zombie-like movements while singing venom. However Ai and Naoto were superb at their new instruments. Just as everyone was getting used to this new paradigm the band switched everything up again. This time, Ai played bass, Kosuke played guitar, and Naoto was the vocalist. The audience went nuts. Naoto had very high pitched screaming and barely moved. He definitely wasn’t suited to be a vocalist. In fact, Ai had to do support vocals to carry the weight. The band was having lots of fun playing their new roles. The next portion of the encore brought on a drum solo. The audience tried to clap along, but with all of the slow downs, speedups and frantic pace, the audience quickly realized it was futile. The drum solo only lasted a minute or two. Ai came out on stage and said that his solo was too short and they expected to get a good rest, but Naoki said he had no more energy.
Naoki Exhaustion
Regardless, Ai said the drums sounded cool. The reason why Ai was complaining was because he had his own solo performance next and wanted a little more down time. He brought out an acoustic guitar and sat on the sole chair that occupied the stage. He looked out and said, “oh shit, everyone’s watching me. Ahhh, I’m nervous.” “Wasn’t that interesting before? The bass is quite a difficult instrument.” He looked puzzled and said, “give me a few more minutes. I mean come on! Who would have expected that drum solo to be that short! Being out here alone is scary.” The audience screamed out, “ganbatte!”. Ai replied sarcastically, “You’re so nice. Wouldn’t you rather go home and sleep?” “NO!” belted the audience. “Alright then, we’ll play 120 more songs,” joked Ai. “I make lots of mistakes. I wasn’t originally a vocalist you know. Please forgive the mistakes I’m about to make. OH! This is too nerve racking!” Ai seemed to have caught his bearings and started to finger pick the intro but immediately screwed up. He tried to cover it by claiming he did that on purpose. He then started again to play a beautiful acoustic solo version of ‘amends’.
Ai
He closed his eyes as he picked each note and sung quietly yet passionately. During the picking he kept it going but the timing was off at the more complicated parts. Once the song went to strumming, he started to become more confident and passionately sung with some added vibrato. The venue was completely quiet during his performance but after it finished, you could here “Kakkouii” shouted from the audience. “Thank you very much. As we announced earlier, Naoto will be leaving the band. Since we formed, we’ve had a lot of different experiences. There is a lot of hardship and difficult things, but all of us have lots of baggage. Naoto chose his own path and we chose ours. Everyone has their own path. At some point another person will stand where he stood. We will make the best music that we can. Oh, don’t cry” Ai said as he saw that many in the audience were crying and sniffles could easily be heard. “Let’s finish by having a good time. Let’s send him off while we laugh and …” he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth during this emotional moment. Naoto chimed in, “Today was awesome!” Then the topic of conversation went random, Ai said, “what’s your favorite Street Fighter II character?” Naoto, “Why Bison is.” Kosuke tried to butt in, but Ai commented on his gotti, “Nice gotti. Does everyone love Kosuke? I just wanna touch him all the time. Hey, what did you eat?” “I ate natto,” said Kosuke. Ai replied, “Why always natto? (He then faces the audience). We were able to stay in a single hotel room last night. That’s right, our band’s status has been upgraded. Everyone gathered in my room to play Street Fighter 0 for PS2 for 3 hours. The entire time, he ate natto. I couldn’t sleep because my room reaked of natto.” Kosuke tried to change the subject, “I like Vega.”
Kosuke
The audience then screamed for Naoto who was standing there idly. “This is great! This is my final show.”
Naoto
Ai asked, “Why are you quitting idiot?” Naoto replied, “I’m leaving, I can’t say much. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank the enter brain staff, and especialy you the fans. Thanks to all of you, I will always have a great memory of this…” He starts to choke up. As he’s trying to collect his thoughts the fans bring a present for him. It was a towel with a message written from all of the fans. He didn’t know where to put the towel so he wrapped it around him.
Naoto
He took it off though and said, “I can’t play guitar in this.” The band then played three more heavy songs. Throughout the entire 27 gut wrenching songs, Ai held his voice and the band had perfect timing. DEATHGAZE is definitely a live band. As the band departed the audience screamed out, “YADA!!!!!” Maybe the band felt bad so they came out for a second encore and played one more song, scatologist.
DEATHGAZE
As the band left the stage, Naoto profusely thanked the crowed by saying “domo arigatou” dozens of times.
The band walked out one by one; fist the drummer Naoki, second the guitarist Naoto, third the bassist Kosuke, and finally the vocalist Ai, who would swirl his tongue around like an escapee from a mental institution. With little ado the band went straight into -l off their newest album, Awake -evoke the urge.
DEATHGAZE
This was filled with furious screams and growls that replicated the intensity of the CD perfectly.
Ai
His screaming technique was perfect and had added surprised like licking his lips with his tongue in between screaming like the Joker did in the recent Batman film.
Ai
Ai
For most of the song Ai was out front crouching on a stand while screaming.
Ai
Meanwhile the rest of the band members stood in the back ground only to come out a bit during the instrumental portion of the song.
Naoto
Naoto
Their next song, Evoke the world from AWAKE -evoke the urge wasn’t a straight forward scream fest and had multiple transitions. However the vocalist nailed each transition with grace. Ai could go from intense screaming to beautiful singing evocative of visual kei singing all while doing a crazy moshing dance on stage.
Ai
Fog came bursting out and made everything extremely dark. In fact the entire show was extremely dark. This was complemented by the band wearing all black with black make up.
Naoto
The audience was eating up every last second. There was furious head banging from the mostly female audience. Towards the end of the song, Naoto had a guitar solo which he seemed really happy and emotional while soloing. He looked as if he was fully taking in his last show, smiling at times (which was a little out of place for DEATHGAZE) and really getting into the music at others.
Naoto
Naoto
“Show me your energy” proclaimed the vocalist to a flurry of “OI!” from the audience. Before the audience could even finish, DEATHGAZE had alread started unchain wing from AWAKE -evoke the urge. The audience heeded to Ai’s commands and went into a forray of headbanging creating an image out of a Van Gogh painting.
Ai
Kosuke started screaming into the mic as well and amazingly, everything sounded exactly as it did on the CD. Kosuke played impeccably and would occasionally smash his fists into his chest in between verses.
Kosuke
The bassist and guitar would even headbang while playing complicated verses and would never miss a note. The fifth song could only be described as chaos because that was exactly what it was. The stage went completely red.
DEATHGAZE
As the music was building up, Ai went around greeting friends and fans in the audience. The atmosphere seemed very friendly until he started to scream “CHAOS!” furiously. The audience was all jumping up and down for minutes with pure energy. With lots of abstract guitar work coupled with that machinegun sound, the audience was going nuts. When they slowed it down a few knotches, the audience started to rock back and forth and then the song finished. During the sixth song, Ai would lick his lips again in the most freakiest of ways. The seventh song, quench from AWAKE evoke the urge went right into fast guitar work by Naoto. However it was the next song, domestic pig #1013 from AWAKE -evoke the urge where the audience came alive. The vocalist would rile up the crowd with chants while Kosuke and Naoto would brood around stage like hunchbacks.
Throughout the past 7 uninterupted songs of unrelenting screaming, Ai’s voice was still perfect. Unbelievable. This wasn’t to last as he demanded a break with pure agony after the eighth song. The intermission was brief. Ai said, “We’re DEATHGAZE,” followed by the audience saying “It’s nice to meet you” and him replying, “It’s nice to meet you too. This is Naoto’s last live.” Then immediately afterwords they went into Shizakura with little ado. This song was more melodic and gave the band the opportunity to rest a bit, but the song was mostly hard.
Ai
For DOWNER from DEAREST, the stage went red again and that machinegun sound came back as Kosuke held up his bass vertically while playing the ascending portion of the song. Song 11, Memento Mori was a soft song that went quite well and displayed the band’s full range. After this song, the band took a one minute break without saying or doing anything. They merely stood on the stage while fans screamed “Yada!” and “Doushite?” to Naoto.
After the break, the band played forsaken from AWAKE -evoke the urge. This song was softer and more emotional and as a result Ai would clench his hands in pain as he looked down, visibly in pain. At the end of the song he screamed into the mic in agony. The next song SINNER from I’m broken baby, was also soft but played into the emotions of this sad day. Naoto was singing out loud (not into a mic) and the whole song was really in the moment. The next song, Shishuu was also another soft song. In this song the entire band was looking down and didn’t show their face, some members looked like they were crying. Ai looked like he was going to break down. As the song ended the entire place was dead quiet. You could hear a needle drop.
DEATHGAZE finally took down the veil and started to talk. “Welcome. This is a very difficult live to do. Today is our tour final at AREA. Thanks for coming to see us. It’s been a long time since we had a ‘one man show’. The last time we were in Tokyo was in May of last year.” A roadie came out who also had the same look as the band (all black clothing and black makeup) to fix Naoto’s cords. Ai commented on how they always get tied up. Naoto dryly replied by saying, “You’re cool.” The crowd started to scream “Yada” in complete disgust that their favorite guitarist was leaving. Ai screamed at them, “SHUT UP! I’m sorry! Everyone looks so happy that it’s making me sick.”
After a nice break, the band went into their harder material again with ‘paranoid parade’. The crowd started to jump up and down with everyone head banging. Naoto was hopping around and doing a funny dance. Meanwhile, Ai and Kosuke were screaming into the mic creating an earthquake. For the next song, fuck me from AWAKE -evoke the urge, Ai looked down at the audience while screaming, “FUCK ME!” The females in the audience most surely would have. The band was really laying down an impressive performance. For music that is this aggressive and heavy on distortion, everything sounded so clear, from the heavy parts to the solos (Kosuke had a nice bass solo on this song). However during abyss the vocalist seemed to be slightly out breath but still held on to that raw intensity. For the second to last song, the band played I’m broken baby. The crowd was riled up by the vocalist screaming “Iku Ze!” The ferociousness of DEATHGAZE was back! There was double bass drum insanity, relentless screaming and an audience shoutfest of “oi!” The song ended with just the bass and drum while Naoto screamed into the mic while holding his fist in the air with his middle finger flanked out. The last song, genocide and mass murder was relentless. The music was incredibly fast and seemed to be the song the band enjoyed playing the most. The audience also seemed to love it as well. The band departed the stage while thanking everyone.
The band came out for an encore but something strange was happening. The members all took up different instruments. The vocalist picked up a guitar, the guitarist picked up a bass and the bassist became the vocalist. While Kosuke certainly had charisma he didn’t have as powerful of a voice as Ai, but looked like a mad scientist with his crazy hair and zombie-like movements while singing venom. However Ai and Naoto were superb at their new instruments. Just as everyone was getting used to this new paradigm the band switched everything up again. This time, Ai played bass, Kosuke played guitar, and Naoto was the vocalist. The audience went nuts. Naoto had very high pitched screaming and barely moved. He definitely wasn’t suited to be a vocalist. In fact, Ai had to do support vocals to carry the weight. The band was having lots of fun playing their new roles. The next portion of the encore brought on a drum solo. The audience tried to clap along, but with all of the slow downs, speedups and frantic pace, the audience quickly realized it was futile. The drum solo only lasted a minute or two. Ai came out on stage and said that his solo was too short and they expected to get a good rest, but Naoki said he had no more energy.
Naoki Exhaustion
Regardless, Ai said the drums sounded cool. The reason why Ai was complaining was because he had his own solo performance next and wanted a little more down time. He brought out an acoustic guitar and sat on the sole chair that occupied the stage. He looked out and said, “oh shit, everyone’s watching me. Ahhh, I’m nervous.” “Wasn’t that interesting before? The bass is quite a difficult instrument.” He looked puzzled and said, “give me a few more minutes. I mean come on! Who would have expected that drum solo to be that short! Being out here alone is scary.” The audience screamed out, “ganbatte!”. Ai replied sarcastically, “You’re so nice. Wouldn’t you rather go home and sleep?” “NO!” belted the audience. “Alright then, we’ll play 120 more songs,” joked Ai. “I make lots of mistakes. I wasn’t originally a vocalist you know. Please forgive the mistakes I’m about to make. OH! This is too nerve racking!” Ai seemed to have caught his bearings and started to finger pick the intro but immediately screwed up. He tried to cover it by claiming he did that on purpose. He then started again to play a beautiful acoustic solo version of ‘amends’.
Ai
He closed his eyes as he picked each note and sung quietly yet passionately. During the picking he kept it going but the timing was off at the more complicated parts. Once the song went to strumming, he started to become more confident and passionately sung with some added vibrato. The venue was completely quiet during his performance but after it finished, you could here “Kakkouii” shouted from the audience. “Thank you very much. As we announced earlier, Naoto will be leaving the band. Since we formed, we’ve had a lot of different experiences. There is a lot of hardship and difficult things, but all of us have lots of baggage. Naoto chose his own path and we chose ours. Everyone has their own path. At some point another person will stand where he stood. We will make the best music that we can. Oh, don’t cry” Ai said as he saw that many in the audience were crying and sniffles could easily be heard. “Let’s finish by having a good time. Let’s send him off while we laugh and …” he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth during this emotional moment. Naoto chimed in, “Today was awesome!” Then the topic of conversation went random, Ai said, “what’s your favorite Street Fighter II character?” Naoto, “Why Bison is.” Kosuke tried to butt in, but Ai commented on his gotti, “Nice gotti. Does everyone love Kosuke? I just wanna touch him all the time. Hey, what did you eat?” “I ate natto,” said Kosuke. Ai replied, “Why always natto? (He then faces the audience). We were able to stay in a single hotel room last night. That’s right, our band’s status has been upgraded. Everyone gathered in my room to play Street Fighter 0 for PS2 for 3 hours. The entire time, he ate natto. I couldn’t sleep because my room reaked of natto.” Kosuke tried to change the subject, “I like Vega.”
Kosuke
The audience then screamed for Naoto who was standing there idly. “This is great! This is my final show.”
Naoto
Ai asked, “Why are you quitting idiot?” Naoto replied, “I’m leaving, I can’t say much. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank the enter brain staff, and especialy you the fans. Thanks to all of you, I will always have a great memory of this…” He starts to choke up. As he’s trying to collect his thoughts the fans bring a present for him. It was a towel with a message written from all of the fans. He didn’t know where to put the towel so he wrapped it around him.
Naoto
He took it off though and said, “I can’t play guitar in this.” The band then played three more heavy songs. Throughout the entire 27 gut wrenching songs, Ai held his voice and the band had perfect timing. DEATHGAZE is definitely a live band. As the band departed the audience screamed out, “YADA!!!!!” Maybe the band felt bad so they came out for a second encore and played one more song, scatologist.
DEATHGAZE
As the band left the stage, Naoto profusely thanked the crowed by saying “domo arigatou” dozens of times.
Setlist
SE(Japanese Melliorism)
1.-1
2.Evoke the world
3.unchain wing
4.goodbye my earth
5.CHAOS
6.the menace
7.quench
8.domestic pig #1013
9.Shizakura
10.DOWNER
11.Memento Mori
12.forsaken
13.SINNER
14.Shishuu
15.paranoid parade
16.fuck me
17.abyss
18.DEAREST
19.I’m broken baby
20.genocide and mass murder
Encore
21.venom
22.294036224052
23.Drum Solo
24.amends
25.insult kiss me
26.Rihitozoire
27.Yami ni Ame Fuhai Shita Sekai
28.Scatologist
Tsukachi's note :
I was cried when I read this article -_-; especially in this part :The audience then screamed for Naoto who was standing there idly. “This is great! This is my final show.”
Ai asked, “Why are you quitting idiot?” Naoto replied, “I’m leaving, I can’t say much. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank the enter brain staff, and especialy you the fans. Thanks to all of you, I will always have a great memory of this…” He starts to choke up. As he’s trying to collect his thoughts the fans bring a present for him. It was a towel with a message written from all of the fans. He didn’t know where to put the towel so he wrapped it around him.
My tears fall down when I read those lines >w< it's Naoto's last live with DEATHGAZE xO
my heart was broken, Deathgaze always give me unexpected NEWS! when Sou (vocalist) left, i was so sad also and now Naoto.. :( But, I hope the best for the band and Naoto xD
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