Dobek Ohashi CxT Tokyo Straight Edge

I was really REALLY happy that Aram didn’t live up to his word and got the BETRAYED back together as I never got to see them when they were going the first time around. Not living in US/Europe leaves you at a huge disadvantage HC gig-wise.
Here is some short clips from the, until recently, last BETRAYED gig. Every time I watch this my skin goes goose. I wish I was at that gig almost as much as wanted to be at the last CHAMPION show. Great on stage banter. Aram writes lyrics that I can most definitely relate to and #43/88 lays out riffs that make you want to rip the place to bits. Get into it.. Amazing band.

Tokyo show was really good. I spent a lot of time upstairs trying to get rid of bunch of my shirts due to the unsufficient funds but I went down to watch few local bands AS WE LET GO being one of them. Possibly the coolest band out of Tokyo right now.

After that I was back upstairs to loose the shirts. Unfortunatelly most of them were in size S and as it turns out the Japanese are not all that small haha

Yumi + Yuri and where is Yasuko???
Long time no see :)

FC FIVE = as usual = tip top x

And finally BETRAYED. Exceeded expectations. Great band. Really makes you wanna go apeshit dive-wise despite 30+ on your neck, unfortunatelly my fucked spine started to bother me again recently which pretty much left me on the side lines for this one. Can’t wait for their Sunday show in Chiba though.

FreezeUpFreezeUpFreezeUPFreezeUp
“In Effect” Demo 2008

I got this in the post today and have been rocking it on my $15 tape player for some good few hours now. I didnt get to hear many new demos recently but out of the ones I did, this one is the boss.

So, what do you know about Cardiff City? I once met a bloke from Cardiff. I think it was around 8/9 years ago. I can’t remember his name, Tom or Jon (??) maybe. He handed me his business card that said something like VEGAN EXECUTIVE or something along those lines and I think it had a picture of a hunter dude being aimed at (aka the STATEMENT ep rip-off) or am I just imagining this? So awesome. He was a real nice chap, despite wearing 25 TA LIFE shirt. We actually met at an ANTI-FUR demo that was somewhere close to Oxford Circus in London. Anyone ever goes to those anymore? Didn’t think so..
He used to come to London for shows after that every now and then and after some few shows I have never seen him again.

So that was all I ever knew about Cardiff. That the vegan executive geezer lived there. Now I know that there’s an awesome band there as well.
They say they sound like Outburst mixed with Altercation. I’m shit at comparisons but in my opinion to sound like Outburst you need at least one geezer in your band to look like Ben Affleck. But that’s just me.
Outburst/not Outburst, this demo is proper good nevertheless.
Another thing I have to mention is that this release has the illest looking cover art I have seen in 2008 so far. I also like how the case and the tape match the cover colour-wise. This one’s gonna be hard to beat.

I wish I could say where you can get one but there were only 50 made and they are all GONE as of now.
Good news is that there’s a YSI link here that will be valid for 7 days from now so that you can download this thing my pedigree chums

…and there ain’t no hope. Or so what they say.
Defiance ~ I bought their 1st LP when it came out sometime in 95 or 96, can’t remember exactly. I recall they were huge in Europe around that time. That dude Kelly who played bass for them was in just about every band out of Portland: RESIST, Masskontrol maybe Deprived (?) I can’t remember what else… Busy dude.

No Future No Hope = great punk record.

I dont know any of their newer stuff but the songs I didnt know sounded OK live. I dont know what happened to the other singer though. The songs on that LP, nearly all of them are sung on two vocals. Live just the fat geezer was doing all the legwork. It would have sounded way better if there were 2 of them like on the LP. Still, the gig was pretty ill.

I had work that day so I got to Shinjuku pretty late. Just before 9pm. In time for last local act that name I was too lazy to find out. Pretty cool band though, check teh video below. The vocal looked like a Japanese version of Charlie Harper. Many points.

Other than that I met Mayu. I havent seen her since we last met at the Casualties gig in 2006. Long time no see.

Oh yeah, when you look at the pictures, check out the Addicts dude. I hate that band, they have a shit name and their music is gobshite but the geezer at the gig looked ill as fuck. Kind of reminded me of the Joker from new Batman movie.

The Japanese band that name I dont know

Defiance

I was hanging out at Hachioji for a while. Walked around some shops and went up the fire escape to the top of some office building. Check out the pics > one of them is a panoramic view off the roof.
After that I rolled into to Takashi’s to finish the half sleeve. Now we’re gonna start filling all the holes to cover the rest of the arm. Awesome. Takashi rules.