Tonight is the night for Opeth!

Between bands at Loud Park the above Opeth ad could be seen on the giant screen. I purchased my Opeth ticket before Loud Park so the Opeth show wasn’t news to me, but it was fun to see the advertisement anyway.

Purchasing concert tickets in Japan is a breeze (if you can read Japanese). Simply walk into any convenience store (we have at least a dozen within a five minute walk from our apartment), go to the ticket vending machine, type in the name of the artist, venue, or date, push a button to print your receipt, take it to the counter, and pay at the register. There are no lines to wait in, internet sites downed by everyone logging on at once, or $20 commissions to Ticketmaster like in the U.S. I was back home with an Opeth ticket in my hand less than 10 minutes after they went on sale.

The above picture is of the flyer for tonight’s gig that I received at Loud Park. The CD on the left I received at Loud Park for filling out a one-page survey (in Japanese) for Arch Enemy. Unfortunately, there is a guy talking (in Japanese of course) between the songs. He is interesting to listen to once, but I have no desire to play the CD a second time with the thought of having to hear him again in order to listen to the Arch Enemy tunes.

Arch Enemy, by the way, is using my photos on their website. It would have been nice had they asked first or at least linked back to the source. Better yet, they could offer me a photographer’s pass to the next gig they do near my location so I can take photos from less than a mile away. In fact, I will send Arch Enemy, or any other band, all of the photos and video I have of them (63 pics and video in the case of Arch Enemy) in their original, high-resolution, not-yet-resized-for-the-internet format with rights to do whatever they like with them for nothing more than a photographer’s press pass to one of their future shows I can attend. And I will give them, free of charge, all of the images and video I take at that show as well.

Posted on November 17th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, opeth, Tokyo. Comments: None

This entry will wrap up the Slayer series. I will probably have another post or two on other Loud Park 2009 acts in the future.

Tom does a fine job of singing the most morbid lyrics with a smile on his face.

Kerry didn’t have spiked arms on this evening, like he has when I have seen Slayer in the past, but he looked great anyway.

World Painted Blood was still a couple of weeks from being released when Slayer played at Loud Park in October of 2009. Tom didn’t have the lyrics down for the new songs so he looked down at cue cards when they played about three new tunes.

Posted on November 1st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, slayer. Comments: None

More Slayer photos and video can be found in my prior entry.

The above picture is obviously a mistake. I must have been hit at the moment I took it. But I like the results. A photo like this conveys Slayer more clearly than a sharp image.

Dave Lombardo has been back with the band for a while now. I thought his stuff with Grip Inc. was also very good. For some strange reason, they scheduled his signing session at the same time as Children of Bodom’s live set so I didn’t get to meet him.

Here is the other video of Slayer that I captured, “Seasons in the Abyss.” Enjoy!

Posted on November 1st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, slayer, video. Comments: None

Slayer was the headliner for day two (Sunday) of Loud Park.

Tom Araya, Slayer’s bassist and vocalist, didn’t speak very much, which made sense given that most of the crowd wouldn’t understand him anyway. Some others (Rob Zombie for instance) seemed completely clueless to the fact that everyone in the world can’t understand English.

The above photo was taken at the moment when Tom said oyasuminasai (お休みなさい) at the end of the show. He, and the Children of Bodom keyboardist Janne Wirman, were the only non-Japanese artists to go beyond arigato in Japanese.

I have seen Jeff Hanneman live in the 80s, 90s, and now at Loud Park in 2009. He is not aging well (unlike Megadeth members who look better now than they did twenty years ago). As someone appearing on a stage in front of thousands, more than a hundred nights a year, he should really take better care of himself. He can barely waddle from one side of the stage to the other. If I ever see Slayer again I won’t be surprised to see him come out in a muumuu next time, instead of an XXXL jersey, at the rate he is going.

My favorite part of the above photo is the guy’s foot in the air. When I was in the front row for Outrage it was fun to see the crowd surfers once they made it to the stage. They would bow to security before heading to the side and back into the crowd. Within a few minutes the same guys would be bowing once again to the security guards.

Slayer bids farewell to the Tokyo crowd in the above photo. Hanneman appears to have already made a quick exit to get first dibs on the post-show buffet.

I believe the only song Tom gave any kind of description of before playing was “Mandatory Suicide” which you can see in the video I shot below. This was not an easy video to take as the crowd was going nuts around me. Luckily I was a foot taller than most of them. If you look closely you can spot Hanneman’s Heineken logo guitar. The guitar actually says Hanneman instead of Heineken though. A light beer should sponsor a weight loss program for Jeff and then give him a guitar with their logo on it. Sorry, enough of the Hanneman being fat comments and on to the video…

Posted on October 20th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: loudpark, metal, slayer, video. Comments: None