Opeth was set to hit the stage at Shibuya O-EAST at 7 p.m. Doors opened at 6 p.m., and there was no opening band. Rain had been falling hard all day and didn’t let up before, or after, the show. I arrived at 6 to find that they were letting people in based on a number printed on the ticket. It turns out I was number 189. I don’t know if this is the case at all small venues in Japan, but it is good to know. If you aren’t in the first 50 numbers, who grab up the best spots, you may as well show up 10 minutes before the show so you don’t have to stand and wait for an hour.

Most people in the audience had an umbrella with them throughout the show, myself included. Afterwards I thought I should have opened my umbrella when Mikael mentioned “Watershed,” but maybe the mostly non-English speaking audience wouldn’t have made the connection.

O-EAST is a fantastic venue. The stage is large for the size of the place, and everyone in the audience is within about 40 feet of the stage. The sound was incredible. I think this was the best quality sound I have ever experienced at a concert. Maybe my earplugs were just in perfectly, or something, but the music was crystal clear. There wasn’t the normal distortion of music bouncing around like there usually is at indoor shows. I wasn’t even standing near the mixing board; nor was I dead center. Even so, the mix from my position in the crowd was perfect; every instrument, and the vocals, sounded just right.

Even though I saw Opeth on this same tour back in the states this past summer, the set list was extremely different on this evening in Tokyo. Only two songs were the same. “Windowpane” was probably the last song in the world I was expecting them to begin with. “Burden,” kicking off the encore, was also a shock. Personally, I’d rather hear “Demon of the Fall” and “Baying of the Hounds” instead, but surprises are good too.

Setlist:
Windowpane
Ghost of Perdition
The Lotus Eater
White Cluster
The Leper Affinity
Reverie/Harlequin Forest
April Ethereal
Hex Omega
Burden
Rudolf Schenker impersonation
Guitar Solo
Deliverance

I have a pretty decent video of “The Leper Affinity” coming here soon.

Posted on November 17th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: metal, opeth. Comments: 4

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 Off on Opeth in Shibuya tonight

This guy in the crowd with one arm up and a yellow wrist band messed up a large number of my shots. He was center, front and had both arms up high most of the night.

A few songs I was a bit surprised that didn’t make it into the setlist were Deliverance, Baying of the Hounds, and The Drapery Falls–all three of which Opeth played the three previous times I have seen them. I was really happy they did Demon of the Fall. The full setlist is in my prior entry.

Opeth members took a deep bow after the photo below. I have a picture of the deep bow too, but you can’t even see the band members in it as they bowed so low they were below the crowd.

At long last, I present for you the full video for The Lotus Eater from the Watershed CD. There are a couple of things worth mentioning before viewing.

The first is that the LX3 can take great video (even in poor lighting conditions by someone who is very tired and in a state of constant jostlement by those around him). I seriously doubt there is a camera, that can be easily brought into concerts, that can take better photographs and video. Be sure to set the LX3 to HD mode and 16:9 viewing. Also, don’t be afraid to zoom into the digital mode on an LX3. I believe the non-digital mode only goes to 2.5X. The video below is at about 5X and the results are pretty good. Since you can’t change the zoom once the video begins be sure to get to 5X (or something closer to the maximum of 10X if you are farther away) before starting the recording.

The second thing to note is Per Wiberg, the keyboardist, at around minute 3. He moves his microphone out of the way to prepare to headbang which I find very amusing.

Enjoy!

Posted on May 18th, 2009 under Other. Tags: metal, opeth, video. Comments: 1

The Opeth posts continue today with more images from the Chico show. I apologize to those of you who couldn’t care less about Opeth and promise that tomorrow will be the final installment before returning you to your regularly scheduled program.

Mikael had his normal, hilarious comments between songs on this evening. I can’t do them justice here, but I will mention a few just to bring a smile to the faces of those who were there and happen to be reading this.

He mentioned it being their first time in Chico and how he understood Chico to be a “party town.” (We found this to be true as well as both bars we went to were packed all afternoon on a Wednesday when school was in session. The campus seemed much less active than the pubs.) Mikael said he was induced to drink a pint during the afternoon, and then a quart, but it had all worn off by show time, he thought.

Someone in the crowd said something about meatballs so Mikael responded with a discussion on Swedish Meatballs and how to cook them. (I was particularly amused as my son still talks about how wonderful the Swedish Meatballs were that he had in Gotenberg, Sweden last summer.) He then got really sidetracked and ended up giving a full recipe and cooking techniques for making some sort of fish that is bound to please your significant other.

Mikael also knew that people from Chico wouldn’t be huge fans of Los Angeles so, to get the crowd going, he said something about receiving a fax from Los Angeles before coming on stage that said Chico’s fans sucked, couldn’t make a lot of noise, or something to that effect. Of course, everyone went nuts at this suggestion, and Mikael replied that he will have to fax LA back to let them know they are wrong.

Another one that comes to mind is before the encore. The band is gone for a really long time before coming back. Mikael runs to the mic and apologizes for taking so long. It wasn’t because we weren’t loud enough; it was because he had to wait in line to take a leak. Then, when he introduces Martin Axenrot, the drummer, he said that Martin probably didn’t even wash his hands after pissing at the break, but he’s still going to play anyway.

Fredrik, shown above and below, performed a guitar solo. It was a bit strange as it wasn’t part of a song. The solo was more of the old school variety where the singer, Mikael in this case, merely announces that it’s time for a guitar solo. Fredrik plays it and it didn’t turn into the intro of the next song.

What I thought was funny was something I noticed when I looked at my pictures. I took about a dozen photos from the beginning to the end of the solo, and in every one the security guy is watching the solo rather than doing his job. I don’t have any other pictures from the show in which security is watching the band. Apparently this guy in the red shirt is a fan of guitar solos.

Here is the aforementioned Martin “Axe” Axenrot, the drummer who doesn’t wash his hands after going to the bathroom. It doesn’t seem to have affected his love life however. He is dating the very beautiful, Nathalie Lorichs, who, unfortunately, was not on stage like Wayne Static’s wife was the week before.

Posted on May 17th, 2009 under Other. Tags: metal, opeth. Comments Off on Opeth, part 3

The venue in Chico (Senator Theatre) is very decent. There are seats until you get to about 20 feet from the stage. At that point there is a railing and then an open area near the stage for moshing. The seating is nice for a rest before and between bands, and the railing is nice for standing right behind if want to be close without getting pummeled by the moshers. I stood right behind the railing all night. Some of my pictures look like they are from farther back, but that is just the wide-angle lens on my LX3.

The crowd wasn’t very large. They could have easily fit more than a hundred people more on the floor, and the balcony wasn’t even open. Had Opeth played in Medford, instead of Chico, I bet they would have sold twice as many tickets. Small crowds are fine by me though. The smaller the better in fact. One of the reasons we made the Chico road trip to see Opeth, instead of one to Portland or San Francisco, was the anticipated smaller crowd.

Between a couple of mellower numbers the crowd was very quiet. Mikael walks up to the microphone and says in a perfect Roger Water’s whisper voice, “Is there anybody out there?”

Watershed is the CD the current tour is based on, but, to be perfectly honest, it wouldn’t crack the top five if I were asked to rank Opeth’s CDs. Not that I hate Watershed. It is still one of the best releases of 2008 and would probably make my Top 30 best CDs ever. It just isn’t as good as Opeth’s other masterpieces (like, say, Blackwater Park or Ghost Reveries).

As previously mentioned, I did do some more experimentation with video and found that the LX3 isn’t as inept as I thought after hearing what it produced at the Static-X show last week. The following is the first that I took. It was the first time Mikael spoke to the crowd during the evening.

“The name of this band is Opeth.” Sorry for the tease that the above video is. Stay tuned for a full video of The Lotus Eater in a future blog entry.

Posted on May 16th, 2009 under Other. Tags: metal, opeth. Comments Off on Opeth, part 2