DaiKaiJu Rocks!

I was feeling kind of lazy with the usual Sunday evening depression, but the 501 wasn't too far and Steve insisted that these guys kicked some serious ass. I didn't know what to expect since he couldn't really describe them in any way that made sense, and they looked pretty typical as they set up their gear...

When the lights went down, the power-trio (yes just three) hit the stage with their masks in place and proceeded to blow my mind. It was kind of like surf, it seemed to have surf-progressions and it was all-instrumental, but it was surf meets punk meets metal meets wall of noise - and they were tight, very tight. Clearly skilled musicians all.

The guitarist's set-up was a page from the sound in my head (just before I plug in and ruin it): two amps, physically separated and running in stereo. Loads of delay swirling back and forth. Vintage tube amps on the cleaner side, but cranked, and with super touch-sensitive single-coils, producing a beautiful snarl when hammered. The delays continuing what the hands had started. The rhythm section relentlessly pounding a jagged groove through the sonic layers. The music was unbelievably hard, technical and catchy.

But there was something else - the masks. The band doesn't talk to the crowd, at all, there are no microphones on stage. -but their connection to the audience was one of the strongest I've ever seen. The guitarist (photo center) does this thing - I see why Steve had trouble describing - It's bizarre. Now keep in mind that he's playing these really challenging pieces of pulsing dynamic grind-storm all the while, but he's like slow-motion gyrating, then he just whips 90 degrees and freezes, and makes eye contact with you for like two or three seconds. Swirling, spinning, jumping, running... He moves constantly, slowwwwly starts sticking his butt out, then jerks, turns, holds, and looks right into your soul. It's nearly uncomfortable. His eyes so clear and emotional but his mask-face perfectly placid. Blank. Cold. And he's looking, right, at me. I couldn't stop watching him, the crowd couldn't either. When we talked to him after, he was very friendly, easy-going and gentle - that mask really seemed to set him free on stage.

Near the end of the show, the cool style-punk bartender that we'd been ordering from poked us in the back and we toasted his shot glass against the un-ordered ones he was handing us. When the band finally left the stage with their idle amplifiers hissing low-level white-noise, he said that in the year that he'd worked there they were the best band he'd ever seen on a Sunday night. I think they're the best band I've ever seen on a Sunday night too.