Wooohoooo! A Show Rundown!

Bet ya haven't seen one of these in a while! Here's the Playlist:

Hyde - Season's Call
Camino - Hell Wonderland
BLOOD - Sweetest Disease
D'espairsRay - Tainted World
*NEW ROCK* The Back Horn - Chaos Diver
Gazette - Cassis
Between The Burried And Me - Alaska
Dir en grey - C
*Oldboy*
MUCC - Gerbera
*NEW ROCK* Gilgamesh - Rei Zero
Luna Sea - Mother
Sonic Adventure 2 - Live And Learn
*NEW ROCK* Asian Kungfu Generation - Sakurasou
Schwarz Stein - Addictive Epicurean
Hanzel und Gretyl - Lust
Hanzel und Gretyl - Frikk Dikk Micht Fire
Kagerou - XII Dizzy
*The Elder's Scroll IV: Oblivion*
12012 - My Room Agony
Coaltar of the Deepers - Mars Attacks
Pillars of Nein - Epic
Gackt - Black Stone
*The Current State of Isabelle*
*NEW ROCK* Isabelle - N
*NEW ROCK* Dacco - Tropical Hip
*The Moi Dix Mois Situation*
D - Akuma Kurai
Psycho le Cemu - Sei Excalibur
Malice Mizer - Au Revior
Vidoll - Deathmate
*NEW ROCK* D'espairsRay - Kogoeru Yuru ni Saita Hana
Miyavi - Senior Seniora Seniorita
*NEW ROCK* Phantasmagoria - Gensou Kyoku -Eternal Silence-

When CD 3 wasn't royally fucking me over, I was either playing music or struggling to get through a solo talk break (PLEASE PLEASE SEE THE CO-HOST APPLICATION 2 POSTS AGO!). The biggest news of the night is the buffet of new music we played though out the show (listed above with the NEW ROCK marker). We did do a 6 hour show technically, but I tried to keep the first 3 hours a kinda "not TR" show so that the people who didn't know wouldn't miss anything, as it happened very spur of the moment (the show before us never came in).

I (and you fans) also suffered the agony of me having to talk solo, talking about such subjects as Oldboy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/) and The Elder's Scroll IV: Oblivion (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/theelderscrollsivoblivion/index.html) but the other 2 talkbreaks generated the most reaction and we actually have follow-ups on.

Isabelle, very suddenly, sent an e-mail to their fans in Japan that they will be stopping activities. I personally hoped this would be a temporary thing, however, on the Synectics website (http://www.synectics01.com/), they are advertising Isabelle's last live. This comes on the heals of translated blog posts from seek, Lida, and Yura-sama that the upcoming May tour will be the last "Hoora" for Psycho le Cemu.

The other talk break centered around Batsu claiming to be sponsoring a Moi Dix Mois US tour. I tried to take a neutral standpoint on the matter, trying to state only facts, but it was hard to support Batsu as we asked for a statement from them and recieved none. However, that changed over the weekend as Batsu did release a statement to us! That statement can be read in the post below. Here on TR, when ever speaking about anything, especially controversial matters in the J-Rock world, we try to have both sides represented, so we are very happy Batsu wrote us back and would like to thank them for it.

This week we had no artist of the week, as last week's Artist of the Week, Pillars of Nein, didn't get their proper share of the title, which they really, REALLY deserve!


Pillars of Nein - Apathy

Pillars of Nein's Apathy is a great mid-90's style industrial rock album. Combining hard rock guitar riffs, vocals that seems to be a mix between Peter Steele and Gavin Rosdale, and soothing ambiant keyboards, PoN manages to deliver a knock out punch! Their lyrics tackle everything from seperation to drug addiction and, added with the delivery in the vocals, it give the words more emotional meaning, like a man contimplating his life up to this point. Their songs have 2 modes. While I love the rock out songs like Need and Coming Around Again, its their slower "ballads" that put the true power in this album. Songs like Epic and Broken Bones have an incredible amount of feeling in them added with the use of dark moody keyboards (and female back-up vocals in Epic). You deffinately get a true sence of meloncholy while listening to the band, even when they rock out. Maybe THIS is what Emo should be, that that sissy cry-baby shit like Fallout Boy. I tell ya what, if emo sounded even half this good, it might be worth listening to. It's hard to pick a fave song on this album, because there are so many high class tracks. However, I think the edge goes to Epic. It is the most musical of the songs, and it has this tendancy to make you reflect on things, especially if you are in a relationship. Apathy is a brilliant work of industrial rock that shouldn't be passed up for anything!

Pillars of Nein Official Website: http://www.pillarsofnein.com/
Pillars of Nein Official Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/pillarsofnein

-Roger