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Tokyometal78 karma

Awesome! Band wise, I'll always gladly recommend GUEVNNA(some releases on my label), Funeral Moth, Self Deconstruction, Begräbnis, Exorgrindst, Floaters, Nepenthes, and many more.

We're actually doing live stream of a Floaters show filmed at a and to benefit a very important Yokohama venue called El Puente, would be super cool if you could check it out!

Tokyometal55 karma

Thrash Zone. No other. Lol.

I might not be the right person to ask about that as I'm incredibly jaded about all the major rock bars that frequently come up when this question is asked (Mother, PSY, GODZ, From Dusk Till Dawn, etc.). A lot of it is really "designer" metal culture IMO, which quite possibly colors me as a little bit elitist, but the fact is I rarely meet people actually engaged in the scene at those places.

Most of the spots that a lot of the people actually involved in the scene go are pretty run of the mill. No "THIS IS A METAL BAR" sign or anything.

That being said, Shinjuku and Nakano are definitely the places to be for good shows. They happen elsewhere, too, but they're pretty heavily concentrated in those 2 districts.

Tokyometal44 karma

You're almost certainly referring to Shinjuku's Nichome district, which is also where some of the best restaurants in Shinjuku are.

That's actually sort of a complex question. I definitely have friends in the scene who are gay, though it's not really something they go out of their way to point out. One side of me says that could be due too Japan's notoriously repressive "overground" culture, but another side of me also thinks there's a part of the scene that kind of just doesn't care, in a non-negative way.

I've actually thought about this extensively over the years as there is certainly gender-bending, cross-dressing, and the like at play at a non-insubstantial amount of events, but, again, it's not "a big deal." It kind of just is.

I usually refer to this as the "null space", and by it I mean a space in which traditionally held beliefs or norms about identity sort of just evaporate, and those that participate in it just sort of take what's being presented as what it is on its own merit. I think this idea is hinted at in Rosemary Overell's Affective Intensities in Extreme Music Scenes academic, what they call "play", though I am unsatisfied with the extent to which the author goes to explicate.

So I guess to answer your question, by the untrained eye I guess there's probably some "gay-ish" stuff going on, though I don't think that anyone readily looks at it in an othering sort of manner. My experience has been everyone's just cool with whatever.

Tokyometal23 karma

You're correct in the day job thing - I myself operate in a wildly different territory than extreme metal during the days - though there are serious though hidden financial as well as social considerations to be made when looking at how this affects everyone involved in the scene.

So first up lemme just say that a promoter who only functions as a promoter is probably next to worthless at best. A 3rd party leech. If they aren't also involved in coordination, then - in my experience - all they do is get in the way and almost always are in it for the perceived money and have very little involvement with the scene proper. So I'm not really worried about them.

As for venues, well, shit, without venues the live music scene doesn't exist so you better worry about them. And if live music doesn't exist, then that severely reduces the incentive to create amongst musicians, unless they're solely in it for the money. Which, if you haven't figured it out, I nor the bands I associate with are; that doesn't mean we don't like turning a profit, but it does mean that we like producing products that are artistically robust as our definitions of it are concerned.

Live music, be it metal or hip hop or pop or whatever, is an ecosystem with a whole lot of moving parts. When one or more than one of them fail, that affects the entire machine. So venues failing means bands arent performing means audiences aren't buying new shirts to tell their friends about means that bandcamp isn't doing as well means that relevancy dwindles. It won't happen quickly, but if nothing's done to make sure that the support systems for all music ecosystems at the independent/underground level are maintained, I believe its quite possible this shit, which personally speaking is the lifeblood of existence itself, could be wiped off the map for the foreseeable future.

Tokyometal16 karma

I mean, literally everything has screeched to a halt, so its pretty bad. But what really exacerbates things is the historical disconnect between pretty much all Japanese artists outside of the really major ones with the rest of the world. Japanese music has a hard enough time getting international traction as it is in normal times, but with this, we're looking at a pretty serious challenge. That, paired with the really old-school way that underground music scenes both in and outside of Japan tend to conduct themselves (analogue), there's so little reach and so little means to leverage that to the artists' advantage that its pretty scary.

We (the aforementioned Kaala) are actively filming audienceless concerts of bands and venues of note (1 band per venue and a skeleton crew to reduce number of people gathered together in a space) which is going well, but we just started so it's not like we're making much of a dent.

1 thing I feel hesitant to say I'm looking forward to given the circumstances but which I still nevertheless find exciting is that it seems like Corona will finally force the hands of the scene to adapt. I've been working independently at the intersection of IT and independent music for at least 5 years, and believe me when I say that despite my love for the scene I am also frustrated by the hesitance with which it approaches change. This might finally get something done.