Morrie and his creatures treated a packed crowd to a personal live in the heart of Tokyo.
Revered around the globe as a mecca of colorful self-expression, for some the area of Harajuku doubles as an important hub for Visual Kei culture and fashion. In addition to several well-known clothing stores, the area also features a handful of intimate live venues that have been home to the performances of legends and amateurs alike. Today’s live venue was the intimate Astro Hall, located minutes from Harajuku Station and mere seconds from Takeshita Street, with Creature Creature as the featured act.
Fans were lined up around Astro Hall as early as 5 pm. Most of them were wearing black - often all black with CC insignias emblazoned on their shirts.
At 5:30pm, the sections slowly pressed forward into the building, with the fan chatter following suit and in no time at all, the standing room was packed with fans. The atmosphere was different to the norm, with fans eagerly replacing silence with loud anticipation. At 6:05pm, the lights dimmed to cheers and calls, with an eerie, haunting sound permeating the air.
Dim became dark, and dark became darker, and once the light had fully gone out, the band appeared on stage. Guitarists HIRO and Shinobu, alongside bassist Hitoki and drummer Sakura were met with cheers and waves; vocalist MORRIE took the stage last to equal approval. Fans raised their arms high; the second leg of the EXORCISING ORPHEUS tour was about to begin.
As the familiar Dream Caller started the set, the fans headbanged in unison, arms still well into the air. When the song ended, and as MORRIE took to adjusting the mike stand, several of his fans giggled. “What are you laughing about?” their hero replied, to approving laughter. For a performer who rarely MCs (let alone converses) during a main set, the response alone was a treat.
This was a dichotomy that seemed to define the band; the fans, loud, cheering, energetic, with MORRIE and his bandmates focusing their energies and sound on the music being played. If music is a language understood by all, then the band’s role as orator was respected. Whatever energy needed to be drawn by the fans was done one note at a time - Amor Fati’s thrashing riffs, the perfectly timed spotlights cued to Zone, even tactical fashion decisions by the band (today featured at least one and a half shirtless members) all played into the aural monologue.
If the band’s main set was Creature Creature’s speech, the encore was its Q&A session. Here, MORRIE and his bandmates waxed on cultural differences between countries alongside an array of personal anecdotes. What was originally listed as a few encore songs doubled in size, in part due to the fans’ persistent requests for more, but also due to Sakura, acknowledging his fans’ pleas after several contemplative pauses. The final encore set may have pushed his body to the limit, but his fans’ gratitude was enough to keep him standing through the guitar-riff frenzied finale.
Those looking for more Creature Creature can find them playing at the Meguro Rockmaykan in November as part of their PNEUMA Tour.
Set list:
01. Dream Caller
02. Amor Fati
03. Zone
04. MABOROSHI
05. Hoshitsuki (Star-Possessed)
06. Black Hole
07. Gone By Rain
08. Cluster
09. Psyche
10. Ataraxia
11. Hien (Secret Garden)
12. Tenshuu Ranman
13. COSMOS BLACKNESS
14. DEAD RIDER
15. RED
16. SWAN
17. LIGHTS
18. Haru no Kikai (Spring Machine)
Encore 1
01. Mirrors
02. Paradise
03. Vanishing
Encore 2
04. Telos
05. Sen no Yamiyo Ni (For a Thousand Dark Nights)
Encore 3
06. Ayakashi
07. Koku-Ningyo Es (Puppet of Emptiness Es)
08. Kaze no Tou (Tower of Wind)
09. Swan
