The Other East

Oh look here’s another write up about Lilac by me. This is the third time that I’ve written about them playing in less than a year. Though, probably the last since I’m wandering over to Tokyo for a while. Why do I like them? Aside from them being very good and electric on-stage they are a welcome break from the piles of really heavy, screamed vocals, bands that there are so many of these days. I like metal, don’t get me wrong, but I have a sweet tooth for hard rock. These days I’ll listen to Cloud Nine over X Japan, and Lilac satiates that hard rock love.

Like [geist], Lilac had their own set of drum problems. Long time drummer ChaCha was here, but the house drums kept falling apart on him. Even though I didn’t remember much about Gelatine’s drummer’s drumming, he must have done a number on them. ChaCha wasn’t too happy about the couple times in which the show had to completely stop to fix the kit. Gabriel and Toshi were left to talk to the audience, while the staff tightened various knobs hoping it would hold.

Aside from those unfortunate instances, the band was as tight as I’ve come to expect. In fact after another ridiculously good set laced with killer solos and showmanship I started to think about just were this band ranks among not just the American Jrock bands, but Japanese and Japanese bands as a whole.

Its pretty high up there, I’d put them in the top 50 easy. They are certainly more interesting the stuff bands like Versailes, X Japan, and Vamps are putting out right now and that’s really saying something about a band that’s barely a year old. Are they better from a technical stand point? I don’t know, but I know when I hear one of their songs I’m far more interested in hearing it than most other bands.

The band has yet to release their debut album, so far only releasing an EP last fall, but they have a sizable body of songs already that easily filled their hour set. The audience, though small, was into the set and I’m quite certain that there were far more people there to see Lilac than headliner Kazha. I’m not sure anyone would have shown up if Kazha had played alone. They are actually pretty talented, but they are completely unknown here.

There is only so much I can say about them that I haven’t previously said, and if I talked too much about specific songs no one outside of NYC would know what I was talking about because they still haven’t ventured outside of the Empire State. I personally think they are ready, and when they hit your town you’d be a fool to not go check them out. So here are the rest of the photos for you to enjoy.

Tags: America, concert, Jrock, new york, nyc