Noise…I’ve experienced different kinds of noise to wrap up my 2015.  From OzzFest (Head-banging, thrash metal concert festival) to Hong Kong at Christmas, and Tokyo for New Years Eve – the noise was real.  One was literally a lot of sound and cranked up high and the other was more pushy salesmen and noisy touristy spots (I’ll do a separate post on this trip) and of course New Year’s Eve was spent in Hobgoblins in Shibuya (I’ll do a Holiday – Year End wrap up post).

On to OzzFest

(the links are to the band’s web site respectively)

This was a bit of a bucket list type thing for me.  I never thought I’d have the opportunity to go see Ozzy Osbourne live in concert let alone my slightly stalkerish celebrity crush Dave Navarro WITH Jane’s Addiction.  Epic doesn’t even cover it.  Jane’s Addiction, I didn’t know they were back together, talk about a throw back to my teenage years.  It brought back a lot of great memories of nights out with my brother and his friends.  Yep, he brought his little sister with him to party because he was awesome like that.

What I didn’t realize was the level of thrash and screamo bands that were lined up with the greats.  I honestly thought it would be mostly hard rock and I’m not a huge fan of people screaming at me but honestly if it’s done right and I’m in the right mood I can get into it.  Enter Hatebreed, a hard core metal – thrash band that has a new fan.  They killed it, sounded amazing and were really great at hyping up the crowd.  As soon as we got home I put two cd’s in our amazon basket.

Crystal Lake also got the crowd amp’d up, good stuff though the mosh pit slammed me just enough to have us moving back from the stage about half way thru their set.

Corey Taylor from Slipknot was fantastic and I have to admit I was worried an acoustic jam would lose the crowd but it seemed to come at just the right time for everyone to cool down and take a breath.  He sounded great, that was a big treat.

Evanescence stunned me.  This is not what I would consider a metal band by any means and I was actually rather surprised to see them in the lineup.  Holy crap they sounded amazing.  The metal sound with Amy Lee’s voice was incredible.  I was in awe.

The husband and I saw Korn live many years ago in San Diego so this was a repeat but man they still sounded great and belted it out big, truly epic.

Black Label Society were also on my list of bands to see live so I can check that off now.  Brilliant and a true biker band if there ever was one.

I’m not going to lie, the Japanese bands kind of run together in my head and a lot of them sounded rather similar.  Baby Metal and 人間椅子 (Ningen Isu) definitely stood out.  Baby Metal has a huge following and I can see why.  These girls were well rehearsed, super cutesy and just stupid enough to make me rather disgusted.  I do give the band credit, the music was good but the singing was … meh.   人間椅子 – these guys were amazing!  What a show, you must check them out – even if you don’t like metal music, please watch…these older guys are rocking it out!

I researched them a bit before the concert so I knew a little of what to expect but man did they deliver.

That’s my summary of the bands I found noteworthy.  All in all it was an amazing weekend and I am so incredibly glad we were able to do the concert series in Japan.  What a great memory for us to take with us.  We saw some legends play here from Eric Clapton and Sarah Brightman to Judas Priest, Brian Setzer and all of OzzFest.  It’s been an epic music adventure, my ears are still ringing. (ok not really but yeh)  By the way, 3 Doors Down is playing in a couple of weeks.

Thank you Japan!