This Friday, I went to go see Dir en grey perform for the first time since 2011 at the House of Blues in Anaheim. I was originally supposed to go with the same person I’d gone with last time I saw the band live, but they ended up not going. All of my subsequent efforts to find someone else to go—and eventually, resell the ticket—failed to materialize. However, I’ve never been one to be held back by the prospect of going alone to a concert. Rather than wearing one of my old Japanese rock band/concert tees, I decided I was going to attend repping my present-day musical apex, Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, so I threw on a tour tee and my silver sparkling high tops and made the drive up to Anaheim in the early evening little after 5PM.
Background
I have a long running history with this band, being a first-wave fan back in the early 2000s when information and even their music itself was both scarcely available and heavily gated by language barriers and regional music industry practices. I had found I liked hard rock and many of its sub-genres at the time and was a fan of plenty of domestic acts, but Dir en grey was my first love in music. From their instrumentation to their aesthetic, they seemed to be executing all the best parts of the different American bands I liked on another level. Before Dir en grey, rock music was a single dissonant harmony to me, but at first listen, terms like “lead guitar”, “rhythm guitar”, and “bass line” immediately made sense to me.
In those early days of 2002, with only a single English website that covered a few visual kei bands and only around 3 barebones Japanese language fansites, the only option back then was to pay importers or Japan-based individual eBay/Yahoo Auctions sellers $60+ for CDs albums and small fortunes for official merch. To this day, one of my greatest personal treasures remains that used first-press slipcase edition of GAUZE I spent little over $150 on.
But things also moved quick in those early 2000s when high-speed home internet became widely available, especially after the 2001 shutdown of Napster gave rise to so many alternative P2P clients. It was through Audiogalaxy that I finally managed to piece together their GAUZE album in full and a few of the tracks off of MACABRE, but it was really Soulseek that ended up being the ultimate portal to Japanese music, a P2P network with users serving up a wide array of Jpop and Jrock.
Through the 00s and early 2010s, Dir en grey remained my favorite band despite intense competition from their contemporaries, truly rivaled only by LUNA SEA*—at least up until that adage of “never meet your heroes” proved true and SUGIZO turned out to be a total dick and killed my vibe for Japanese Rock in general, but that’s multiple stories for possibly another time. In turn, I hadn’t bothered to catch a Dir en grey concert since 2011’s AGE QUOD AGIS US Tour.
*Kagrra deserves a special mention here, since they are technically competition for position of personal favorite but at the same time in an unimpeachable class of their own beyond compare.
VULGAR, my favorite Dir en grey album, remains to this day the most excruciating wait for any media release in my life, announced and preordered months in advance of its drop date in 2003. Its release was four years and two more full length albums before their first limited U.S. tour in 2007. When I happened to find out about their limited U.S. tour this year featuring “mode of” shows for both VULGAR and Withering to death, both shows in Los Angeles were already sold out, and the scheduling for them didn’t work with my academics to make it worth trying to score resale tickets. Thankfully the additional VULGAR show in Anaheim on a Friday was announced soon after, and I got my tickets for it the moment they went on sale.
The Show
I arrived at the Anaheim GardenWalk where the venue is located, and was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. Finding the end of the line required walking to almost the entire opposite end of the mall, and the crowd was made up of more youthful fresh faces than grizzled band veterans like myself. I briefly spoke with one girl in line behind me with her boyfriend, so elated at seeing them for the first time after being a fan since 9th grade. I told her the same went for me, only my 9th grade was over 20 years ago.
Upon entering the venue, I immediately went to go scope out the merch offerings. As soon as I spotted the table and saw the hanging shirts on display, on of them featuring the VULGAR album artwork, I knew I had to get one before they sold out. Past me definitely had it easier when I was an XL/L, the M lifestyle is a lot more competitive. By the time I made it to the front of the line, the show had already started and the first couple of songs observed through the TV screens in the lobby.
Once I had my merch purchased and stashed in my mini-backpack, I headed into the performance hall and started looking for a place to post up and watch the show. I lasted another couple songs on the upper edge of the floor level before realizing that standing still and head bobbing wasn’t going to cut it—despite my age, I still felt the urge/need to be jostled about in a sea of people, sweating and screaming my head off. I needed the pit.
So I squeezed myself through the loose groups of people in front of the short set of steps leading down to the floor level, and was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.
The Crowd
In hindsight, the fanbase was one of the things that took the piss out of going to see Dir en grey live. In the early aughts, the band was still largely unknown. They were only a few years into their career in homeland, and Japan’s culture isn’t exactly conducive to the loud rebellious nature of rock music; every Japanese exchange student or foreign visitor I spoke to back then professed to me knowing more about their rock music scene than they did. Here in the United States, the Japanese Rock fanbases was basically a perfect overlap with the anime fanbase. Prior to the exposure they got in 2006 from going on the Family Values tour, I’m pretty sure I was the only person in America that felt so passionately about the music while having absolutely no interest in anime.
What this translated to in person were crowds that were overwhelmingly 5’2”–5’6” Asian and white females with petite builds in their finest gothic lolita duds—and A LOT of whining to “stop pushing” and not being able to see in the mosh pits of rock concerts. Those memories of times past, combined with the current generation’s inclination to stand in place recording on their phones over living the moment, had me going in expecting a disappointing crowd. Instead, it ended up being the best one I’ve been in.
There seemed to be an implicit understanding, a large circle in the middle of the floor reserved for the rowdiest boys, no longer limited to the slim anime club stereotype and now an eclectic mix of true metalheads in American band tees (Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, etc.). The perimeter was maintained by those thrashing in the pit cycling in and out, and other guys with stocky/muscular builds there to get jostled and rocked about (myself included). People outside the edge buffer understood where they were, and would look over in amusement whenever they got knocked forwards or sideways by the pit activity—there were even multiple crowd surfs pulled off. And anytime anyone stumbled or fell, multiple hands would fly out and often beat me to pulling that person back up on their feet.
Before I knew it, I found myself in my traditional spot: dead center and just a few rows of people away from the front of the stage.
The Set
Where my past self would have done some research on Setlist.fm on the prior shows, I went in blind. For a “mode of VULGAR” show, I’d hoped for more of the bespoke album—I would lost my shit over a live rendition of Amber. But in the end, I still got most of the Vulgarity I wanted out of the night: DRAIN AWAY, audience KILLER LOOP, a really amusing CHILD PREY, OBSCURE, Kasumi, and THE IIID EMPIRE. Bonus points with Vinushka and Utafumi also being in the mix.
This perhaps would be my only criticism of the crowd: when the band retook the stage for the encore to G.D.S, there were only about 10 people dispersed about doing the rhythmic fist-pump callback. That performance hall should have been thundering with shouts and a shaking floor. The kids these days are behind on their homework.
The Surprise
After the last song was done, we got the usual sign-off—them graciously parading the stage, emptying water bottles over the crowd and launching picks out into the crowd. I didn’t really care to try to get one, since that’s a very been-there-done-that affair for me. Twice: one I can’t remember, and a Toshiya pick from their 2007 show at the Viejas Arena. At one point, I decided I’d get a last set of photos and try to snap a selfie with the band on the lit stage in the background. I pulled my phone out of my right front pocket, and stared down at the screen to FaceID authenticate. As I was swiping up to unlock, something fell in my hand in the small gap between the phone and base of my thumb. In a split-second, I had the reflexive animal instinct to shake it off like it were a spider and the overriding human curiosity to identify what it was: Die’s guitar pick.
It would have made for an awesome photograph, but since it was impossible to take a photo of the pick as it landed tucked between by phone and hand, I simply quietly pocketed it and watched in amusement as everyone around me frantically searched the floor trying to find it.
The Swag
I came home from the show with the VULGAR shirt I desperately wanted, which was thankfully still available in my size unlike the dual skeleton WtD tees.
Since the other tee wasn’t available, I went ahead and got a tote bag, along with some $15 charm the merch attendant didn’t really do a good job of explaining, only that it had a small probability of having something autographed inside. At $15, I expected the bag to contain an actual charm, something along the lines of the dog tags they had on previous tours. Apparently, they were just a show-specific charm bag containing a paper insert that had a small probability of being “autographed”.
Mine wasn’t one of the autographed ones, but that was of no consequence to me since that’s also a been-there-done-that affair, being the winner/owner of Die’s band-autographed guitar from the 2007 Nokia Theater show given away through a Hot Topic sweepstakes way back when year.
In another timeline, I would have felt ripped off over having forked over $15 for a piece of paper in a miniature bag with no functional purpose. Instead, it’s a perfect store for that serendipitous guitar pick.
For Me
In the end, the concert ended up being a validating spiritual and existential boot to the ass I needed in this current sociopolitical climate. Although I don’t feel as ardent about the band and their music as I once used to, that long running artist-fan bond stretching back to my teenage years remains very much alive and well. It was an opportunity to travel through time and not just catch a variant of the VULGAR-centric shows I never had the chance to go to back in high school upon its release, but to also revisit and embody my younger self once more. I went alone, handled the pit crowd just as capably as my teenage self, and had a fantastic time.
So to answer the question of “WHO IS THIS HELL FOR?”: for me, even after all this time.