[ATTENDED: October 24, 2019] Hyde
I had taken C. to a couple of live shows before and he had been to see Ice Nine Kills with his friends. But this was my first time taking him to see a club concert.
This was going to be a long night too. Four bands! With the opening band going on at 7 and Starset ending around 11 (and it was a school night!).
After A Brilliant Lie, some people moved around and we were right in the middle for Hyde.
When I looked up this concert I saw that lot of people were more excited about Hyde than anyone else. Someone even suggested that Hype might play solo–just him and his guitar.
I had no idea who Hyde was, but based on that (erroneous) information I assumed he might be a metal guy doing some mellower songs.
Boy was I wrong.
While Hyde was setting up, guys in white jumpsuits and masks came out to set up their gear. These turned out to be the musicians. They played in the jumpsuits and (very cool) masks for the whole show.
Hyde is the main singer. He is Japanese, born 寶井 秀人 Takarai Hideto. He is also the singer of the band L’Arc-en-Ciel, a much poppier band who were the first Japanese band to headline Madison Square Garden.
The abdn started playing and then Hyde came out in a half face mask under glowing lights. He looked insane. And then he started singing and I was absolutely blown away by his voice. At times he sounds like Geoff Tate from Queensryche. but he also growls and sings “normal” voices. His range is incredible.
The band was so much fun in their masks. The keyboardist had a mask that had a word scrolling across it for the entire show (…DAMNED…). He playedso that the keys were facing us and he was way leaned over, occasionally putting his foot on the keys.
I could never actually see the drummer (he was far on the side of the stage and was pretty much invisible because of all the tall people). But I really enjoyed the antics of the bassist and guitarist.
They started with “Who’s Gonna Save Us Now” (which sounded a lot heavier than it does on record).
“After Light” came next with some really heavy verses (and chanting) and a poppier chorus. You can see the band’s cool masks in the official video for this song.
“When Hyde announced “Fake Divine,” the crowd went suitably crazy. So I guess there were a lot of fans in attendance.
I still didn’t know anything about Hyde before the show, so when he started speaking, I knew he wasn’t from America. But since he had a mask on, I couldn’t tell anything about him. C. and I had the exact same thoughts–at first we thought he as Japanese, then we both changed our ind to German. Hyde has excellent English (all the lyrics are in English), but his accent makes him speak a little stiffly. After a couple of songs he revealed that they were from Japan–which explains the outfits and how good they were, too.
After a few songs, his mask came off, revealing that he had painted green circles on his eyelids which is why his eyes always looked possessed in the black light.
“Sick” has a cool opening riff and then grows crazy, like most of the songs. It also really features some of his most Geoff Tate-like vocals (and even some English language curse words). He had one more trick up his sleeve when he busted out a megaphone for the end of the song.
Their peppiest song was “Another Moment.” The bassist sang backing vocals, which was very funny to see since he was wearing a mask with a big grin and you could never see his mouth move. Hyde was full of so much energy I couldn’t believe it [especially later when I found out that he is a few months older than me!]. Like when he had the audience scream along to the melody of this song and later when, midway through the songs, he hopped the barrier fence and came out within three feet of us and got everyone to jump jump jump.
To finish out the set, they played a cover (second cover song of the night, so far). I really had no idea what to expect. The song started and I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. It was a cover of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” and it was amazing! Hyde’s voice was perfect and by the end they had turned into a much heavier song, too.
All of the songs (including the cover) are on their recent album Anti. I saw that the disc was for sale when we were looking at Starset merch, but I didn’t know anything about them so I didn’t really give it much thought. After their set I absolutely wanted to get something of theirs. But at the end of the night it was very late and the merch line was pretty chaotic so we just headed home.
Turns out you can’t get that CD in the States. Bummer!
SETLIST (from other nights on the tour, I assume it was the same)
- WHO’S GONNA SAVE US
- AFTER LIGHT
- FAKE DIVINE
- SICK
- ANOTHER MOMENT
- MAD QUALIA [maybe they didn’t play this?]
- ORDINARY WORLD
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