[ATTENDED: June 21, 2024] Isiliel
Seven months ago, I spontaneously bought a ticket to see Isiliel at PhilaMOCA. The show was weird but fun.
I’m going to repost (almost my entire review from that show and then add some details for this one:
So, who is Isiliel? She is Himari Tsukishiro who is the main singer in the Japanese band Necronomidol. As her site puts it
Isiliel is a solo dance/vocal project by Himari Tsukishiro (NECRONOMIDOL).
Mixing genres as diverse as folk, blackgaze and city pop via a worldwide team of veteran songwriters such as King Dude and NARASAKI of COALTAR OF THE DEEPERS, through Isiliel Himari will express hitherto unexplored depths of pathos and beauty on stage.
As Isiliel, she has one album out. It is, as implied, a heavy metal sounding album, with heavy guitars and a lot of double bass. But she does not sing like a heavy metal singer. Her delivery is quiet and slow (and it’s in Japanese).
I hadn’t heard of either her or her main band until about a week before this show was announced. But when I saw what Necronomidol looked like, I wanted to go to this show too. It turned out she has some real fans in Philly. The audience was probably about 30 people, but the show had about a week’s notice. And several of these fans brought identical small red lanterns which they waved in time to the beat (I asked the merch guy if he was selling them and he said no–they brought them in!)
She wasn’t in corpse paint (like the other band), rather she was dressed much like she is on the album–a midriff baring top (with a metal breastplate) and short skirt. Her hair is crazy long.
When the music started she began dancing. It was sweet and a little weird–it reminded me a but of when my daughter was little and she would make up dances that seemed to fit with the music. (more…)


