Day One (evening): in which our hero forgets his age

This came up on my feed yesterday and I took a screenshot because it felt particularly apt. I wrote before about how the Wildhearts show in Nagoya in 2019 was one of the best gigs ever. I said that in part because it was the first time in ages I’d ventured back into the mosh pit.

As a teenager, I was either at the rail or very close. I’d mosh from the first song to the last, even if I was one of the few (Three Colours Red at the Lemon Tree, the Wildhearts at the AECC). Every gig would finish with me drenched in sweat, covered in bruises, hair knotted, ears ringing, and a big dumb grin plastered all over my face. The grin and the ringing would last days, though the sweat would quickly turn ice cold, especially at the Lemon Tree, which is pretty near the beach in Aberdeen and at the top end of King Street, a famous wind tunnel.

To lose myself completely for an hour or two, in the music, in the live experience, in the camaraderie of moshing, arms around strangers, hauling each other back to our feet, banging into them recklessly, both of you, all of you loving it. As I’ve aged, I’ve forgotten about that aspect of gigs. Now I’m middle aged, I’m in the crowd at the back, near the bar and the toilets, or at the side, with a wall or barrier to lean against. I watch the guitarist to see how he's doing that, watch the drummer to see the passion, watch the bass player to see if his feet move, watch the singer to see if the rest of the band think he’s a twat. I tend to watch bands now whereas before, as a teenager, I joined bands in the experience of live music. Both are valid, but I hadn’t realized how much I miss joining in.

I felt a bit of it at the Thom Yorke gig in Nagoya at the end of last year. We wanted to dance. Thom encouraged us to dance. The staff let us dance. But we couldn’t because although we were allowed to stand, we were standing in front of our theatre seats in tight rows. It was the opposite of river dance: you could dance from the waist up, only, and that’s nowhere near enough. The feet have to shuffle, the knees have to bend, and the booty has to shake.

Well last night, at Cavalera, teenage Iain took full control (it was his ghost, not the beer, the chu hai, and the Jack Daniels) and I joined in. Joined the pit. At a Sepultura gig.

An aside, I still think of them as Sepultura even though they are called Cavalera or Cavalera Conspiracy, and from now on I'm going to refer to them as Sepultura. I’m doing this not because I’m trying to dead name them but because singer Max Cavalera gave us permission. At the start he growled, “The only real Sepultura is in this room right fucking now!” They’d call themselves Sepultura if they legally could.

Another aside, gigs in Japan can be odd things. The venue, Big Cat, is on the fourth floor of a shopping mall, and we lined up in front of Saizerya, a chain restaurant, looking at signs for Gold’s Gym. Entry to the gig is strictly in numerical order. My ticket was #29, so I was the 29^th person into the building. It’s actually a good system since it rewards fans who buy tickets as soon as they go on sale, meaning they can get to the rail first, but it makes the whole thing seem like you’re back at school. This isn’t helped by the fact that midweek most people are coming straight from work, still in their suits. It’s an odd atmosphere until the lights dim and the music starts.

In the queue, everyone was my age or older. We confirmed this with a chat as we waited. Number 27 commented that there were no young people. He was 57. Number 28 was 49. I offered that I was 44. I quick poll concluded that I was indeed the youngest in the immediate area, the “kohai” of the gig. That seemed to be the case during the first two sets.

I don’t think I said, but the gig last night actually featured three bands. This is normal outside Japan but less common here with big international headliners. The Almighty have no support. It’s something to do with curfews, last trains, needing to be done by 10ish. Bands have a choice: give up some of your time and money to a support band or play a long set yourself. Most go for the latter. This gig however was technically part of an ongoing series of gigs called “Extreme the Dojo”. Number 35 to be precise. That made it a club night, not a tour, and therefore local bands were drafted in: Melt-Banana and SxOxB. I’d seen the name Melt-Banana before but never listened to them. I’d never heard of SxOxB. Apparently both are legendary in the alternative Japanese music scene (Google them, both have English Wikipedia entries).

SxOxB are local heroes and about 20% of the crowd were wearing their shirts. They were loud. They were riotous. They went down so well that they refused to leave the stage. They played “last song” about four times as increasingly angry staff gestured from the side of the stage. Eventually, when the singer went crowd surfing, they just shut it down and pushed them off stage. The crowd loved it.

Melt-Banana were more up my street but went down less well. About halfway through their set the lobby and bar were packed, never a good sign.

Nothing like that when Sepultura came on. As I said, it looked an old crowd but it turned out that the youngsters were biding their time. A couple of dozen guys in their twenties (all guys apart from one woman), mostly Brazilian, wearing Sepultura Brazil football shirts, suddenly appeared and took over the, until then, relatively tame pit and introduced total chaos. On the second song, Max demanded they “open the circle pit” and all hell broke loose.

A circle pit, for those who don’t know, is exactly that. They didn’t really happen when I was young. We tended to mosh up and down, banging into each other. Now metal fans go round and round, flailing and banging into each other, like this.

I’ve been in a couple of half-hearted circle pits before, most memorably watching Baby Metal at Summer Sonic. This was NOT half-hearted. It literally separated the men from the boys. We stood back, gave them space, watching in jealous amusement at the carnage.

Sepultura’s set went chronologically: a few songs from debut EP Bestial Devastation, a few more from debut album Morbid Vision, then a few more from Schizophrenia. They literally left the stage when they changed over to a new record. Now I don’t know Bestial Devastation or Morbid Visions very well, but I have been listening to Schizophrenia a lot recently and have come to love it. Besides, I knew from looking at previous setlists what came next: stuff from Chaos AD, my favourite by miles. As they started Schizophrenia something kicked in. I wasn’t content standing on the edge of the pit. I needed in. Fuck it, I thought, and dived in.

Holy shit, it was amazing. I moshed, I pogoed, I slam-danced, I went round and round in the circle pit. The sweat was pouring off me. My Apple watch sent me regular warnings about the noise (hit 112db) and kept asking me if I wanted to record this workout. I did. I haven’t had a workout like that in years.

35 minutes I was in there for. “Refuse/Resist,” “Territory,” “Biotech is Godzilla,” “Propaganda,” all from Chaos AD. I survived it. I could still do it. Like riding a bike, it all came back, how to jump, how to land, how to take an elbow to the kidney that sends you a metre sideways but still land on your feet. Like the meme said, we perfected this shit. I am at home in a pit, regardless of age.

And then Max called for a Wall of Death.

A wall of death is when you literally divide the crowd in two, facing each other, and on cue, the two halves run at and slam into each other in a metal frenzy. As I had been standing right in front of Max, I ended up in the middle of the front line of the wall stage left. My first thought was, “Get out, you’re going to die.” My second thought was:

… and we ran.

My ears still ring. My body aches. It hurts everywhere. I have whiplash, bruises that will take months to heal. I’m 44, not 14, even though that temporarily slipped my mind. I feel better, happier, more alive than I have in months. I wrote this when I got back to my hotel:

“Fuck your mindfulness, get two from the front when Max Cavalera is making you scream WAR FOR TERRITORY.”

I haven’t stopped grinning yet. I haven’t felt this good since the Wildhearts gig in 2019. I can’t wait for tonight. I know The Almighty’s songs so much better, I know every word, every break and solo, I know how the venue works, my ticket number is high enough that I should get to the merch line early and get to the rail. No support to wait through. Like an addict, I need another hit, now.

TBC…