Originally posted by ElvenShadow
While we're on the subject of Japanese bands, anyone ever hear the band Seikima II?
I have! I even saw them live in Kobe, Japan in about 1988 or 1989 (with a great melodic hard rock/metal band called Earthshaker). The singer, Demon Kogure, is a really funny guy. He had broken his leg not long before the concert, and did the show in a wheelchair that he had decorated with all kinds of scary stuff, skulls and monster heads and things like that.
One of the interesting things about Seikima II is that they are a parody band. They parody all those silly "Look! We're evil!" bands (basically any band with an upside-down pentagram on the cover). They wear makeup and wild costumes (one guy even wears big horns on his head), Demon Kogure "pretends" that he's the Devil, they call their concerts black masses, etc., etc., but they always carry it to a goofy extreme that makes it clear that they're a bit less than serious (though it's hard to pick that up without being able to understand Japanese).
The tour pamphlets they sold at the show I went to were hilarious, with little cartoons showing that when you're walking down the street and trip over something, or when the ice cream scoop falls off the ice cream cone, or things like that happen, it's actually Satan who made it happen.
For quite a few years now, Demon has been appearing on Japanese talk shows, variety shows, and all that. I've even seen him giving a lecture on educational TV.
I bought some of their stuff in Japan, but there is one available on amazon.com, and a whole bunch available from Amazon Japan. Another place to get Japanese CDs and that is
www.cdjapan.co.jp.
