Yes, the big "Heavy Metal Dream" of touring Japan was coming real for DEW-SCENTED by the end of March 2001, when Addictease Production (Run by our friend Hiroko and Ritual Carnage drummer Naoya) set up four shows in the land of the rising sun for DEFLESHED, NIGHT IN GALES and us. It feels hard to write down a tour diary now, as there were massive impressions during our week stay in Japan and everything still is ways to fresh to wrap down in writing but I will try my very best to give you some entertaining vision of what happened for a bunch of uncompromising underground thrash-heads the other day some 10.000 kilometers East from here. As you might know, touring Japan isn't an easy task if you don't have a label / distribution there to host you and arrange all modalities, therefore we couldn't be any more glad to have received this special invitation and despite of the fact that we had (wrongly) assumed that nobody would be aware of our band down there, things went down really smoothly and not even the fact that some other bigger acts where touring Japan around the same date (NAPALM DEATH were doing the same cities some days before us and also CHILDREN OF BODOM & DARK TRANQUILLITY toured the week afterwards), the shows went down really successful for everybody involved....

Hiroko, Naoya as well as Hiroki (also a nice Japanese fellow that lives in Stuttgart who spent his holidays helping out as part of the merchandising and back line crew) picked us up by the airport to load a van with the equipment and later on take like an impressive 1,5 hours bus-drive from the airport to the center of town. Man, this town seemed never endingly huge to us but it wasn't until we reached Tokyo that we found out that this is different standards than Europe in sizes! The first day ran down quickly with some first bit of sight-seeing, record-store check, getting in at the hotel and experiencing a taster of the expensive but cool nightlife happenings in Osaka (you know, some restaurants, computer-games palaces, etc.) Jens, Frank, Tobbe and Bjoern from NIGHT IN GALES and Ingo took the chance to visit one famous underground club called SABBAT, which is leaded by a really Dracula look alike maniac named Taiki, which is well known in the Gothic / Metal Underground scene from Osaka. The approx. 60 square meters small club looks like a rebuilding of the hell itself, with a lot of occult things inside as well as some caskets and monster puppets – strange. According to Taiki a lot of bands took the chance already to visit his club during their stay in Osaka which was also documented by tons of pictures and autographs of these bands like MARYLIN MANSON, RAMMSTEIN, DISMEMBER, BIOHAZARD, SLIPKNOT and much more. After a while and tons of black metal music the guys from DEFLESHED, Patrick and Flo from DEW-SCENTED and Hiroko with her girl friend Yumiko who was helping out a little bit leading us in Osaka arrived at the club. Of course, the obligated band pictures were made soon and Taiki was in good condition due to the fact that he can add some more guests to his "collection". After some beers in the club we decided to go home except our bass-player Patrick somehow decided to check out some more Osaka by his own and ended lost downtown, taking a taxi which wouldn't return him home. Luckily the NIG guys noticed some weird looking longhaired guy sitting in the back of a car passing by them, so that they stopped the taxi and pulled him out, much to his relief. Sometimes the world is a small place to be...The night ended in the hotel room that D-S guitar player Flo and me shared, squeezing in some 12 people in 3 square meters to drown some local beers and quickly fall asleep (well, that was 4 in the morning or so...).

The day of the first show! Everybody was really looking forward to play and the pleasure became for real when we saw that the venue Nanba Rockets was a wonderfully equipped 300-people size club with super modern screens all over the place that showed the bands in action directly while on the stage with some 4 cameras direct mix. Weird stuff! Also, in front of the venue we met the first groups of people that had CD's of all bands playing ready to be signed and cameras ready to shoot. I got amazed by the speed of one guy that shot some pictures with the bands before the sound check and actually returned with the printed copies at night to get them signed. That's what I call fast!!! Strange was also that one fan spend us drinks all the time. Every time when we went out to get some drinks from the drink machine, he immediately put the 120 Yen inside before anybody could get his money faster. Of course sooner or later everybody of the whole group checked this out and shaked the head about this guy. The Japanese band GRIM FORCE (cool thrash metal featuring ex-members of Ritual Carnage and a very wild female bass-player) put on a great show as opening band and got the audience all ready for a DEW-SCENTED set that was incredibly brutal. We were very happy with the 2/3 of the venue-filling audience that really got into our songs and gave us an excellent welcome. We needed to get used to the fact that the people are really quiet in-between the song at first but it seemed very normal for Osaka because all the bands were facing silence in-between the songs, while people went crazy during the tracks... strange! Also it was cool to meet up with Yoshio as well as 2 other members of the local band SHADOW who turned out to be very nice fellows and also my pen pal Munetaka from World Chaos (label to GRIM FORCE, TERROR SQUAD, etc.) was there. NIGHT IN GALES put on a very aggressive show too, displaying a great mixture of songs off all the 3 albums + MCD as well as 2 brand-new songs from the upcoming album "Necrodynamic" (soon to be released on Massacre Records). Surprisingly enough these new songs are in a more 80's thrash vein than their well-known melodic death metal material and partly reminded me on early Anthrax or Testament, which is of course great. Next on was OUTRAGE, a Japanese act that used to be signed to a major company a decade ago and actually recorded their last album in Germany with the producer of ACCEPT, SCORPIONS, etc. The members were all really friendly and got us some good laughter with some German sentences they still had in mind from their stay in Germany. OUTRAGE had taken a longer break and actually don't sound as METALLICA-like anymore but rather made us think of some groovier PRONG version, as also their bass- and guitar-player shared shouted vocal duties due to the fact that they haven't found a proper lead singer for their new material. DEFLESHED from Sverige were the headlining act of today and blew away the audience with an untamed set with mostly tracks of their two latest albums "Fast Forward" and "Under The Blade" but also some older, more mid-paced goodies. DEFLESHED really enjoyed the audience and since there were some major speed freaks in the first rows, the band got motivated to thrash as fast as possible. Yes, drummer Matte was FAST! The aftershow was pretty enthusiastic, as we went down to a restaurant to get amazed by really Japanese food and actually quite some few drinks to celebrate the successful show and good beginning...

Short night (2 hours?) and then a rapid leave to the train-station to catch our ride to Nagoya. Everybody was really tired but luckily the trip wasn't too long, well, it actually didn't feel so long because I slept the whole way through. The club Huck Finn was celebrating 20 years of existence and it was amazing to notice that they have a non-stop every night monthly concert schedule where tons of bands have already played. The location itself was pretty small and we were betting that a max of 100 people would fit the room. However, in the end of the day, it got pretty well packed (80?) and some very enthusiastic first rows made it a very enjoyable evening for all the bands playing. There were also some older (45-50 years) guys in the audience which are coming right from their office work to the show including their expensive looking office clothes. Strange to see some bank men banging to blast beats… Before the actual sound check, I took the chance to check out downtown Nagoya with NIG drummer Chris but apart from getting the feeling that it wasn't as exciting as Osaka and also we were really hang-overed, nothing much happened. Oh, well, actually we did find the first and only (!) underwear machine on the way back to the club and although I had promised several people to bring back some goodies in this vein, I was forced to skip the idea due to the heavy prices...hmmm, sorry guys! Our accommodation for the night was actually upstairs in the same building of the club and had some traditional Japanese rooms (sleeping on the floor with some carpets) which was actually really cool judging by the deep and non-stop dream I had during the full night afterwards. DEW-SCENTED was on first today and although the place seemed still a bit empty when we had to start out (the curfews of 10 PM are merciless!), the audience gave us some great back-up and pushed us to the very limits, performing a really intense gig. NIGHT IN GALES had a very solid show also, somehow didn't seem as aggressive as the night before and things were getting pretty packed for them with 5 people on that small stage but they got some great feedback from the visitors for their tight set. Unfortunately I did miss the set of OUTRAGE because all in DEW-SCENTED went for some supermarket shopping together with Hiroko and Naoya but according to Ingo (who bravely sold merchandise on a half-meter spot inside the really small venue), there was a very good following for OUTRAGE and you could see that they pulled some people on their own tonight. No wonder, if you consider that 2 members of the band come from Nagoya. But their gig was much more harder and more rough than the Osaka gig which put the band into a better light than the day before. Nevertheless, when DEFLESHED got on stage, everybody was freaking out and once again the place was completely demolished, leaving the audience happy and desiring for a shirt. I bet every second visitor of the show went home with a DEFLESHED shirt, judging by the good sales that the band had (which was normal for each of the gigs). Another night, another restaurant but I personally preferred to stay back in the sleeping room (that I shared with Patrick and Chris...I bet the smell wasn't too good as we all ignored the showers today!?) to get some extra-sleep as I was really bumped from the no-rest schedule so far...Oh yeah, and I'm currently listening to THIN LIZZY's "Live And Dangerous" while typing this down, just for your complete information...

Yeah, Tokyo, we are on the way! The whole way with the train from Nagoya to the second biggest town on the globe (only Mexico City beats Tokyo...) was amazing. Beautiful scenery down the coast and we were lucky enough to catch a day where we actually saw the Fuji-Yama volcano in its whole pride, with amazing sunshine on its cone. We spent the whole time attached to the windows and shoot more pictures than actually a Japanese tourist would achieve to do in Europe! Great, hahaha! Seeing that we were approaching Tokyo made me get ready to leave the high-speed-but-no-noise-at-all train but it still took more than an hour until we finally reached the central station. Man, this was HUGE! We began our capital stay with bringing down the luggage to the classy hotel and checking out the Wendy's fast-food restaurant located directly on the other side of the road. Sometimes it gets difficult to explain the people at the counter of hamburger restaurants that all I actually want is 3 cheeseburgers with no meat and instead I would go for french fries as fill to set up my vegetarian meal, ha! DEFLESHED had an appointment with a radio station to do an interview so that we split the group and both NIGHT IN GALES and DEW-SCENTED got picked up by Yusuke, the nice guitar player of DEFILED, who showed us around for a bit, taking us to a Japanese temple and some nice sceneries in this district of Tokyo we actually were. It was impossible to get to see much more than that as the distances between places are huge! We walked back to meet DEFLESHED at their signing session at the Disk Union heavy metal record store, which actually was a great place to find all sorts of cool releases. I found some great cheapos, while our guitar player Flo bought some 45 DM version of the HATE ETERNAL debut album only to notice that it didn't include any bonus-tracks after all. That's what I call bargain, haha! Actually we noticed that some of the people at the signing session were following the bands from Nagoya to see the Tokyo shows as well, which was of course amazing! I also met up with Mirai from SIGH at the record store and we quickly made an appointment for the next day at the show as he's a really nice fellow, needless to say that his band totally rules! We took the tram back to the hotel area (even if the store was only almost "around the corner", this short drives take you about an hour each...) to go out for Japanese group-dinner. Once again, huge amounts of Japanese beer were ordered and emptied and the drinking session continued at the hotel where DEFLESHED (successfully) teached us some silly but entertaining card-games that were always dealing with drinking-punishment for the loser. Luckily we all lost and got the night pass by extremely quickly...

Shibuya is one of the two most common districts for shopping in "central" Tokyo and therefore our complete way there was filled with fascination about the amount of colors, light and people running (there is a much faster pace of walking in Japan than we were used to...) down the roads. Also, it was snowing and raining cold for a bit which was strange because the rest of the week was pretty warm and comfortable with some 15-18°C. You could nevertheless figure out very easily that we were tourists as we must have been the only people in all of Tokyo that didn't own a parachute. The venue (a very traditional 350-capacity place downstairs of a big building that has already hosted bands like TANKARD, CRYPTOPSY and many more) once again featured some great equipment and after all bands were done with sound check, everybody seemed eager to blow away the audience with an amazing gig. I personally once again made sure to check out all possible known and unknown cans out of automatic drink machines (all of Japan is covered with these machines! I better don't wanna know how many 120 Yen drinks I bought all throughout the week. Quoting Gustaf, singer and bass-player in DEFLESHED "Leffe, every time I see you, you are in front of a drink machine buying something!", haha!) to experience some new flavors and especially the 15 different brands of tea in cans available! I wish Germany would be this modern....We got to meet all sorts of different cool people during the show today, as Kirk from JVC came up to say HI, Masahiro from Soundholic (Japanese label of DEFLESHED) was there, Mirai from SIGH again and many more. The concert started out with GRIM FORCE playing a very powerful set, which featured special guests Eddie (Guitars) and Naoya (Drums) of RITUAL CARNAGE as players for the full set. The audience knew to honor this idea and the band sounded great, considering the fact that they only got to rehearse one time on the day before with this line-up. Cool set! Next up was the melodic-progressive Japanese power metal band VIGILANTE that already has a strong reputation within the underground and has some release out through Massacre Records (label mates of NIGHT IN GALES, then! The world is a small place to be sometimes...). The band made sure to blow us away already with their sound check as this was technically perfect melodic metal with some hints of DREAM THEATER and old FATES WARNING with amazing guitar players (those trade-off leads were ace!), some unstoppable 6-string bass-guitar extravaganza and a very impressive high-pitched, clean vocalist. Their show went down really cool but I didn't manage to witness the whole set as we were preparing for the DEW-SCENTED show in the packed tiny backstage room. Unfortunately the monitors were totally screwed by the time we entered the stage and we were caught on some 30 minutes set without the necessary guitar power on stage. My voice was a bit fucked and sounded really rough which didn't really make me very happy but seeing the packed place go all nuts, some rows of all-the-way-through headbanging and even a moshpit (!) was reward enough and eased my personal bad feeling. We sold great amounts of shirts and CD's tonight which proves that sometimes your "musician-feel" doesn't really represent fairly the way a show feels for the audience. Lesson learnt! DEFLESHED were up next today because their live-show would be broadcasted in the radio later on, so the three-piece from Sweden made sure to come up with a very brutal and tight program. The audience was almost exploding and I had some great view of the madness, standing next to the stage. Killer! Closing down the night, NIGHT IN GALES put on a great, bit longer set and you could even figure out that some people knew their material as they were banging and shouting along. It was also funny to see that in Tokyo the audience wasn't as silent in between the songs as in Osaka or Nagoya and NIGHT IN GALES took clever advantage of the powerful atmosphere to make everybody in the club happy, even though there were some technical problems during the set. If it wasn't for the little bit uncontrolled sound and extreme (!) volume, things would have been more enjoyable for myself as well but since the rest of the crowd didn't seem to complain, who cares!? And one thing is for sure, NIG blew people away! The majority of the group once more went out for some collective dinner and drinking while me, Patrick and the guys in DEFLESHED preferred to get a ride back to the hotel with Naoya in his van of metal to rest the bones a bit and for me especially, I was trying to have my voice recover a bit for the second show in Tokyo. Apparently the rest of the nightlife group had some loads of fun as it was already early in the morning when you would still see some alcoholized Germans running all throughout the lobby of the hotel...

Right on, sleep cured the wounds and my voice was back at full power! It took a while to get the whole group awaken and united to leave in direction of the venue (DEFLESHED were already out for some Tokyo sight-seeing as their plane back home would leave already the next day, whereas we still had a day longer to go...) and some of the "corpses" didn't really look very healthy and relaxed during the 40 minutes ride in the back of Naoya's van. However, things were a bit easier today for sound check, as we were already familiar with the venue and we took the chance to make sure that especially the monitors were in perfect set up for the show. I used the time in-between sound checks to go down to the local Tower Records Megastore (7 Levels full of records... too bad that these chainstores file metal together with pop and rock and it therefore takes an infinity to look through the albums to find something interesting!) with Mirai from SIGH as well as to check out other record stores before ending up at Mc Donald's for some traditionally fast food. GRIM FORCE (again with their special guests of RITUAL CARNAGE) put on a fast thrashin' show and despite of the fact that we had all already played the same club the night before, the place got packed and you wouldn't see too many of the same faces that visited last night's show. Great! DEFILED was on next and their killin' technical approach in US-style death metal in the vein of GORGUTS, IMMOLATION or old CRYPTOPSY was seriously impressive. The whole band just thrashed down the stage with their extremely long hair-psycho headbanging and got the crowd to go really violent. Quite an impressive show! We were almost scared to go up on stage after this merciless attack that DEFILED had just created but luckily enough things were in place for us and we played one of the very best shows in our whole career. Awesome atmosphere, great sound (on and off-stage!) crazy audience, again some more moshpit and even stage diving really lead us to squeeze the best out of our instruments. It was a total mindblow and an unforgettable show....well, luckily we have it all taped with Flo's camera, just in case we should become senile one day sooner or later, haha! Sweat can be a great thing at times! Also NIGHT IN GALES had a hell of a gig, vocalist Bjoern had luckily regenerated from his heavy hang-over and it was a pleasure to watch him lead the audience into heavy metal heaven and proving once again that he's one of the finest lead-singers (stage appearance an also the variety in his vocals!) ever in a German metal-band. DEFLESHED went on stage and didn't think twice: no long introduction, no fooling around, just pure metal inferno!!! Again a super brutal set list and people getting into the sonic speed a 100% with the last show on Japanese ground. Mission completed, indeed! Everybody was extremely content with the shows' turnout and therefore it was in time to celebrate this whole great trip with some more Japanese food and beers. We went out with like a 20-people group and had some glorious drinking session until the sun went up again! Somehow we managed to get back to the hotel (sorry, no big memory...) and all I remember from the dead-as-a-stone night was that Lasse (guitar-player in DEFLESHED) bumped into the room where D-S guitar player Flo and me were dead but dreaming to say bye (I guess, I was sleeping...) and leave some beers before they had to go down to the airport...

The trip back to Germany was longer than expected but then again we were ready to face it: Getting up at 6 AM, waiting for the group to be complete to leave direction Tokyo tram, drive some bit to reach the train that would take us to the airport some 1,5 hours later while everybody looked like zombies, checking in and saying THANKS and BYE, SEE YOU HOPEFULLY NEXT TIME to the person in charge of this wonderful tour, Hiroko (you rule, we can't appreciate your support enough!), as well as Ingo because they were both staying a week longer in Japan to do some more tourism (wish I would have been able to join you for that!!!). A last quick visit of Airport Mc Donald's to leave our last Yen-Coins in the right pockets (well.... at least it served the purpose!) and then boarding the flight. The meals were much better than on the first flight (unfortunately Flo and me had once again forgotten to point out that we are vegetarians... shit, always the same!) but the movies sucked big time! Totally boring all-day flight (we only faced darkness when arriving in Germany) but luckily DEW-SCENTED had the pleasure of sitting in the first middle row, which meant "freedom of leg" big time. I guess it's obvious that this flight back was amazing for us, oh, and our apologies to NIG for always looking back on them with a huuuge smile on our comforted faces, haha! Zurich was a quick change over to the flight leading to Duesseldorf and it all felt so terribly short: I mean, we were standing there like a week ago and got to experience soooo many new things in such a quick trip, incredible! Arriving at Duesseldorf sucked a bit when we noticed that Flo's guitar case and also the guitar were smashed and we didn't seem to have the necessary insurance to claim the damage. This costs us some minutes at the Lost & Found counter which made us miss the next train to Dortmund but NIG were nice enough to stick around and get on the same next train as us. On the one hour drive we had a brotherhood-round sip of sake (thanks again, Hiroko!) until NIG left the train in Duisburg, but we are seeing them around for more shows together sooner or later, you can always count on that! DEW-SCENTED were actually gonna walk up to the local show of DIMMU BORGIR / IN FLAMES / NEVERMORE / LACUNA COIL / SUSPERIA that same night in Dortmund but the train we had taken faced some construction area where we had to switch it for another one in the right direction which ended up in the fact that we didn't make it to my place before close to midnight. We were all exhausted but couldn't resist checking out some of the video tapes we had recorded in Japan before crashing into eternal sleep! Once again, we would like to thank everybody involved with this unforgettable tour: Hiroko "caring mama" Maruyama, "The real Samurai" Naoya Hamaii & Addictease Production, Hiroki, Ingo "Hass-san" Hass, our partners in crime NIGHT "hervorragend" IN "Gebretzel" GALES, "this is the return of" DEFLESHED, the nice Japanese acts that played along (GRIM FORCE, OUTRAGE, DEFILED and VIGILANTE), all the clubs and visitors of the shows for the wholehearted support as well as all the new friends we made on this tour. We can't wait to be back.....and we will be back for sure for another fistful of thrash sooner or later! Domo Arrigaton gozaimas & Matane!!!