For those of you interested in expanding your global musical horizons, the two day Metal Matsuri festival in London at the start of October might be just your thing. Offering up ten Japanese metal acts who I imagine are not household names in the UK, this looks to be an interesting and entertaining couple of days.
The line-up features Mary’s Blood, Mardelas, Rie aka Suzaku, Lipstick, Zeroschiki, Unlucky Morpheus, Bridear, Fate Gear featuring Ibuki, Bloodstain Child and Aya1000RR. If you are unfamiliar with any of these acts – and unless you are a hardened J-Metal fan, I suspect you will be – the festival website helpfully has video clips of each band in action. The music ranges from melodic to brutal, hardcore to glam, slick to rough, but everything here definitely seems worth checking out. There are more female than male performers, but angry metal purists will be relieved to see that the acts are all (ahem) ‘proper’ bands who play their own instruments and are not remotely ‘kawaii’.
Tickets will cost you £107 for the two days, or £70 for a single day, which might put it beyond the merely curious, though it works out at just over a tenner a band, which seems eminently reasonable.
Full details and tickets here.
