It has been a while ago that a Japanese band had the chance to enter the stage of Baroeg in Rotterdam. After Crossfaith, Church of Misery, Coffins, and a number of other bands from Japan, Visual Kei band Jupiter was the next band to take the stage in The Netherlands.
Baroeg is a perfect place for metal bands to be discovered, especially for the Japanese band, because they have not performed in The Netherlands before and this also applied to the support acts. Jupiter are not unknown at all to fans of the Visual Kei scene and at first glance, they seemed to have come to the event on 10 May. That changed later in the evening with a diversity of people who enjoyed Japanese symphonic power metal.
It was the second day of the European tour and all the bands were still full of energy and enthusiasm. This was especially noticeable with the headliner Jupiter, who even as the last act managed to give a show in which the band and audience went crazy. From the first moment, the band managed to pop with ARCADIA and LAST MOMENT, the audience was directly involved and gave them a free workout. Both are tracks of which the original was sung by KUZE’s predecessor ZIN and for fans a way to discover the differences between the two vocalists. No time for a breather until a song in the direction of a ballad started, like No cry no more.
KUZE was very welcomed as the new vocalist of Jupiter, he managed to convince the Rotterdam audience with the wide range of his voice and his enthusiasm. While trying to make contact with the entire audience, he led them through the concert. During a break, KUZE tried to communicate with the enthusiastic audience in English and Japanese, although he managed to throw out a thank you in Dutch, there was no time to stay still and the band had to quickly continue, because the SHOW MUST GO ON. Of course there was enough room during the performance for the solos of guitarists Teru and Hizaki, where Hizaki even makes an impressive splits along the monitor to show his guitar playing up close for those who had to attend the concert while sitting. No discrimination from the band and that creates a fraternisation between the audience and the band members.
Even though Jupiter’s show took place later in the evening, the musicians had enough energy to go to extremes. Soon the sweat drops appeared on the faces of the musicians, especially Hizaki, who is completely dressed in a rococo dress, soon receives the heat, but the heat doesn’t hurt anyone, because there is full concentration on bringing a perfect show. Compared to the support acts, Jupiter’s light show is much more interesting, so the attention was directly drawn to the band. Though that may not have been necessary, since Jupiter managed to give a big show, a finger-licking good one.
As expected, the focus of the setlist was mainly on Jupiter’s latest album, Zeus ~Legends Never Die~, but a number of older songs were not forgotten, like the first two songs of the gig and at the end with Blessing of the Future and Symmetry Breaking, among others.
Setlist
01. ARCADIA
02. LAST MOMENT
03. Angel’s Wings
04. Drastic Night
05. Bring Me Out
06. SHOW MUST GO ON
07. No cry no more
08. The Spirit Within Me
09. TEARS OF THE SUN
10. Memories of you
11. B.L.A.S.T
12. Blessing of the Future
13. Zeus：Ⅰ.Legend Never Die – Ⅱ.Conversations with GodEncore 1: Symmetry Breaking
Encore 2: Theory of Evolution
As the evening was filled with not only the performance of Jupiter, but also of 3 different support acts, lovers of loud music were kept busy for a couple of hours. The evening was kicked off by the solo musician Lightning who tried to convince the audience with his guitar supported by a backingtrack. Almost the entire show he was surrounded by a cameraman who tried to record his performance and the reactions of the audience. Since Lightning was the starter of the evening, there were more cameras than the audience at that moment and that is a pity, but also something that is common for support acts.
With one of his more known tracks, Memories, Lightning tries to get the audience interested in his guitar skills. The audience was a bit shy in the beginning, but as the show progresses the audience knows how to react more to the musician and his performance. This creates enthusiasm on the part of Lightning. Despite the fact that he’s on his own on stage, he tried to make a show of it, like during his last song where he managed to shred a bit on his guitar.
In the second act, the German symphonic metal band AETERNITAS, the audience is filled with new faces. It’s a bit crowded on stage, because it was filled with 6 band members and their instruments. The band immediately managed to get in with a bang and that immediately causes some nodding heads by the audience. AETERNITAS shows that they are a theatrical metal band with opera and fairy-tale elements, but they are slightly different from the other support acts.
In the meantime, the bass player attracted attention by playing all over the stage and duelling with the other musicians. The vocalist Julia sang with full conviction and with great difficulty above the music, while the voice of guitarist and vocalist Alex seemed to come across very clearly. AETERNITAS knows how to get the audience along by singing along to the catchy elements they have incorporated in their songs. There even seemed to be a track in between that seemed to resemble Frozen’s Let It Go. Whether this was the case, didn’t matter much to the audience, because they seemed to enjoy the show.
The last support contact for Jupiter was the English band Season of Ghosts, for many a well-known name thanks to the vocalist Sophia who has an interesting history in Japan. Sophia stood on stage with her sunglasses and hood on which caused some mystery around her. After a false start with the microphone, the vocalist was able to recover quickly to encourage the audience, also referred to as beautiful time travellers.
The band went back in time with a track from the first album The Human Paradox. The space became smokier and the atmosphere more intense. It could be seen that Sophia sings with a smile and filled the hall with a heavenly sound. With the hope that the Japanese version of A Place to Call Home would be performed, as a nod to the main act, this was ultimately not the case. Anyway, this was a perfect song to get in motion, for Sophia it’s time to take off her sunglasses. In the end Season of Ghost managed to give a wink with a track from Sophia’s old band Blood Stain Child, Stargazer, as a nice ending.
Photography: Helcanen
