Over the weekend I was lucky enough to see VAMPS playing twice at Japan Night in London! I'd only planned to go on the Friday, as I couldn't afford tickets for both nights, but on Saturday I ran into the lovely Kimi, who gave me a spare pass she had for that night. <3
On Friday I arrived at the venue a few hours early. About a month ago I had surgery on my feet, and whilst I'm almost recovered now, I still have to use crutches, and didn't want to risk someone jumping on my feet, so I arrived early so I could stand in the front row, which would be safer (and I could put my crutches down behind the barrier and hold on to that instead if I needed to). Thankfully, I managed to get a front row spot on Kaz's side.
My look that day was inspired by the girl on the cover of the BLOODSUCKERS album, because I had fun doing her makeup a couple of months ago. I didn't have anything like the clothes she wears, so I cut up my tour shirt from 2013 to make it a more flattering style (used to hardly wear it because of the shape it was haha), and keeping with the feel of the album, went for a vampire/pirate/rock-themed outfit.
The concert was amazing on both days. The setlists were pretty similar on both days, and there was a good mix of songs from their new album and popular, older ones. Sadly, they never played The Jolly Roger, which is the song I'd wanted to hear the most. Hyde spoke to the crowd a lot, and really tried his best with English, which was cute.
On Tuesday, VAMPS played in Paris. It was such a fun day!
If any of you happen to not know VAMPS, I highly recommend them! The vocalist is Hyde of L'Arc-en-Ciel. I've never been particularly interested in L'Arc, but I do like Hyde's voice, and VAMPS is much more to my taste.
This is the song that made me a fan of VAMPS.
The venue was L'Olympia, which was actually a little smaller than I'd expected. It was a good size.
I'd originally planned to get to the venue at about 12, because I wanted to make sure I had a good view of the stage, but that didn't quite work out as planned, and I ended up arriving at about 2pm. Fortunately, it was a Tuesday so there weren't too many people there.
That day I went for a vampire-esque make up look, of course.
I spent the next 5 hours or so going to Starbucks a lot, and talking with other fans a bit. It was a little cold (and I didn't bring a coat haha), but time passed a lot faster than I'd expected it to.
At about 7.30, they let us in. I got a decent spot a few rows from the front, and slightly right of the centre because I wanted to see K.A.Z (guitarist) too.
Hyde! Even without Photoshop he looks much younger than he is (somewhere in his 40's)! He was also surprisingly tiny.
As for the live itself, it was great! The first thing that struck me was Hyde's amazing contact lenses, which I failed to capture with my iPhone haha. At first it looked like he wasn't wearing contacts at all, but occasionally (I guess when UV lights shined on them) they'd glow white, like a demon. It was really cool.
K.A.Z
Their music works extremely well live, so much so that I suspect at least a few of the songs were composed with lives in mind. There are lots of sort of... chanting(?) and shouting parts where the crowd can join in, which was fun. The best live songs were, in my opinion, HUNTING, REVOLUTION, and SEX BLOOD ROCK N' ROLL.
Hyde played the guitar too sometimes
Hyde and K.A.Z are the only official members of VAMPS, but I also want to mention the support members, because they were great. They were all really lively and enthusiastic (usually more so than the official members), and generally very fun. I actually kind of wish I'd stood more towards the left of the stage, because the bassist was great, and I would have liked to see him a little better.
Hyde was the only one to speak to the crowd, but he did it quite a few times, and was pretty entertaining. He made a pretty good stab at French (most of it was understandable, and the pronunciation was surprisingly good), and also spoke some English and Japanese.
After the live some of us waited outside to see the band off. We were waiting at the artists' entrance, but strangely, they actually left through the main entrance, so we missed them. :< But I still had fun chatting with other fans, and we didn't have to wait for too long~
I bought a T-shirt. It's a little bigger than I prefer, but I really liked the design.
