STEEL MEETS STEEL 7 (Report)

Wow!

Great night yesterday at Crescendo "cave"-house! "Steel meets Steel #7", organized & sponsored by MASTERMIND. The band itself is already a trademark of quality here, but for the occasion it has put together a bunch of very talented people. I'm talking about LONGINUS, UNTRAD, ARGUMENT SOUL and SCREAMING SYMPHONY. All fellas from around here...
For those of you that have been following these pages, it will be no news Cpt. passion for Mastermind and Longinus. And as a matter of fact it is for them that I signed yesterday. Nonetheless all the others - that I virtually ignored before yesterday - turned out to be three aces in the game (clicking their names will get you to the relative home-pages).

UNTRAD: horns up! Quartet from Tokyo(?), which plays fu*king good heavy metal! Great rythm, great sound, great tunes, plus a Halford-like singer with Cpt.'s dreams voice! I really like their stuff and want more of it! Such a pity that their next concert is scheduled close to summer.

ARGUMENT SOUL: horns up! A quintet originating from Nagoya delivering a fast, precise and powerful metallic assault a-la Dragonforce (but without that senseless cheese). The singer, young Toshinori Kamiya, is a monstrous spitfire machine! Really impressive the resemblance of his high pitch screems with Loudness's Minoru Niihara! Or was I drunk? Yes, because on usual singing he doesn't sound like that...
By the way, interesting to know (doing some more homework) that axeman Yoshiyasu Maruyama played live with DUNGEON too, back on May 2005 in Sydney!

SCREAMING SYMPHONY: hell yeah! Another quintet from... uhm... Fukuoka (?) [Myspace says "western island of Kyushu"] it should be this time. They play a thundering heavy/power metal, but with some more modern and groovy influences. Nasty enough, but not too much! Shortly: hot stuff! Pics were so-so...

LONGINUS: outstanding performance, as usual, but with a novelty. Masaki-san laser-precision axe grinding has been replaced on the occasion by... a new look Masaki-san! Precision grinding was unchanged!

MASTERMIND: a very long time no see for the Cpt.! But always a great pleasure: they delivered a hell of a power/speed metal show with the kick-ass singing of Noriyo-san... that you should remember from Hellhound. I love these guys! On the guitar, temporary guest - I guess - in place of Yoshiyuki Watarai - recovering from an injury - Inspire axeman Tsutomu Aruga (thanks Noriyo!). Very skilled dude! Anyway, as you can see from the pics, Yoshiyuki-san joined the party at the end too, just for a couple of song.　Set list as follows:

1.Phoenix Rising
2.Loud And Proud
3.Fight To Survive
4.Note Of Glory
5.Heroes
6.Eye Of The Riot
7.Departure〜Say Your Prayer
8.Never Say Never
9.The Way I Go
10.Run For Your Life
-encore-
11.Never Die(カバー）

I'll tell you: it was a long time since I last went home tired and neck-broken from a gig, waking up in the morning as if I went working out! But it's an hell of a good sensation! Oh... almost forgot it: they got us a special posing... only for PORT ROYAL fans! You know, they won't be concerting for a while...

(Naoyuki, Yushiya, Noriyo, Tsutomu, Yoshiyuki, Shinichi)