[2024.11.03] kein x GULLET x lynch. Reo 50th Birthday "Genealogia" @ Nagoya Bottom Line

Wooh! It’s been 4-5 months since I last traveled to Nagoya to see a live. When this was first announced, I was pretty eager to see Kein and lynch together, and I didn’t know a thing about the mystery session band GxxxxT.

My spouse sent me the announcement and said, “It’s GULLET. We NEED to go see this.”

And I was like, sure, why not? We haven’t traveled in a while.

Boy am I glad that we went to see this!

For those who don’t know, Reo was in kein before it disbanded. Mako, aie, and Yukino went to form deadman, and Reo joined Gullet. Then he left Gullet to form lynch. The whole point of this live was to celebrate Reo’s past bands across the years!

The Gullet session was a session because Reo, Yukino, and the vocalist Ryo were the only members playing. The other two members have retired from band activities. Sally from kein was set to play the drums.

Since there was no timetable, and a last minute livestream of the encore was announced, we all assumed that Gullet would be playing during the encore. 

Anyway, on to the day itself!

We got to Nagoya at around 2pm, checked into our hotel, and then we got to the venue at around 3:30 to get that sweet sweet birthday merch. They had a sign for Bottom Line inside the nearest train station, which was pretty cool. I had my eyes on the pick shaped coaster, which turned out to be stainless steel. I went right back in there and got myself another coaster. And I’m glad I did, because they sold out after the show.

My spouse got the acrylic stand set. Honestly whoever came up with the idea needs a raise, because putting Reo’s full government name and toddler photo next to him in full video makeup on birthday merch is genius.

We had some pretty good tickets which put us in the third row. My spouse is a huge Yusuke fan, and we thought Yukino would come over to the Shimote side for Gullet, so we stood somewhere in the shimote/center area.

A middle aged lady stood uncomfortably close to me for around 5 minutes before wedging herself into a half-space in second row. She even tried to force her way into saizen, but it didn’t work lol. 

That would not be the only spot drama that happened that night.

When the lights finally dimmed for kein, there was a sudden wave of movement from behind that pushed us to the front. This doesn’t really happen for vkei lives anymore, and even if it does, it’s only for a few short moments where a band man is leaning into the crowd to high five us or something. But pre covid this was a regular occurrence. The lights would go off and people would rush forward. 

Honestly I was pretty surprised to see this happen for kein of all bands. The previous kein lives I’ve been to have been pretty mild. People barely even headbanged and stuff, lol.

Mako came out in his ratty ass kein wig (sorry Mako, I love you) and started singing. Gosh, kein is so damn cool. Reo was pretty close to our spot. At one point Yukino got on the center stand to do a bass solo. And he looked incredible today with his blond hair and bold lipstick. When he came out, I was like fuuuuck, what’s going on? Why is he HOT?

Then at some point he went back to his spot and took off his jacket. And hot damn, his ARMS. When he was finger plucking the bass you could see the veins on the back of his hand PULSE. He had his pick in his mouth. 1000/10 no notes. Even my (straight) spouse said it was ridiculously hot. (Tbh my spouse was the one who brought the hot thing up. I thought I was just being thirsty, but nah dog. We both were.)

Then, when Danro no Kajitsu ended, Mako and aie just up and left the stage. It was weird since Mako usually bows and stuff…

And then a man I’d never seen before waltzed onto the stage. I was like, who’s this dude?

It was… Ryo!

Wow, literally no one expected that transition. They leapt into Persecution Complex right away. I was kinda disappointed to see Yukino remain on the Kamite side…

But Gullet had really intense energy. So did the crowd, which pushed us even further to the front. I had listened to Gullet for like 3 hours leading up to the live, so I knew the songs by sound but not by name. It didn’t matter, because I still had a blast.

The pushing didn’t stop after Gullet ended. A gya in front of me left saizen because it got too intense. Two elder gya in my row also left. So with the gya in front of me moving in front, I should be in 2nd row, right? WRONG! Someone on my right slid themselves diagonally into the spot in front of me.

Long story short, the pushing didn’t stop at all, and I ended up behind my spouse. For reference. I am 159cm and my spouse is 174cm. My face was in his hair. I couldn’t see a thing, lol. I tried to ask him to switch (which is what we usually do in this situation) but he looked at me all annoyed and I thought it was because he wanted to be closer to Yusuke. 

(Later it turned out that he was annoyed because spot thief #1 had been elbowing him the whole time and he would have been happy to switch so he didn’t need to be elbowed. Oh well. There’s always a next time.)

Lynch. started and there was another rush of people from the back. Another middle-aged woman (who had been somewhere in row 4 or 5) barged into the front on my right, trapping me so that I could barely move my arms. I literally could not see Yusuke at all. I had a good view of Hazuki, though. I spent the first two songs completely sandwiched and unable to move from all the pushing. For a moment I thought I was going to die in there, but then I saw the woman on my right having the time of her life… and I snapped. Fuck it, I thought, I’m going to enjoy myself even if it means I have to crash into all of you… so I started jumping in place with my arm in the air.

To my surprise, everything got much more bearable once I started doing that. I guess the lesson here is that I shouldn’t let people walk all over me (literally).

Then it was time for pulse. For those who don’t know, pulse is lynch.’s most in-your-face sex song. It’s not there in the recorded version, but at lives, the chorus is just the audience chanting, “yaritai yaritai yaritai!” (Translation: I wanna fuck! x 3) and Hazuki always hypes the crowd up by saying “Let’s have SEX!” or some variation of the phrase. Emphasis on the sex part.

Today was a little different. Hazuki started by saying it was time for us all to do *something*, and since it’s Reo’s special day, maybe Reo should do the honors…

To which Reo replied, “I KNEW this was coming! I knew Hazuki would bring it up…!”

We all had a laugh, and Reo leaned into his mic… and said the thing! He was hella blushing while he said it, too.

Then lynch.’s set ended and it was almost time for the (streamed) encore session. My spouse and I switched spots so that I could finally, um, see. 

Surprisingly, the encore started with Reo coming out by himself with a mic, sans guitar. He gave a really long and heartfelt speech, which I’ll try my best to summarize here.

In September of last year, Reo lost a close friend and mentor, a PA person called Yamamoto-san. Yamamoto-san had done PA work for all three bands kein, Gullet, and lynch., and had been an invaluable presence in all of their lives. And since him and Reo were so close in age, this loss got him thinking, and he decided to organize this live. The live title “Genealogia” is his way of conveying the passing of the torch, in a sense - from Yamamoto-san, to the band, to the audience, and finally to whomever the audience might introduce this music to. This live would not have been possible if Reo had not been blessed by so many supportive connections. Kein and lynch., for one, and also the past Gullet members. Since Reo had left Gullet before it disbanded, it was actually a huge ask for him to request permission to use Gullet’s songs and perform them. But the boss of the label allowed it, and even allowed them to use Gullet’s logo on their merch and for the event. The retired Gullet members even came to see this live, and they were sitting in the special guests area on the 2nd floor.

After the speech, he introduced the three vocalists of the night, saying that Yamamoto-san had loved all three bands.

(I can’t actually remember who else was on stage for the encore. There were too many of them.)

Ryo had a new addition to his costume—some fake vampire blood on his chin, and bloody bandages around his neck.

They started playing kein’s Kranke, and then Gullet’s Pool and finally lynch.’s Evidence, with all three vocalists singing in turn. They had the lyrics to the songs pasted on the floor of the stage for easy reference, lol.

Then the show finally ended, with Reo and Yusuke throwing picks at the crowd before they left the stage.

Reo’s final parting message for us was that he hoped we would look into each member’s other projects in addition to what they played tonight.

Honestly, this might be in my Top 10 lives of the year at this point, even with all the pushing and spot drama. I felt like I was in one of those old live DVDs of super influential bands from the early 2000s, like deadman’s 2006 endroll live. It was messy, there was no personal space, and there was drama and pushing… but it was fucking amazing all the same.