Tokyo

Imagine my horror when I was asked to be one of the judges for the Supersonicboom event held at Guthlaxton College. Four hours of bands. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I turned up, heard the music, and I’m glad I went. The standard was shockingly good opening up with the first band who had quite an accomplished young guitarist and a gutsy singer. For me though it came down to two bands, Tokyo and C*Bob. It was a hard choice, C*Bob certainly had the “fuller” sound, but Tokyo hadn’t been around for that long….consequently they both received 31 marks out of 40 from me.

This review however is about Tokyo. Initially formed in 2004, the band comprises the notable talents of James Stew, Nathan Rainer, Ben Tranter and Arvin Yarollahi. James is their storming guitarist who cites his influences as Bon Jovi, Van Halen and Guns N' Roses, it shows because as soon as he started playing I knew I was going to enjoy their set. There’s just something about that sort of music which just makes me grin from ear to ear. A flawless display of guitar work showing how it should be done. Nathan is a breath of fresh air, for once we have a bass player who understands that the bass isn’t just a guitar with two strings missing and that it’s ok to actually play stuff that gets noticed. I’ve only ever heard two other bass players like this at a local level (one of them playing in my band :O) ), and it was nice to see Nathan enjoying himself and actually moving around as opposed to being rooted to the spot. Their drummer, Ben, didn’t drift, didn’t over complicate matters, put fills in where they were needed…..if only more bands had drummers like this.

Finally Arvin, their singer. Vocals are often the making or breaking of bands. The music started, I thought “so far so good, but here comes the vocals”, I closed my eyes in anticipation of what was going to come, half in fear, half in hopeful expectation. Then they hit me and my mind was filled with all the great bands that I grew up with, Bon Jovi, Guns N Roses, Queensryche, DreamTheatre all of those great vocals I had missed and seemed to be absent in modern day rock. Wow can this guy sing! What we have here is a complete band who deserve a lucky break.

I have one of their CD’s and I actually play it now and then. I will say that the quality of the CD is ok, but they do sound better live.

"Arigato gozaimasu" Tokyo...or "Domo"