Tokyo’s metallic hardcore scene looks, from outside, like dozens of unrelated bands. Look at the credits and it is closer to one extended family. Birthplace sits in the middle of the tree.
The Trunk: State Craft
The oldest branch is State Craft, formed in 1995. It made one album, in 2000, and stopped in 2001.
In 1998 its members started a side project. That became Loyal to the Grave, and State Craft’s two guitarists are in it.
The Link: Koba
The bassist of Loyal to the Grave, from its first day, was Hiroyuki Kobayashi, known as Koba.
He was the bassist of Birthplace as well. So through the late 1990s and the 2000s the same player held down the low end in two of the city’s leading new school bands. Birthplace’s albums came out in 2000 and 2005. Loyal to the Grave’s came out in 2006 and 2012.
In 2010 Koba moved from bass to vocals in Loyal to the Grave, and has been its singer since.
The New Branch: Indication
In 2023 a new band appeared, and its lineup was the family tree in miniature.
Indication has Koba on bass, back on his first instrument. It has GV, the guitarist of Birthplace. And its singer is Veron, who left Crystal Lake in 2011.
A Tokyo record shop introduced the band’s first demo as the offspring of Birthplace and Crystal Lake. It was more colourful than that in the original Japanese.
The stated purpose was to rekindle new school hardcore, the style Birthplace had played two decades before. The band went on to make an album, with guest vocalists from the German band Heaven Shall Burn and the American band Mindforce.
That same year, 2023, Birthplace’s first album was remastered and put back in circulation.
The Meeting Place
The tree has a trunk, and it also has a clearing where everybody gathers. Since 2000 Koba has run Bloodaxe Festival, where the bands of this family share a stage every year with groups from overseas.
Why It Matters
Scenes that last are held together by a small number of people who keep turning up in new combinations. In Tokyo you can trace one such line from 1995 onward through four band names and a few musicians, most of them called Hiroyuki.
That last part is true. Loyal to the Grave has had three members with that first name at once.
Start with Birthplace’s first album, then Indication.
