Some musicians play in a scene. A few build the scene they play in. Koba, the singer of Loyal to the Grave, is one of the second kind.

Bass to Vocals

Hiroyuki Kobayashi, known as Koba, was the bassist of Loyal to the Grave from its start in 1998. He was also the bassist of Birthplace, another of the key Tokyo bands of that generation.

In 2010 Loyal to the Grave lost its singer. Koba stopped playing bass and became the vocalist. He has fronted the band on everything since, including the album Against the Odds in 2012 and the EP Rectitude in 2024.

In 2023 he picked the bass up again for a new band, Indication, with a former singer of Crystal Lake.

The Festival

Koba started Bloodaxe Festival in 2000. It has grown into what is regularly called the biggest hardcore festival in Japan.

Its home is Club Citta in Kawasaki, and the formula is consistent: bands flown in from overseas, on the same stage as the best of the Japanese scene.

The 2015 bill gives the idea. From abroad came Emmure, First Blood and Hundredth from the United States and Desolated from Britain. From Japan came Loyal to the Grave, Crystal Lake, NUMB and A Ghost of Flare.

It has kept that level. The September 2024 edition had Comeback Kid and Mindforce. A spring edition in May 2025 had Counterparts and Kublai Khan. The 2026 festival, on 19 September, was headlined by Speed and Poison the Well.

Writers abroad credit the festival to Koba’s persistence and to the group around him, known as the Bloodaxe 168 crew.

The Label and the Shop

There is more. Koba runs Retribution Network, a label and mail-order distributor for hardcore records that has been going since around the turn of the century. Its catalogue covers new school and old school hardcore, metalcore and New York hardcore.

Since 2014 it has had a physical home as well. NERDS is a record shop in Shibuya, run jointly by Retribution Network and a punk label.

So the same person sings in the band, books the festival, releases the records and sells them over a counter.

Why It Matters

Hardcore depends on people who do the unglamorous work: the booking, the mail order, the shop. In Tokyo a remarkable amount of that work has been done by one bassist-turned-singer for twenty-five years.

His bandmate Hiroyuki Kohama once put it simply in an interview: hardcore is not only the songs, it is the connections between people. Koba is where a lot of those connections meet.