Tonight we’re at the Kavka Zappa in Antwerp for Hanabie and Ocean Encounters. For Hanabie it’s their first European tour. These girls ensured that every show in the tour is sold out with the necessary venue upgrades. A few days before our Belgian date the venue moved from the Kavka Oudaan to the Kavka Zappa.
Ocean Encounters brings a mix of various metal genres such as metalcore, death metal and add a pinch of rap to it. Their most recent addition is the new vocalist Lola, known for her metal covers on Youtube, including in collaboration with McFly and Carlito. The band immediately flew into it mercilessly and got the audience on their feet with their heavy breakdowns and the deafening vocals of both vocalists.
The highlight of their set was when they asked the audience to open a wall of death that turned into a circle pit afterwards. Ocean Encounters gave their best during the entire set, thanks to the audience who went wild with it.
After Ocean Encounters it’s finally time for Hanabie (pronounced ‘Ha-na-bie-jee’). The ladies enter the stage one by one, after which Yukina storms onto the stage with the Belgian flag. These ladies bring a warm atmosphere with their warm smile and stage performance that is contagious to the audience. Starting their set with ‘Choujigen Galaxy’ and immediately introduces us to the Kawaii Japanese metalcore/hardcore.
Despite the fact that the ladies speak poor English, they manage to entertain the whole crowd during their songs.The audience goes completely wild from dancing arm in arm to intense moshpits. The audience dances along to the infectious moves that the ladies use. Towards the end, Yukina even jumps into the audience to crowd surf! We get an encore after the ladies’ set. This gives us one very last song to close this great and very warm evening ‘Osaki ni Shitsurei Shimatsu’.
Setlist: Choujigen Galaxy – NEET GAME – Warning!! – Reiwa Matching-sedai – Ware Amatou – Kotoshi koso Gal-Shoka-Ver- – L.C.G. – Tousou – Osaki ni Shitsurei Shimasu – Today’s Good Day & So Epic.
HANABIE. Setted the room on fire for almost 55 minutes. The show itself was short but those ladies sure know how to play guitar, bass and drums! They also know how to entertain their crowd!