「No matter how lovely my dreams    When I wake up, I’m always alone*」

The lyrics of their last song, LOVE ME, resonated in my heart. This was a song that they have always sung, but for some reason, on this day, it was especially significant.

This year, BUCK-TICK’s THE DAY IN QUESTION 2019 was held as a tour, making stops in Takasaki, Osaka, Nagoya, before playing the final show here in Tokyo. For almost 20 years, they have been performing in Tokyo on 29 December at the Nippon Budokan every year, but this year, the Budokan was undergoing refurbishments and could not be used, so their venue was shifted to Yoyogi National Stadium First Gymnasium.

I remember this same day last year. After they postponed a few (4) performances when Sakurai Atsushi fell ill, the place where he made his comeback was the Nippon Budokan. It has been one year since that day when, in an instant, we realised that nothing lasts forever and were made to feel that we should treasure our present moments more than ever.

This year, aside from performing the rescheduled concerts for the postponed lives, Locus Solus no Kemonotachi at Makuhari Messe, and after that, this tour, the rest of their time was spent in production. The number of lives they performed was few. Because of that, it felt as if there was an especially strong desire for the band.

The setlist remained more or less the same for all 4 venues. With a keen awareness, they opened with Muma 〜The Nightmare, and until the last song of their first encore, Mudai, the performance felt like a quixotic circus of darkness. It was as if we had been dragged into someone’s nightmare. As a spirit dressed in burial garb, the Fool follows. Until the very end, this worldview held fast.

Until the end of the first encore, the songs they played were mostly from their days following the move to BMG Funhouse (now known as Ariola Japan) with the exception of Uta, SILENT NIGHT, and Speed. Considering the fact that a snowy performance created a flow which led from Snow White to SILENT NIGHT, it was, in essence, two songs.

This is because the members acknowledge the worldview that BUCK-TICK possesses, and I believe that it was during the time of their move when they dared recognise it and let it take shape. As a result, the songs that were selected is close to the tone of their world and in line with for THE DAY IN QUESTION’s concept of “performing nostalgic songs which won’t be played during a regular tour”.

The only change for the main set was that the first day’s New World had been switched for Dokudanjou Beauty-R.I.P.-. On the other hand, with the second encore, they switched around between a total of six songs including the four listed below and two others; MISS TAKE -boku wa miss take- and GLAMOROUS.

Within such a set, they performed their new song Datenshi in the encore. This song, which started with a glam rock-like guitar which sounds like something you would’ve heard somewhere before, feels like a rock-and-roll song with a simple beat, but something about it leaves behind a strange sense of discomfort. Imai talks about it in the headline feature interview of the next issue of Ongaku to Hito, but perhaps that comes from the composition of the song.

We were once again surprised by the avant-garde ideas of the inscrutable Imai, but no matter what song it is, (it works because) once these five play together, they possess an implicit value that makes anything become BUCK-TICK’s. And because of this, Imai is allowed to write unabashedly strange, “anything goes” type of songs. And this trust didn’t come about just because they have been playing together for 30 years or have been friends since their high school days, but it is something that exists because the five of them have been working hard and thinking about the band every day.

Many call this band a miracle, but that is not what they are. These five have been working hard every day to make sure that this band continues to thrive. This tough band vibe that can be felt from the stage is the gift that comes from their ongoing devotion to betterment.