By Jason Yu
On a foggy, Saturday night in Berkeley (CA), the prestigious college town would play host to veteran J-rock & alt-metal group, Survive Said the Prophet. The venue, Cornerstone Berkeley, a popular restaurant and bar, would host the J-rock group with their concert hall in the back.
Survive Said the Prophet, also called SSTP or Sabapuro, debuted back in 2011 in Tokyo. The four-member group is currently on their 2024 Make / Break Yourself, with Berkeley being their 5th stop on their U.S. tour. The group actually was in the San Francisco Bay Area just two months ago in May, being guests of honor at Fanime, an anime convention held annually in San Jose, CA.
Best known to anime fans for the songs “Mukanjyo” and “Paradox,” the first and opening themes, respectively, for the anime series Vinland Saga, the group toured within Japan for much of their career.
Until now.
With their 2024 Make / Break Yourself tour, this marks the group expanding to the West. Led by vocalist Yosh and supported by guitarist Tatsuya, guitarist Ivan, and drummer Show, the group developed a niche, but strong fanbase, as seen from the crowded venue inside Cornerstone Berkeley.
Before Survive Said the Prophet took the grand stage, the opening act was rock group Ice Cream, a local Bay Area act. With four members, the group played for 45 minutes, mixing up soft rock with alt-rock vibes.
Throughout each set, fans were intrigued by the group’s name, Ice Cream, as the desert was a favorite among many in the audience. Questions such as “what’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”, “Did you have ice cream today?”, and “I like soft serve, do you?” were just come of the inquiries fans had, to the laughter of many. The group, however, did not bite with answering the ice cream questions, getting into their next songs.
Curious to find out the ice cream questions myself, after the concert, I actually asked them about the group’s name. To my surprise, their group name wasn’t because of their love of the icy desert. Rather, the name was picked for more of a philosophical reason, relating the melting of ice cream to life itself. Basically, if you don’t live life to its fullest, then like ice cream, your opportunities will melt away.
Profound indeed.
Sadly, I forgot to ask the most important question: the members’ favorite ice cream flavors. Perhaps next time.
After Ice Cream’s opening act, the members of SSTP starting coming out to set up their instrumentals to the cheers of the audience. Fifteen minutes later, vocalist Yosh came out, shouting, “Berkeley, are you ready?”, kicking off the concert.
The opening songs started off strong, as the energy was quite high. Yosh would smile, laugh, and gesture to the audience with the microphone to sing along. Tatsuya would jam out on the guitar, doing a mid-air guitar jump early on. Ivan jammed out with the audience, having intense facial expressions to match the alt-rock tempo. And the drummer, Show, would be in the background, providing the percussion beats.
After one rest segment, where the band took some time to catch their breath and drink water, Yosh said, “this is not our first time here in the San Francisco Bay Area.” “We were hear back in May for Fanime. Anyone go there?” to the cheers of many. Back in May, the group performed for Fanime con-goers, with many singing along “Paradox” and “Mukanjyo” as Vinland Saga enjoyers.
The group, all in their mid-30s and being together as a group for over 13 years, is primed to grow bigger in the U.S. With anime becoming mainstream now and Asian pop culture rapidly being embraced in the West, SSTP can make serious waves in the Asian rock scene here.
It also helps that frontman and vocalist Yosh speaks fluent English too. He went to international school in Japan and attended Full Sail University in Florida before moving back to Japan. His knowledge in both American and Japanese cultures is a huge benefit in SSTP expanding further overseas. Because of Yosh’ global mindset, it was only a matter of time before he would bring up performing in the West.
In a Fanime interview earlier this year, he mentioned the global mindset and finding team members that had a similar mindset. Bandmates that listened to American rock and had many influences outside of just Japanese rock. Bandmates that wanted to expand beyond Japan and to introduce American fans to J-rock and J-metal.
In Show, Tatsuya, and Ivan, Yosh found his dream team.
The group played around 13 songs in total, from “NE:ONE” and “”Win/Lose” to “Right and Left” and “Mary.” The would follow up with their encore song of “T R A N S l a t e d” before asking to take a group photo with the audience. Before the photo, Yoshi asked, “do you know the Japanese word for 2?” The audience quickly responded with “ni,” with Yoshi saying, “right! So we’ll say ‘ni’ when taking the picture.”
All of us said ‘ni’ and we had our photo moment with SSTP and the Berkeley audience.
After their encore song, the audience cheered and took pictures of the stage. Talking to a few fans after the concert, about half of them were anime fans and knew of SSTP for awhile. These fans were the loyal fans that loved both the group’s anime OSTs, as well as original songs.
Yet, it was the new fans, the ones that liked rock, but only heard of SSTP just now that had equal promise. “If J-rock is like this, I want more!” said one person. “I’ll definitely come out the next time the group tours” said another.
If these reactions from American fans are any indication, so far, so good, Survive Said the Prophet. It looks like the next time they tour the U.S., they’ll be welcomed with open arms to even more fans.
We wanted to thank both SSTP’s tour company, JUS Management, as well as Cornerstone Berkeley for inviting us to cover the concert! Truly humbled and honored.