Already Late

Tired, excited, and a little hungry, the band arrive at the venue just after 3:15 pm. They park the car and lift the most important of their instruments out of the back. The sounds of WANIMA, Panic! At the Disco, Twenty One Pilots or Enter Shikari emanate from the open doors in the brief seconds before the engine is turned off and the power cut.

Already Late takes the stage towards the end of the night. B-Stixx counts them in, and they explode into the first track on the setlist. Jest A King, flows from singing to rapping, from guitar to ukulele all while exuding an on stage persona that screams “rock-star”. B-Stixx’s drums swell and burst, making time itself a slave to the band’s whims. Gluing it all together are Hakase's basslines, making sure the songs are groovy and solid.

Every song in their set is different. They blend and cross genres as if they were trying on clothes in a thrift store. Hip-Hop fuses with pop-punk. English lyrics are intermixed with Japanese. Indie, funk and hardcore all find their place. But, beneath this eccentricity and eclecticism, is a subtle cohesion that says, “That is definitely an Already Late song”. As wild and diverse as the show seems, it can be expressed easily by a single word: fun. By the end of the night, not a single person is left uninterested.

“They sound like Green Day and Drake had a baby, and it was raised by ONE OK ROCK” one newly converted fan says.