Wednesday March 26th metalheads were in for a full night of metal as Kim Dracula & HANABIE. brought their twenty five date coheadline tour to The Pageant in St. Louis, MO along with Crystal Lake and Kaonashi.

Hanabie. is an all girl Japanese metalcore band from Tokyo who combined loud and heavy music with contrasting Harajuku aesthetics in a style self-described as “Harajuku-core”. Don’t be fooled by their cute girly image though as these girls can thrash. The first time I heard them I thought that they had two singers as singer Yukina can transition from cute clean vocals to a harder growl. In 2024, Hanabie. became the first all-female Japanese band to perform on the main stage at Lollapalooza.

Hanabie. came out one at a time to the center of the stage before taking their positions. First up was drummer Chika, followed by bassist Hettsu, then guitarist/singer Matsuri, and lastly singer Yukina holding up a Buc-ee’s baseball jersey with Missouri on the back. The band kicked off with ‘O•TA•KU Lovely Densetsu’. The band is is nonstop energy from start to finish and should not be missed if they come to a city near you.

Samuel Wellings, the genre bending Australian musician known professionally as Kim Dracula who fuses trap, metal, hip hop, lounge jazz, rock, and pop and to me looks and sounds a bit like Marilyn Manson and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way had a kid and he learned to rap a bit. Kim Dracula broke out in November 2020 with a TikTok metal cover of “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga.

As the lights went down a message came over the PA saying that Doctor Dracula was entering and that the crowd needed to make way for them. Kim Dracula entered shrouded in a black clock escorted by guards through the crowd and made their way onto the stage and opened with ‘Land of the Sun‘. Around mid way into the nights set I was shocked with a cover of Pearl Jam’s ‘Even Flow’ but it should not have came as a surprise as Kim is known to have gotten their start with doing metal covers of songs.

Crystal Lake

Kaonashi