_{Review by Ann Faris (@ann_without_wings)}

The text on one of The Cards I Play’s new t-shirt designs, made for their one-man tour kicking off here in Nagoya at Club Zion, boasts an undeniable truth:

“2025 is the Nu 2000.” 

Nu-metal is hot the world over and no one is doing it better in Japan than The Cards I Play. Hailing from Tokyo, this three piece combines harsh vocals, hip-hop bars, driving guitar, funky bass lines, and lots of turntable spins to create an insanely fun, emotive, sometimes dark sound unlike anything else in scene. The cited influence of Linkin Park is real – you gotta check these guys out if you’re riding the current Y2K nu-metal resurgence wave, or can’t get enough Kill Bill sirens and gunshot sound effects in your metalcore. Personally, as a Bizkit bumping metalhead, I’m a big fan. It’s a fresh take on a familiar sound. I believe TCIP are hands down one of the best up-and-comers in Japan. 

In 2024, in addition to opening for While She Sleeps on their Japan tour, TCIP won the open audition alongside metalcore band Prompts for loud rock giant SiM’s sold-out DEAD POP FESTiVAL.

In 2025, just this month, they released their second album, DIAMOND AVENUE. Thus, they embarked on a one-man tour in celebration, with the first stop being the city of Nagoya’s number one small box for metal, Club Zion. 

This was the band’s first one-man in Nagoya. A healthy and cosy Zion crowd readied for a TCIP show. When they heard those police sirens sound- it marked the start of DIAMOND AVENUE’s opening track ‘RAINBOWS‘, complete with rainbow lighting.

It was sometimes difficult to get a small box going but nonetheless the circle pit was spinning and the two-steppers were kicking into the next songs, ‘ONE LAST RIDE’ and ‘STAY AWAY’. 

After ‘DEAD INSIDE’ came one of my favorite tracks on the new album, ‘YABAKUNAI?’. This is the most pure hip-hop song of the album, with bilingual members Daniel and Joji weaving languages within bars seamlessly. Most TCIP songs are entirely in English, and utilize native-level pronunciation – it’s easy to forget that this is in fact a Japanese band, and not North American. Love the Luda “move bitch get out tha way” line in this one. 

This wasn’t a setlist with strictly DIAMOND AVENUE songs though, as the popular ‘FATE’, ‘BEST OF LUCK’ (an all-time favorite of mine), ‘BLACK AND BLUE’, and ‘AFTERGLOW’ were performed back-to-back. 

After some MC [talking to the crowd], bassist Daiya moved centre-stage to perform ‘CHOTTO FLEX’. Daiya cites Red Hot Chili Peppers as one of his influences, and the slap-bass spirit of Flea here shows it. 

After dreamy ‘THE SUN’ and oldie ‘RUN’, a familiar sound echoed through Zion. Everyone here should know this noise. It’s a soundtrack song from From Russia With Love played backward and cut up! Yup, if you know you know, it’s the intro to Linkin Park’s ‘Faint’.

I was pleased to see The Cards I Play covered the entire song and did not just use the intro as a hype piece, because I wanted to see how vocalist Joji, who has a higher register similar to Chester’s, would take on the iconic screams in the second half. He did not disappoint. 

The next two songs were the last two on DIAMOND AVENUE, the penultimate ballad ‘FUTURE’ which had lots of fists up in the air, and the powerful closer ‘THE WRITING ON THE WALL’, which may be my favourite on the album, with its sense of running in the night, pushed by driving rhythm, sprinkled with this upward-twinkling sample effect I love. Joji descended to the floor with his mic stand for this one for some emotional delivery. 

Once the band exited the stage, the standard cries of “one more” began from the crowd. Daniel, Joji, a now shirtless Daiya, and their support drummer returned for an encore consisting of ‘MADNESS’, which produced a stage diver, and the classic setlist closer ‘TIME’.

With the stage now empty, the members stuck around to sell merchandise and speak to fans. I was happy to be able to speak to them a bit about the new album.

I learned that compared to previous work, where Daniel wrote all the songs, this album was a more collaborative effort between all members, resulting in everyone’s personality and style showing a lot more. I commented that I believed the tone is a little less dark than older material. 

“I mean like, we kinda stopped taking ourselves too seriously,” laughed Joji. “It’s like, we like making music, we like playing music, ok let’s have fun with it.”

I asked them a final fun question. 

NNV: “So there’s a cage match. No weapons, no items. Who’s coming in first, who’s coming in last?”

Joji: (pointing to the imposing Daiya) “You’re probably coming in first.”

Daniel: “No no, I feel like he’s gonna be like, overconfident.”

Joji: “Oh so no no, we can tag team bro! We can tag team, right?”

Daniel: “Yeah!”

Joji: “So he’s gotta be last….and, ahh, that’s hard…”

NNV: “Ok, so tag team him…”

Joji: “Tag him, take him out-“

Daniel: “Yeah fuck this guy, he’s too big.”

Joji: “Fuck, [Daniel’s] my best friend. I don’t really wanna, you know like [inaudible]….so we’re probably gonna do like a Russian Roulette match to pick who comes first. So let’s do it now.”

The two rock-paper-scissors, the end-all-be-all decider in Japan. Daniel throws scissors and wins.

Joji: “Ok, you come first.”

Daniel: “First place bitch!”

The two then translate the situation for Daiya. Daiya immediately rejects the outcome and points to himself as the winner, who would use an elbow drop technique. 

Daniel: “See, he’s overconfident!”

The finale of The Cards I Play’s one-man tour will at the 600-capacity Spotify O-West in Tokyo on October 10th.

You can purchase tickets here.

If you can’t catch this effortlessly cool band live, do yourselves a favour and check them out on YouTube or streaming platforms. 

If you want to find out more about The Cards I Play, check out our interview with them below.