Milan’s “BESIDE ME IN HELL” Tour redefines what a live collaboration can be
The performance of the band in Milan for their “BESIDE ME IN HELL” collaborative tour in Europe becomes exemplary among all other stops as far as the rigidity of the conceptual basis of the collaboration is concerned. This is neither a typical case of a split bill, nor is it an exchange of experiences of two individual artists since both systems remain separated yet simultaneously have to exist within one temporal space. The point here is that in terms of media coverage, the performance will be active before the first piece of music is played, as the way the event itself has been conceptualized creates conditions for the pre-existing interpretation of the performance before it happens.
THE DEVIL INSIDE, the solo project of Aryu (former singer of MORRIGAN from 2015 to 2018), brings to this European stint the afterglow of a crucial experience gained under the duress of extreme touring in Japan, where he played in excess of one hundred concerts per year, made history with a one-man concert at Shinjuku BLAZE, and went on a solo tour in Europe in 2017. Since the birth of THE DEVIL INSIDE in 2023 with "THE DEVIL INSIDE", this band has managed to establish itself through a careful balance between aggression and melody, wherein heaviness isn’t used as the superficial layer, but the structural force, consistently fine-tuned but never unleashed. And in Milan, the language of THE DEVIL INSIDE is delivered in its utmost control: not extended, not toned down, but honed to perfection.
tzkwym, the sole artist behind Tsuzuku (former singer of VANESSA, MEJIBRAY, and currently singing for DRUGS), performs under a wholly distinct epistemology of performing. Founded on 29 February 2024, tzkwym sees itself neither as an extension of the genre visual kei nor as its decomposition in a metaphorical sense, but rather as the decompositional structure of lived experiences, where “an open bookshelf”, each of whose “books” represents an emotionally disjointed document. The albums “A CONNECTIV SISTEM” and the EP “And Yet I Remain”, both created in 2024 and 2025 respectively, have already formed a linguistic structure based on fragmentation; however, onstage the language becomes operative as opposed to illustrating.
The structure of the tour in Milan manifests itself most clearly in the way that the performance resists any sort of synthesis from its dramaturgy. It is not the case that THE DEVIL INSIDE and tzkwym take turns to present themselves as opposed acts in a coherent narrative flow, but they remain as two separate information streams, and the sole link they share is that of their simultaneous presence. As such, the performance is no longer built on a principle of progress but that of opposition and conflict.
The beginning of THE DEVIL INSIDE lacks the theatrical threshold of entering. There is no buildup to an entrance, nor does any gesture precede the transition from stage off to stage on. Rather, sound is perceived as an activity that is already occurring, richly textured and physically present as though the music has been playing prior to its being captured into perception. Lighting in Milan works towards this disruption of the perceptual entrance: light functions subtractively rather than additively, working through sudden illumination and sudden blackout.
In this framework, the music of THE DEVIL INSIDE works by means of carefully calculated saturation. The performance space is built up not from moments of climactic high points, but of overpressurized sustained states where even melody lines do not act as moments of release but retain structural significance within the piece. Aryu’s singing style is very carefully contained, not as a form of limitation, but of structure; expression is always kept to the brink of explosion, without actually exploding.
The lack of decorative overindulgence extends even to the visual realm, where scenography becomes a functional play of light versus darkness. In Milan, color is used for its meaning rather than for its aesthetic effect; red signifies maximum density, white stands for structural exposure, and black signifies perceptual suspension. Of great significance here is the fact that each of these perceptual states does not exemplify the music, but rather categorizes it, transforming our process of interpreting sound information. Even the MC phases, where they take place, become part of this process of reclassification, without breaking tension.
By the close of THE DEVIL INSIDE performance set, there has been no formal ending. It does not come to a close so much as to dissolve into residual energy, creating an impression of sound that lingers within the space as sound memory. That persistent energy is crucial to the structure of the event, because it ensures that the entry of tzkwym is not reset. Instead of a contrast in what follows, we see the same energy transformed into new expressivity.
The entry of tzkwym into this space full of energy does not bring silence but a reconfiguration of density into interiorized fragmentation. If THE DEVIL INSIDE creates externalized force through compression of sound, then tzkwym creates fragmentation of force across unstable temporality. This means that rather than being part of a continuous vocal line, each phrase of singing is a distinct fragment of emotion. As for the light design in Milan, it descends into low frequencies of spectrum.
Within this context, the metaphor of "bookshelf" becomes operational logic: each of the pieces performs as an independent emotion recording, neither intending to be connected to anything else nor to its own self but rather coexisting with others in one common collection of disconnected emotions. Thus, this does not represent the process of narrative fragmentation, but, on the contrary, the refusal of any sort of narrative organisation of the material. As a result, the listeners find themselves in the position of the active creators of unstable meaning rather than mere consumers.
In this way, the vocalist Tsuzuku reinforces the process by blurring the boundaries between articulation and dissolution. The phrases are uttered already dissolving; in other words, it seems like language is being expressed right when it disappears. It creates an effect of perception in which meaning is always out of reach but rather suggested through incomplete traces. This effect finds its reinforcement in Milan where sound is absent not in an absolute but rather relative sense, becoming a medium itself.
In both projects, that which emerges as structurally necessary is the refusal of stabilisation. Nothing is ever resolved through closure or catharsis; rather, the concert creates an environment of constant instability of meaning. In this unstable world, the listener is constantly shifting back and forth between two ways of experiencing reality, either through external sonic pressure or through internal fragmentation of experience. More crucially, these states are never entirely separate from each other but contaminate each other through memory.
Indeed, those moments which are most significant in the Milan concert emerge in those gaps where memory connects THE DEVIL INSIDE's sonic afterimage to tzkwym's concert space. Nevertheless, the fundamental refusal of these projects does not allow anything resembling synthesis to emerge – only the condition of interference, wherein two emotional systems collide in one place without any ability to be translated into each other's terms.
The response of the audience in this regard is particularly revealing as it is anything but united or synchronized. Instead, what occurs is a delayed form of interpretation. Silence becomes more of an interpretive process rather than a lack of response, whereas the applause is no longer a response but rather recognition. The entire room does not so much "respond" as it recalibrates according to various emotions at play.
When the show finally comes to its end and the two performers leave without any proper form of closure, while the sound itself disintegrates into an unresolved frequency, the absence of closure becomes the last manifestation of the structure of this performance. There is nothing left for the concert to resolve, as it would contradict its internal logic. What remains in Milan is not memory per se, but a dual expression embedded within the same temporal mark.
From a critical perspective, the Milan performance of “BESIDE ME IN HELL” is probably the closest interpretation of the theoretical principles of the tour concept. It neither shows collaboration in terms of harmony nor opposition in terms of conflict but keeps separation alive in its own right. It is not that THE DEVIL INSIDE and tzkwym complement each other within one piece of art but that both are kept apart from each other by virtue of their inability to be brought together.
Comments