It's three in the morning at the livehouse Gig-Antic in Shibuya and as the girl band launches into the first song a skinhead leaps on stage, screams "Manchester United" into a mike and dives headfirst into the mosh pit. He's caught by a studded-leather-clad kid with a yellow mohawk, a skate-punk in baggy shorts and a dread-haired hippie-punk, and is promptly propelled head-height above the crowd.
All of this means that the band playing, Thug Murder, despite not having even released a record, are well on course to achieving their chief aim . . . to unite punks.
"We're sick of divisions in punk rock. We like street punk, which is skinheads, mohawks, straight-edge, guys with spiked jackets, whatever, all of them coming together and having fun," says Ryoko, Thug Murder's guitarist and singer.