THE ORAL CIGARETTES 'ERASE the BORDER TOUR' Final, Sprinting Beyond the Speed of Thought: Spelling Out the Current ORAL Giving in to New Urges Beyond Maturity

On March 24, the final performance of the 'ERASE the BORDER TOUR 2026' was held at Zepp Haneda. Borrowing Takuya Yamanaka's words from that day, this was a tour holding two-man live shows across various locations with 'bands who are close by but surprisingly haven't played together much' and 'bands we've known for a long time but haven't played alongside recently.' For the final two days at Zepp Haneda, they invited My Hair is Bad as guests, marking their first two-man live in about 10 years, excluding co-appearances at festivals and events.

To begin with, THE ORAL CIGARETTES, in their phase post-'AlterGeist0000', have placed live performances back at the foundation of their activities while releasing 'OVERNIGHT' and 'ERASE'. They announced this 'ERASE the BORDER TOUR 2026' in September last year, and further announced the hall tour 'Home Sweet Home TOUR 2026' in December of the same year. They are also concurrently running the Tohoku edition of the 'WANDER ABOUT Wandering TOUR' series, which meticulously visits small live houses nationwide. As Yamanaka revealed during the live show that day, they have declined offers to appear at media-sponsored summer festivals and plan to solely focus on rolling out lives driven by themselves. The stance of prioritizing live performances is not a new story for them, but they probably haven't been this thoroughly immersed in ORAL-driven tours in recent years. What can be read from this stance of consecutive live shows is a mode of immersing themselves in activities of ORAL, by ORAL, for ORAL. Feeling a sense of crisis over the decline of rock during the COVID-19 pandemic, and aiming to rebuild the live house scene severed by the pandemic, they dedicated themselves to live house tours, trying to wave the flag of the rock scene by involving peers regardless of seniority—this was ORAL's mode leading up to 'AlterGeist0000'. 'AlterGeist0000', produced under the theme of 'condensing the musicality expanded through each work into rock', was a temporary culmination for ORAL, and at the same time, it was dropped as a catalyst for the scene. In the course of those activities, ORAL practically became an entity carrying the scene, acting as the final headliner at numerous festivals. Precisely because they intended to show off the presence of the rock scene, they also accelerated moves to tear down the borders with other genres. In short, the ORAL of these past few years has continued to move with the resolution to carry the scene, continuing to send out messages with the primary goal of making their own 'home' thicker, stronger, and more resilient.

Building upon that, what has been announced in quick succession since late last year is this 'ERASE the BORDER TOUR 2026', and heading from summer to autumn...