A live show is bound to have great energy when the crowd goes wild for the lead singer combing his hair. That’s how Dohatsuten front-man Naozumi Masuko opened the Hokkaido rock quartet’s early afternoon set at the White Stage, and neither his nor the crowd’s energy sagged much during the following 50 minutes of music.

After hurling his comb into the audience, Masuko and company ripped into their take on high-energy rock music. Nearly every song Dohatsuten played featured a chorus constructed for fans to shout “eh! eh! eh!” along with the music. They were egged on by the lanky lead singer, who frequently made wild arm gestures and practically pantomimed the songs as they happened. Even though it seemed like he always had a leg latched onto one of the White Stage’s monitors, Masuko had the audience going wild to the bouncy rock his band was playing. Though he got out of the way when one of the band’s guitarists played a crowd-pleasing solo – he just pointed at them, giving them some love.

This relentless rock set – it sometimes veered towards ska, sometimes toward surf music – actually got too relentless about 30 minutes through, so Dohatsuten threw a curve at the audience and played a slow song from their debut album to let the audience catch some rest. After that, though, they didn’t take a break at all. Dohatsuten ripped through the final leg of their set without any between song banter and practically no silence between tracks. The crowd, which had started to lag, were suddenly back to jumping up and down excitedly, Masuko joining in by spinning all over the stage. To finish off the show, Dohatsuten broke out one more surprise – they put their instruments down, donned traditional Japanese clothes and closed with a Japanese fan dance. Of course, the crowd went nuts.