The Friday - Our Body Made in Fukushima

Just as Chernobyl spawned punktakes from the likes of punk-pop J-rockers Blue Hearts' Blue Hearts Theme, Greek d-beat Chernobyl Attack, low-fi Russian rebels Grazhdanskaya Oborona folk He Saw the Sun to Slang's terrifying metalpunk Chernobyl Necklace on LIFE MADE ME HARDCORE, the pogonutters Chernobyl Babies, punk bands eddy and swirl in the aftermath of horrific events, twisting, riding the violence and pain in their darkworld/fuckedworld conceptions. The tragedy at Fukushima has already led to Irish mutants Rats Blood's No More Fukushima, New York cyberthugs L.O.T.I.O.N.'s Fukushima Fallout, Swedish crustcunts Anger Burning's Fukushima Fireworks, Spanish hardcore band Fukushima, real Fukushima rawpunx Strange Factory's Fukushima Nightmare, probably many more already and many more to come.

Straight outta Fukushima, an all-girl trio who produce an unnerving combination of this clean chunky bass with the sort of tinny fuzz found on early 80s Spanish shit-fi classics like Qloaqa Letal and Los Punk Rockers. The vocals a ratty snatch and call, screaming. All-girl teenpunk carries stereotypes and connotations of bubblegum, Unlovables sweetness, conceived in the shadow of nuclear oblivion, these songs have touches of the noisecore of Stagnation, ruthless breakings and beatings of Disorder/Chaos UK punx, those sounds taken apart and skin stretched between pikes, blood soaking the ground. The onwards tumble of Stupid Animal, drums clatter and pounding as if trying to find a way out, the stop-and-go graze of Chicken Feed, the stabbing noisespike and bassy tickle of Common Sense, the monotonous drive and thump of Sein Und Zeit, the basic solo whinnying off into the dirty churning ether. Nuclear threat is more than just a Discharge lyric. It's a hovering evil that kills, deforms, rearranges lives and landscapes. The Friday are all too aware of that as they scream and snarl over this weirdpunk all imbued with a real human rage at ungodly power, chaos and bonescrape, and on the title track it lumbers like revenant beast, full of pain and purpose, Our Body Made in Fukushima.

Voco Protesta - Neniam Konfidu al la Stato

"I do believe in the necessity, and indeed in the inevitability of an universal language; but I do not believe it will be brought about, or even hastened, by smaller races or nations consenting to the extinction of their language. Such a course of action, or rather of slavish inaction, would not hasten the day of a universal language, but would rather lead to the intensification of the struggle for mastery between the languages of the greater powers.

On the other hand, a large number of small communities, speaking different tongues, are more likely to agree upon a common language as a common means of communication than a small number of great empires, each jealous of its own power and seeking its own supremacy." James Connolly, 1908

Raw punk from Japan screamed bitterly in Esperanto, a melding of form and content, a language built to erase borders, unify humanity in one tongue, one language. The use of Esperanto harkens back to movements of the early 20th century, futurists as optimists, the wide open possibilities of revolutionary camaraderie spanning the world, before futurism played its hand as fascistic ugly machineworship, Esperanto is new rules as new loves, new grammars as new communities. It's an old-fashioned idea, because the imposition of new languages is now synonymous with the erasure of old ways, those "smaller races or nations consenting to the extinction of their language" that James Connolly wrote of, the native kids taught English or Spanish or French and punished for using the words that connect them to their heritage, it's been a severing, controlling tool, a cleaver, so that the more revolutionary act is one of reclaiming lost tongues, preserving languages sitting on the brink, crafting literature and poetry and song in a voice that speaks to your family but not the majority, that you hold tighter, make those who wish to see and understand you have to work at it actively engage with your voice, the intimacy holding back the malicious hegemony that globalisation carries with it. Charu Nivedita's Zero Degree written in Tamil not Malayalam or English, Der Nister's The Family Mashber in Yiddish not Russian. Punk bands across the world letting loose enraged rants in every language under the sun. Esperanto is seen as an odd utopian relic.

Voco Protesta embrace this revolutionary tradition of the language fully, although it is a far from utopian perspective expressed in this album, a raw graze of violence and struggle, pain and burning, capitalism, bureacracy, police violence, profits and nuclear fallout, a litany of illnesses poisoning the planet. The unifying force of Esperanto here is the unity of struggle and the promise of anarchism, the reaching grasp of hunger and unhappiness, in this we find a makeshift communion with people across the globe, and languages so steeped in blood as English or Japanese, though they are capable of great beauty and truth as all language, are unfit for purpose to lay this struggle bare. Reach back into the past to find this half-forgotten thing to blast apart bureaucratic nightmares and nuclear traps.

The brutality here, as in the works of Pichismo, an Esperanto punk band hailing from Ukraine, is fully alive in the music, blistering and violent, underpinned by a radiation hum, exploding out of tension on Kontrauatako, setting up moments of respite from the thrashbuzz, sweet woundings on Divido Kaj Konflikto, jaunty marching on Vivas Morte, only to kick them in with unnatural forces of distortion. Only to crash onwards.

Eight years after he penned the words at the top of this review, James Connolly was standing before a British firing squad for his part in the Easter Rising. In word and deed, commitment to a better world is what we all aspire to, and almost always fall short of, battered by the blows of an unjust world, tugged down by the human compromise, but we can find moments and small places where these revolutions live, in protests, in voices, in the shape of the language we use or refuse to use, in art and in song. And for some of us, in the warm savagery of noise.

On La Vida Es Un Mus.

Tom and Boot Boys - Stupid And Naked Punks Are Running In My House

Responsible for some of the greatest dumbest fulltilt pogo punk ever with classics such as Punk Parade and 30s Punx Go For It!, Tom and Boot Boys return with their first blast of fresh pogo beauts for a couple of years with a seven inch that practically screams "The fucking pogo cunts are back!". It also literally screams that at the start of the record. Subtlety is for boring people. You gotta kick everything to pieces with roaring runs of pogonoise, popping bouncing silly convergences of singalong glory, Chaotic Dischord covers, Oi!s and sweary bedlam.

Song titles as almost the entirety of the lyrics. Lay it out straight, smash it in with amphetamine glee. I Don't Wanna Spend My Fuckin' Money For Your Fuckin' Cunt with emotionally stunted cheapskate desire "I don't wanna pay for your fuckin' cunt. Now I don't have money so fuck me for free." and in the second verse "I don't wanna pay for your fuckin' cock. Now I don't have money so fuck me for free." Equality in inanity. Oi! goes Oi! Stupid and Naked Punks Running In My House blasts a riotous punkhouse ode, I Hate Suit Men giggles uncontrollably with normloathing joy. A reaffirmation of all that's silly and great about punk rock, all that's certain and undeniable as you runaround in noisy madcap vandalism, hating on cityboys, shouting along with other eejits, breaking things, breaking bones, just holding it together with the sheer propulsive energy of a screaming firework. At home in this madness, with the sillyshit morons and the bouncing ceilingsmacking dance energy. Looking like utter messes but knowing that in this puerile pandemonium that I AM OK, YOU ARE FUCKER.

Guitar Wolf - Beast Vibrator

This is a message I received.

I recently received a message from someone who was keen to tell me that while they enjoyed my blog, I would be a better writer if I attempted to write more objectively. I am always open to constructive criticism and I will therefore endeavour to stick to the facts as much as possible in this review. Objectivity is the watchword.

Guitar Wolf are a band. Guitar Wolf are a band from Japan. Guitar Wolf have three members. These three members are named Seiji, U.G. and Toru and are sometimes known as Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf. That is a combination of the word 'wolf' (taken from the name of the band) and the musical instrument that these respective musicians play. Beast Vibrator is the name of Guitar Wolf's new album. This album is their 12th album, following on from Spacebattleship Love, Mars Twist, Dead Rock, Golden Black, Loverock, UFO Romantics, Rock and Roll Etiquette, Jet Generation, Planet of the Wolves, Missile Me! and Run Wolf Run. Guitar Wolf are a band that play very loud. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. Guitar Wolf are a very loud rock and roll band. Their new album, which is entitled Beast Vibrator, contains eleven songs.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Beast Vibrator. The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Mesopotamian Lonely. The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Gasoline Lullaby. The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Ghostly You. The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Robot Maria. The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Batting Center. The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Saphire CITY. The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Magma Nobunaga. The nine song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Barf Night. The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is EARTH vs. ALIEN. The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Female Machine Gun.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Beast Vibrator, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Beasts is a word used to describe undomesticated animals. Vibrator is an instrument used to provide sexual pleasure. This song is a wild animal that provides sexual stimulation and release.

The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Mesopotamian Lonely, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Mesopotamian is an adjective pertaining to the inhabitants and culture of the area now known as Iraq. Lonely is the sensation when you are isolated from other people and have negative feelings due to this isolation. This song is painful desert solitude.

The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Gasoline is the substance that is used to power many machines, including cars, motorcycles and chainsaws. Lullaby is a song that is sung to children to help them go to sleep. This song is powerful song that will ignite to make children sleep.

The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Ghostly You, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Ghostly is a word that descibes things which resemble the spirits of dead people. You are a bastard. This song is a haunting bastard.

The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Robot Maria, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Robot is a word, originating from the Czech playwright Karel Capek's book War With the Newts, that is used to describe an automaton capable of performing tasks. Maria is a popular name. It is often associated with Catholicism, or the van which takes prisoners to jail, which is known as a Black Maria. This song is machine built from wire and steel that will take your ass to jail.

The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Batting Center, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Batting is the action of striking a ball with a bat. Center is a word for the middle of things. This song strikes at the core.

The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Saphire CITY, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Saphire is a precious blue stone. CITY is a large built-up area in which many people live and work. This song is the blues in lives and works.

The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Magma Nobunaga, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. is the substance that consists of molten rock underneath the world. Nobunaga is the name of a man who unified Japan. This song is unifying burn. Out of context, the word Nobunaga may appear to some English readers to be a nonsense word such as flubtredderling, weeewoopapapapabipdaaaaaaarswuix, or gluttle. This song is hot squabaloo.

This is the album cover of the Guitar Wolf album Beast
Vibrator. This album cover depicts the members
of Guitar Wolf imprisoned and looking super cool.

The ninth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Barf Night, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Barf is a word for when you expell food and fluids from your mouth through a series of convulsions. Night is the period when the Earth is turned away from the sun. This song is a convulsion that will turn the world dark.

The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, EARTH vs. ALIEN, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. EARTH is the planet on which humanity originates, vs. is a term used to denote a fight or contest, ALIEN is a word for sentient beings not originating on planet Earth, also used to describe anything which comes from outside our realms of experience. This song is a fight between all that we know and all that we do not know.

The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Female Machine Gun, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Female is a word used to describe women. Examples of women include Alice Bag, Tabitha Tate, Khutulun, Laura Jane Grace, Kathy Acker, Trina, Pauline Kael, and, in fiction, Storm from the X-Men. Machine Gun is a type of weapon that fires a great many bullets in rapid succession and is designed to maim and kill. This song is a storm of grace designed to main and kill.

This is a Guitar Wolf album. This Guitar Wolf album is named Beast Vibrator. Guitar Wolf are the best band in the world. Guitar Wolf are literally the best band to ever exist. Guitar Wolf are the sun rising and the night falling. Guitar Wolf saved my soul.

This has been an entirely objective review of the new Guitar Wolf album named Beast Vibrator. I would like to extend my thanks to my original correspondent for suggesting this new writing style predicated on balanced factual information. My first draft for this review contained sections such as this: "Mashing together words with a sort of bloodied and beaten glinting glee, Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, Barf Night, Female Machine Gun. The trainwreck joy of Beast Vibrator, "V-V-V-V-Vii-iibrator!", trashrock noise, flailin out, the flushing wildness of Robot Maria, the whispering fuzz and dancing guitar spikes on Barf Night, the insane thrashblues of Mesopotamian Lonely, rubbing along with those huge sweeping guitar strokes over the bassruns, the shiver and crash of Female Machine Gun." which I now see were gauche and overtly subjective. Guitar Wolf need no such musings. Guitar Wolf are Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. This is a Guitar Wolf album. It is loud.

Zyanose - Why There Grieve?

I am way into into when bands insist on coining their own subgenres to describe their music, that act of marking out your sound as something different something not quite containable is an act of meaningless artistic bravado that always makes me smile, the Taxpayers with goofpunk for example, on Why There Grieve? Zyanose have dubbed their twin-bass fury DITCH CRUST NOISE CORE, at once a descriptor for their sound and a herald of their attack. Zyanose make punishing stuff, deep, burbling, biting noise that crashes with the force of buildings falling.

While their last 12" Insane Noise Raid focused on sin, Why There Grieve? moves slightly outside these classical interior failings to deal with more modern pressures. Keep Yourself is a punx on punx song, namechecking Gloom, Confuse, the forerunners of Zyanose's ugly sound. "I beleave in punk" it screams. Maybe the one thing that Zyanose do believe in, the rest of the album torn through with looming nuclear spectres and smaller quieter forms of oblivion, drudgery of work, the venal machinations of politicians, apathy creeping like frostbite, irritation, anger, all drawn in chaotic blasts, as the noise swirls in panic on Silent or F.O.A.D., rumbles then bursts on Snapped Pappet, clangors in incomprehensible conflict on the Die is Cast (while the liner notes give lyrics in both Japanese and English, the long string of kanji that is The Die Is Cast is translated into English as Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhrrrr!!!!).

Nihilistic squealings. Pulse is a 13 second wordless, well, pulse, that ends off the first side of the record. The sound of a countdown, or a time marker, an underwater bloop, like a baby version of the rest of the records explosions, a short snap of the worldbeat that Zyanose feel down in the corroded bones of the world, that they explicate on in the militaristically underpinned Camouflage or the anguished vocalisations of Options for the Fool.

Before the album runs out to a stop with the drums on Keep Yourself, Zyanose construct an awful world of awful noise, few releases from its pain, just the slightly longer bite and rumble of that final track and its strength in punk, strength in the noise that's ripped out of the earth in order to mirror the noise that's pressed down on you. F.O.A.D. Fuck off and die. Fuck off and dance.

Amnesea - 1st EP

Blown all the way out past all orbitary waystations, a storming Japanese hardcore release on Tadpole Records. That sort of total splatternoise distortion that Zyanose trade in, ferocity totality. The vocals squeeze out of the signalscatter cacophony in a ghostly half-buried echo. Glitchy guitar solos breaking apart on re-entry on ソケイヘルニア. The final song gets kinda mellow and but still noisy as hell, kind of like the song Vanette topping off Slight Slappers's A Selfish World Called Freedom LP, there's tension and building threat there which isn't present on the rest of the EPs crashercrust tumbles. Slowly leading into another purewrath explosion, a raw rippedapart beast, dropping out into mid-tempo variation on that sinister runaround, erupting again. Furious and unfuckwithable brokenpunx.

Framtid - Defeat of Civilization

"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way." - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

"In the pre-dawn glow the plain before us seemed to move like a vast grey ocean, undulating gently; but instead of water it was a sea of chitin, flecked with claw and fang rather than foam, rolling inexorably on towards the fragile defensive island of the artillery park, I would have wept with disappointment if I wasn't already too terrified for any other emotion." - Sandy Mitchell, Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium

These Japanese crust killers made us wait. 11 years since the release of the classic Under the Ashes, Framtid return to shock and awe. Defeat of Civilization, out on Black Water in US, La Vida Es Un Mus in Europe and Crust War in Japan. They have not lost the stark black-and-white art. They have not mellowed. This is relentless stuff, crust in the mold of the Shitlickers sickened dirt burn, stretched slightly longer that the 1 minute blasts of the Cracked Cop Skulls EP or Diskonto's discography but retaining all drive, all wounded beast power. It's crust without the anchoring rock and roll of stuff like Malignant Tumour or Black Panda, where the noise twists around some dimly recognisable Lemmyborn structure, without the sweeping neocrust machinations of the likes of Ekkaia where the soaring scope of wasteland epics struggle against the lowdown rockethrust, this is just the demented aural attack. Framtid sound like a fucking bomb going off.

Framtid pierce and Framtid push onwards in the black. Framtid attack.

Attack is the right word. Bomb is too. And shock and awe collocated nastily by snide Pentagon mappers and tacticians, because throughout Framtid use their terrible power to oppose greater, more terrible powers. I saw them explode in a Texas warehouse with a banner hung behind them stating BY ANY MEANS WAR IS UNNECESSARY. That is what Framtid primarily sing about. They've got the ills of society on blast (man, are Framtid a band that earns the term 'on blast') but more than anything they are ANTI-WAR and they are ANTI-NUKE.

Their anti-war, anti-nuke sentiment dominates this album, they come from a country who, both then and now has been on the sharp end of the worst parts of that particular chain reaction. Ashes to Ashes screams "INNOCENT SUFFER FIRST/INNOCENT DYING FIRST", the title track sets up humankind as on a battle with the ultimately uncontrollable forces of fission ("HUMAN KIND AND NUCLEUS/CAN'T COEXIST") and the song Nuclear Power Genocide. The lyrics for UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicle if you're not up to date with the current euphemism for senseless murder machines) "AND AGAIN THE SENSE OF SIN/DISAPPEARS FROM THE ACT OF WAR", one of the best lines on this album (not for this band are trite war sucks platitudes), containing so much wrong in one scream, breaking through the dearth of shame resulting from the sheltering effects of video game interfaces when real damn people are burning under the gun,  piercing the disconnect between action and result.

A lot of the lyrics in here point to traps, point to repetitions of this cycle, that little 'and again' kicking off that line, the song Error Again ("ERROR AGAIN/SWAYED AGAIN!"), the unanswered howl of Will The World Change, the bitterness of Sarcastic Truth ("AFTER THE WAR IS OVER/THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A LIFE IN PEACE") the opening line of Ashes to Ashes is "THEY ARE STILL IN BATTLEFIELDS!". Those little words, those agains and evers and stills that point to a continuous process, an ongoing struggle, maybe an endless one, caught in these circular motions. "JUSTICE DESTROYING JUSTICE/HOPE KILLING HOPE/LIFE ERASING LIFE/INHUMANITY'S ALSO HUMANITY" goes Sarcastic Truth's weltschmerz smear.

Attack. Bomb. Shock and awe. This reflective noise, like Crass proclaiming THE NATURE OF YOUR OPPRESSION IS THE AESTHETIC OF OUR ANGER from the art of Yes Sir, I will, like the grenades in the war scenes in Hal Duncan's Vellum bursting with an onomatopoeic DOOM!, a sound calling to mind all our worst moments and set-up to counter it, this is the meat of Discharge taken further, charging harder. The oppression Framtid face is oblivion strong, and the way they resist is the same. Once, when I was a dickhead youth (dickhead is such a more evocative and accurate word than callow), someone invited me to go on an anti-war march, and I, remembering a line from the preface to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, made some glib dickhead comment about it being about as much use as going on an anti-glacier march. I was wrong, obviously, because while shit gets shittier, politician cunts get more cuntish, and Framtid acknowledge that, they also, on probably the most anthemic moment of the album, scream "NEVER SURRENDER, OPPOSE THE POWER!". So I was wrong, because fuck giving up, fuck that sort of cynicism that lets them win, but maybe what matters most here, what matters is that Framtid sound like they could stop a fucking glacier.

NEVER SURRENDER! OPPOSE THE POWER! Uncompromising is as good a word as 'relentless' for Framtid's workings. As Rorschach had it in Watchmen, "Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise", you know, when he was just a character in a great comic that ticked along under the threat of the cold war and hadn't been adopted by a million self-satisfied fuckheads and had his Randian origins in Ditko's Mr A properly squeezed out and emphasised by people who are more than willing to compromise on everything, but just don't like people.

Though there is stuff other than war. There's Prison, attacking the incarcero-industrial complex amongst it's drum flurries, echoing the thoughts of Angela Davis when she said "Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other." Prisons are another example of justice destroying justice, humanity as inhumanity, where this time in the lyrics the literal explosions of Framtid's other tracks slide into a tearing metaphor for the irradiated pain of lives inside. A reckless run-up into shouts of "INSIDE THE HIGH STRETCHED FENCES/SOUNDS OF EXPLOSION NEVER STOPS/ENDLESS DESTRUCTION"

The crustswells of Deceived and Abused, riff ingurgitated in the thick murk of bassed-up Disclose sonics (this album is dedicated to that band's departed frontman Kawakami), but it is unlike though the ugly sublimate noise of someone like D-Clone where each instrument can find itself just shrieking as one with. In a Framtid song there is guitar. There is discernible purpose and momentum here, but it is all engine, all the skid and turn of tank tracks, it is the warmachine forward roar, not solos flailing high and above, not swaggering or gaudy like the slogans or cheesecake daubed on a bomber's nose. Deep buzz like convoy rumble, death attendant and sticky. "UNREASONABLE EXPLAINS/SOCIAL MALAISE/UNREASONABLE RESULT/SOCIAL MALAISE" continuing that self-repeating downward spiral, where the hate feeds the hate. Continuing that second coming, in madness, eye-tearing, skin-blistering madness, a voice of It sound.

Though there are little peaks of Jacky's guitar where it climbs out of the dark bubbling, there's a solo on NPG that hits out briefly before being dragged under, one that flails on Never Surrender before being dragged down almost immediately, feeling like it's been cut-off prematurely, brutally embraced, like it couldn't survive in the wild, outside the assaultative swirl of the rhythm section and its radiation bones.

Uncompromising. Relentless. Bombs. Awe. Attack. Shock. A complete fucking statement, built bunkerstrong. So much to take in. Makino's vocal anguish, a throat scorched by fire, a mouth full of salted earth and anger for the dead. Framtid. A ground-to-sky behemoth, a noise of depth, of death, destruction mechanics, blotting out the shine with bootblack and scumgod.

Worthwhile Way - Love is All

Worthwhile Way, in their new release on ADD Records, do a nice line in sweet skippy Japanese punk-pop that frequently indulges in some folky clicks and country twang along the lines of a cleaner (way cleaner), less fucked-up and raw, Tex and the Horseheads or what The Gateway District did on their first LP stuff like The Highway Song, a bubblegum bounce Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels, a smoothed out One Man Army. Melodic vocals that dance about, serenading, shouting, sometimes Mayu stopping singing to talk in matter-of-fact kinda way, like it's a quick aside to audience. Highlights include the namesake track and it's sweepalong power-pop, the gentle slowly building twist of Birds Sing, Family Song and its drop outs and high-pitched vocal acrobatics and singalong pep, a version of the folk standard The Frozen Logger that's got a kinda low-rent Jake Thackray rise-and-fall feel to it and a Billy Bragg cover almost as good as Discount ever managed with Northern Industrial Town.

Cobra - Tokyo Boicott

OI! OI! Motherfucker! Oi! I dunno know what to say about this beyond: it's an Oi! album. Snotty slurred streetpunk vocals than go into titanic shoutalong choruses that crash down upon you like a quiver of fury rolling through a crowd, chug-a-lug pubrock riffs, Oi!-based puns, everything a good Oi! album should have. It's even got a couple chill moments, in the manner of Cock Sparrer's Out On an Island, like the whistling on Get On The Ship. The music you sing with your friends as you all peg it down alleyways as the cops show up to the rumble. A band that have been going for 30 years and 12 albums and still have songs called Teenage Riot.

People - Ausentic Oral Communication

Starting with a bassline that sounds like the soundtrack of a cartoon about a mischievous cat, while weirdo barely-human distorted vocals start to echo in the background which sets the tone for the album, playful but noisy, simple but unhinged, fun. Rock and roll songs so basic Billy Childish would be proud of them, but with an extra hit of Chaos Destroy-noise, for these '77 stumblers to bounce and slice about in. Strained drunken rants for vocals, fried and flattened Todd Pot sneers packed with pukebits of despair and sloppy halfway-too-fucked-to-care anguish, over idiot basslines that refuse to leave your head, nihilistic noise-fuzz and stabbing riffs that pucker up with the of broken-down pop of rockabilly scum. Grimy and nauseating, noise-punk at its most basic, stupid and catchy. (I didn't post the song on this page because the only one I could find on youtube had a big ol' swastika as the video. Punk rock! Still on that inexcusably dumb fucking shitbag moron trip. What twats.)

Forward - War Nuke and Death Sentence

Forward are, along with Judgement and Paintbox, one of the bands that emerged from the ashes of the legendary Death Side, who defined the Burning Spirits style of Japanese hardcore, which rests on fuming Motorhead rhythms tied to the million-mile-an-hour yelping guitar solos. Forward dial down the metal-guitar rush and instead focus on the anthemic possibilities of punk rock, pushing the vocals to the front, adding a bunch of silly drunken whoa-oh-ohs to the grit and rip of their hardcore thunder so it sounds like a chaotic cross between the sloppy warmth of a fucked-up singalong gruff-punk party, a storming j-core thrasher and the galloping goofy delinquence of Berurier Noir’s La Marche Funèbre De La Jeunesse Suicidaire, ending on a piece of shrieking madness entitled Aarrgghh...

Boobs $hit - Fuckin' Brain Boobs $hit

Sublimely ridiculous Japanese pogo-noise that was apparently released on CD-r a few years ago getting put on translucent yellow vinyl with the colour-tone of a Lemon Sherbet or dehydration piss. This is simplistic, fast punk rock, all Anti-Nowhere League So What? force and Menace infectious with that cartoon UK82 childishness, bolted down and then above it a swirling glow of scribble-fuzz noise, flakes of sound in blizzard poise. The vocals trade-off on nagging strained bites and streetpunk singalongs, darting between the punch of the drums and the cordon of the upper levels of voluminous distortion, spewing the the scummy surface scrapings of spikey teenage gutterpunk degradation. It's the manic barking punx party of short attention desecrations and chaotic blown the fuck out becomings amongst flaresound static, a shot of vital Tom and Boot Boys/Disclapties style blah-blah-blah, a dispatch from the grimier side of circled-As, sticky overplayed cassette bootlegs of Confuse's Contempt For The Authority, And Take Off The Lie and Burst City studded jackets, where you pogo in weird-directions on beerslick floors and the show always ends in a fight. From Pogo Punx.

Slang - Glory Outshines Doom

Slang do not do small. Their last studio-album emerging denominated with the hard-faced confrontation of a title that was LIFE MADE ME HARDCORE, daring a disagreement on that particular point, their live album they released since then was called WORLD PEACE QUESTION NOW!?, and now the awesomely declarative GLORY OUTSHINES DOOM, a huge crashing metalpunk crust attack with a shining skeletal angel emblazoned on its cover, living up to every inch of its bluster and pose with the brutality and exacting power of the sound. This is a big fucking record, the only thing that gets close this year is the new Tragedy. It's full of colossal chugging riffs, gravel-ripped vocals and chastening burning-spirit solos.

There's not much let up, a few seconds of bass-murmur at the end of 十二月ノ業~Happy Birthday to You~, the minute long sludge-kicker of 白昼夢 where the guitar-wail builds over the slime before throwing you straight back into another bloodfuck kick-to-the-back-of-the-head that is 焼却炉, the short acoustic interlude of もの言わぬ本 that shivers with threat because you know what's coming is just going to open up holes in the ground like mighty fucking earthworks. The gargantuan rolling sound plunges onwards, screaming upwards almost into noise on the peaks of 黒煙の輪郭, this album is a crushing salt-the-earth screed of leviathan bombast and colossal sonic spaces, Unicron-hunger and godless exaltation. It will stomp you down like and raise you up on its hardcore-punk thrash-monster wings. GLORY OUTSHINES DOOM, motherfucker. It's glorious.

D-Clone - Creation and Destroy

A short metallic snap of a drum gives about half a second of warning and then this album hits high gear pretty fucking immediately. Blown the fuck out d-beat noise-core, like Disclose were really pussy-footing around the issue or something, jeez. The band named as a quick-smiling nod to the uniformity of lineage from which they spring, in which they rot and fucking howl, but they grab this raw-punk snake by its tail and shake it harder, push it further, kick it nastier, hold a heavier load of fuzz and co to that damn thrumhead Discharge rubble-quick skin-trash. Clones they are, but mutant unsteady creations, with the DNA corrupted. They're fifth, sixth, seventeenth iterations, scummier and filthier copies and further sunk into the nuclear scream, edges battle-blurred and then borders broken, songs adumbrated in the scuttle-murk cacophony, hate-system incomprehension, bled and blasted harsh and high, humming with the nihilism of coming bombs, signal barely there.


This is scary uncompromising wargutter noise, all wired through this big-distortion connectors, lit-up and sprawling like power-station control boards. This fear is not an isolated spark, the symbols and stages of this thing were set time ago, and have been echoed and reset, rerun and static loaded. Noise is not a distraction here, it's the raw aching bloodied point, destroying with creation, flattening you, making you feel mutable and turned-about, open to great internal changes, chaos in the core, rats in your mouse guts, this fear that the bodied burst of hardcore-attack has altered us too much from our basic construction. Here is will, here is living in chaos, here is hatred, and here, in the way this rages, there is, as the band screams, something approaching a shining, bright point, as visions of world's ending, retro-apocalypses and workhouse god slaughters fall about, here is a single cracked entity constructed from three parts, a loudness, a stupidity and a hope, with a violence to all three, here is making punk future, Creation and Destroy. Noise not music. Punk rock fuck you.

Paintbox - Trip, Trance and Travelling

Maybe the strength of this album is diluted if I actually talk about what it sounds like before you listen to it. Certainly some of the strongest reactions that people I know have given it come from the utter shock of its sound. So I will beseech you to fucking trust me on this and just get this bloody album.

Okay, that's not really enough for some people, and fair enough. So here are some pithy sonic comparisons to get you to listen to it: GISM if they allied their searing solos with a forthright melodic sensibility rather than their low-fi minatory drone. Motörhead if they covered the songs you generally get over the ending credits of Japanese beat-em-ups. Chinese Democracy if it was worth the wait.

I don't have a huge grounding in the history of Japanese punk, so there may be some factual errors here, but as I understand it, Paintbox were a Japanese hardcore band who traveled in a particular subgenre known as burning spirits, apparently named after a certain tour in Japan, the characteristic sound of which is basically a defiantly uptempo punk thrasher featuring the sort of solos you haven't heard since the last time you stumbled across the Beat It video on a Sounds of the 80s marathon and listened to Eddie Van Halen make his guitar wail over the sight of a bunch of extras from The Warriors abandoning violence in favour of meticulously synchronised dance moves. The band that defined this style was Death Side who existed from 87-94 before disbanding and all their members going on to further develop the sound in the bands Judgement, Forward and Paintbox.

Out of those three bands, Paintbox are by far the easiest on the ears, on their albums Singing, Shouting, Crying and Earth Ball Sports Tournament they begin incorporate a myriad of other styles and sensibilities into the core of their burning spirits sound, but when I first came to Trip, Trance and Travelling I didn't know that. I had never heard of this band. All I knew was that I was listening to what I had been assured was a completely rocking album which began with a whole lot of mellow spacey guitar noodling and I was just starting to wonder whether I'd been prog-rolled when, almost two minutes in, the song bursts into angry thrashing life and I found myself swept up in a current of an irresistible hardcore punk rhythm, rough throaty vocals, marvelling more with each seamless sonic development, a chugging guitar part, a rumbling wandering bassline, a huge nonsensical chorus (one of the few bits of English on the album), a delirious guitar solo, keyboards, heraldic trumpets, a mellifluous lullaby of female vocals. After the first song, I was entranced, but I thought they surely couldn't keep up this intense and insane blend of styles for the whole album, there have been many bands where I've encountered a thrilling song only to find it to be the one moment when their talents and intentions transcended their limitations and they produce something amazing before collapsing into a generic samey mush. That is not Paintbox. This entire album, from the first note to the last, is imbued with the same nutty thrill of the first track, even on the mellower songs which are perfectly placed throughout the album for breathing space in the galloping onslaught punk rock that dominates the album. And this album lasts over seventy fucking minutes. Seventy!

Now when I listen to that first song I find the intro filled with tension, the bass swelling underneath, the soft guitar rising and falling, expanding and contracting, teasing you for the joyous moment when it rips into gear. It's one of those little bits of music, like the chorus in Dear Landlord's Three to the Beach, like first time the backing vocals kick in on The Vindictives' Assembly Line, that never fails to elicit a completely shit-eating grin from me. The most effective use of establishing and then subverting the expectations of a tender aural caress since the Butthole Surfers shouted SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! at the start of Locust Abortion Technician and then ploughed into a massive blast of Black Sabbath's Sweat Leaf tastefully retitled Sweat Loaf. There are far too many beautiful giddy moments like that on this album to catalogue them all, and part of the joy of this album is being constantly surprised by it, constantly finding bits where if you were were going to describe them to someone you would be constantly bookending your assessment of the sound with the panicky phrase 'but good', but here are a couple of bits that stand out to me:

• 
  the mariachi horns on Mental Picnic
• the whole of Fields in the Moonlight, which for large parts of its seven minute duration gives itself over to the more melodic influences of the album until the screaming inevitably kicks in and its like you were listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack on Winamp when someone linked you to a webpage which autoplayed Dangers. In fact, possibly the pithiest musical description of this entire beautiful mess to stand next to my previous comparisons would be four words: Yoko Kanno's hardcore album
• the way the riff (which bears an odd resemblance to Jona Lewie's Stop the Cavalry) on the final track speeds up
• the Chemical Warfare-esque squealing madness at the end of Raw Ore
• the brief bass break in the middle of Retribution
• the little tinkle before the guitar solo at the start of Praying

Lyrically I don't really have much to say about this album. I fell in love with it before I knew what the hell they were singing, which is fairly unusual for me. Even if a band's lyrics are completely dumb, I like to be able to singalong with them, but that's just another testament to the overwhelming power of the music. Since I first heard it, I've purchased the gorgeous gatefold double LP which comes complete with lyrical translations, and while its a relief to know I haven't been madly besotted with a concept album endorsing the Rape of Nanking, I still don't really care about what they're singing. The lyrics are kind of clunky in translation, but are perfectly workable fun punk exhortations of freedom. They don't completely work on paper, but few punk lyrics do. It's always about the way they're sung, the force put into them. I'm sure if you knew Japanese it would be a lot of fun to sing along to lines like "It's not enough/Destroy all the rules/ You will strike a mine called shyness and explode yourself/We are making preparations steadily" or "Going to the ends of the endless world/Using every trick to coax my rickety body/Swinging paralysing gasoline/Let's become ape-men with an engine and go" but for me they're sadly just a peripheral part of the whole experience.

I have utterly no problem with a band that just wants to play punk rock and never alter their style. I love The Copyrights more and more with each release and never expect them to change much. I'm enamoured with The Lillingtons, Guitar Wolf and Threatener and countless other bands that stick rigidly to a particular basic punk rock template, but there's such a complete feeling of delight to hear a band push the envelope of punk rock so far beyond its conventional bounds without ever losing the vim and fury that makes it so appealing. I've never been much of a metal fan, but this album is like everything I would always sort of want metal to sound like in its noise and bombast streamlined perfectly into happy bursts of infectious cacophony.

In the making of this album, Chelsea, the guitarist of Paintbox and before that Death Side, died, as did Mayuko Sakai, the woman responsible for the beautiful ethereal female vocals that perfectly counterpoint the angry growl of the lead singer (whose name remains unstranslated in the lyrics booklet). Now it would be jejune and probably offensive to speculate that the decade long struggle to produce this album in all its epic scope contributed to their death (Chelsea by all accounts had a pretty big drug problem for a long time (online you can find a report of someone seeing him play a show with a heroin baggie hanging from the mic) and died after apparently spending several days getting drunk and not eating in a hot apartment without adequate air-conditioning), instead I'll say that in the searing beauty of this album, the glorious derangement of the whole endeavour, the way it makes the absurd sounding mix of psychedelia and punk rock, J-pop and thrash, lounge jazz and metal, prog and hardcore sound like the most natural thing in the world and never gets tired or boring over a running time about the same as Buster Keaton's The General, there exists a testament to the astounding skill and artistry of all involved in making this masterpiece, and to the assimilative powers of all punk rock, and ultimately to just the way that music itself is constantly evolving and constantly surprising and constantly finding strange and madcap new approaches to soundtrack the fractal delirium of the human condition.