Worshipping japanese hardcore since the day before yesterday!
This compilation was originally released in 1986 with cover artwork featuring the Atomic Bomb Dome, but this here is the 1988 version on Nuclear Blast. Lipcream, Outo, Gauze and The Execute are featured with great thrash, Ghoul and Gastunk are more metallic. I especially love the tracks by Ghoul and Gauze.
I like Cola!
(The) Execute were one of the early japanese hardcore bands who kept releasing albums and loads of 7″es throughout the eighties. This here is a bootleg of their first flexi 7″ from 1983. It’s got ten tracks of cool and somewhat melodic hardcore and the greatest bootleg sound you could wish for: you can hear just how dusty the original record must have been!
Dust Noise!
Edit: during my 2018 visit to Tōkyō I saw the 2nd pressing of this flexi at Disc Union for a mere 180.000円. It’s a steal!
With Lip Cream, Systematic Death, Outo and Gauze this compilation/4-way split is like a who’s who of japanese mid-eighties thrash bands. Even though I’m not that big a Lip Cream fan, this whole record is completely chaotic, high-speed thrash & burn madness, with some of the best tracks these bands ever recorded. Hell yeah! This version is the US-release on Pusmort Records, and sadly came without an insert.
Thank you, Brilliant Naoki!
And once again it’s a band about which I can’t really tell anything. As far as I know they only released this one 7″ on Tam’s ADK Records. There’s a lot of Bauhaus (who would’ve guessed?) and Killing Joke influences on this great record.
Why not worship brutalism?
The Punx – Street Movement was originally released as a tape in 1985 with a huge 84 page book about the history of Japan’s punk scene. The compilation features songs by Gas, Laughin’ Nose, new wave band The Willard, the hilarious Cobra (Worrier’s Rock? Or did they mean Warriors’ Rock?), Lip Cream and GISM. One of the GISM tracks has a different song on each audio channel (can’t these maniacs do anything like ordinary, well adjusted people?), but I separated the channels so you can listen to each song on its own. You’re welcome!
C’mon in Oi!
The first 7″ by L.S.D. from 1984 takes low-fi to new extremes. Extremely simple songs, a not-quite-in-tune guitar and a barking, croaking singer who sounds like he had an echo chamber built so he could live in it. Since this was ripped from a recent bootleg 7″ the sound quality is kinda mediocre, but the songs are still damn great! In 2005 all of their recordings were released on a compilation record with better sound quality, too.
Lustmord, Snatch, Death’Ein Bodie
As with the band Anarchy, I don’t know very much about パイディア (Phaidia). All I can say is they were an early- to mid-eighties deathrock band who released several 7″es plus this very enjoyable (can you say this about a deathrock album?) LP. They sounded a bit like Christian Death with some Killing Joke thrown in, and (of course) had great big hairdos and makeup.
Not G.B.H.
Gai (Outsider/outside or maybe harm/injury) from Kyūshū were one the original japanese noise-core/raw punk bands. Together with bands like Confuse and ジイク ハイル they developed their own style by completely dropping musical ability and songwriting, ignoring production values, and replacing them all with lots of distortion and fuzz. In their time they recorded several tapes before releasing their first flexi 7″ called “Extermination” in 1984. Later they changed their name to “Swankys” and kept going for a couple more years. This bootleg 2×7″ includes Gai’s Extermination 7″, The Swankys’ Lifestyle 7″ plus a couple more tracks.
FZZZZZZZZZ!
There’s not really much I can say about アナーキー (Anarchy), since I don’t know very much about them. This is their first LP from 1980, which could have been a pretty cool album, if they had recorded some more original songs instead of a shitload of cover versions: songs by Stiff Little Fingers, Eater, The Clash (three times) and even (get this) Chuck Berry wound up on this LP. Too bad, since their own songs are actually cool and catchy 77 punkrock, though pretty outdated by 1980.
Johnny B. Goode
This here is a bootleg of a 1984 posthumous release of a 1979 live show in Tōkyō. SS were probably the first japanese band to play something resembling proto-hardcore, and listening to this record I find it hard to believe that such wildness and ferocity in 1979 could be found outside of the USA. There’s hardly a song longer than one minute, the 1-2-3-4s come a lot faster and wilder than Dee Dee’s, the bassist shreds like a madman, and I doubt the guitarist plays even one single chord on his out of tune guitar! Fucking great!
SS never released any studio or demo recordings, but there’s another live recording available on CD. Sadly all the song titles seem to be lost to history.
SS RAGE! 1-2-3-4!
狂気の日本 