Worshipping japanese hardcore since the day before yesterday!
As with so many other japanese bands, the easiest way to describe them would be to list all the other bands their members have played in, but I’m gonna skip it this time since everybody knows it anyway. This is Forward’s second single, released in 1997 on HG Fact. Side A is mid-tempo and rocking, is high-speed with some cool drum breaks and great guitar leads.
Danse Macabre were founded by Cherry of Zouo after his return from the USA, where he had joined Half Life as a second singer. Playing shows with Samhain influenced him to start a band in a somewhat similar vein, so Danse Macabre’s songs turned out slower and less over the top than Zouo’s, but with similarly darkness-, death- and horror-themed lyrics. Of course they sound nothing like Samhain; Danse Macabre’s songs are far more primitive and blunt, and comparing Cherry’s Zouo-style voice to Danzig’s crooning… This self-titled 7″ from 1988 is their first release.
Released in 1998 on Six Weeks, Violence – A Japanese HC Compilation was something of a follow-up to the first Six Weeks Omnibus 8″ compilation. Stylistically the bands are typical nineties thrashy hardcore: Real Reggae, Nice View, Argue Damnation, No Think, Flash Gordon and One Size Fits All feature a very lo-fi production and deliver lots of blastbeats.
This split 7″ flexi has some really wild shit by Phaidia and Gilles De Rais. Japanese music magazine Marquee Moon released the single, and from the looks of it the flexi probably came with the magazine.
Phaidia’s track starts out with a 3+ minute long intro of atonal synths, quiet pianos and flutes before morphing into a great goth rock song (which keeps the synths, pianos and flutes).
Gilles de Rais -named after the french serial killer of children- is just as weird: a slow, dark 5 minute dirge of synths, drum machines, whining guitars and wild vocal effects.
Neurotic Organisation was released in 2001; its three Crow originals are typical later-era Crow tracks: dark, fast, heavy, metallic, sometimes somewhat “melodic”. They also recorded “Sanctuary” by Amebix, reworking it in their own fast-paced style.
狂気の日本 