Worshipping japanese hardcore since the day before yesterday!
To me, bands covering each other usually amounts to not much more than gimmicky, novelty releases. Boy, does this 7“ here prove me wrong! It’s hard to decide, which band pays better tribute to the other: Warhead going full overdriven crazy on Tetsu Arei’s heavy, Burning Spirits hardcore, or Tetsu Arei infusing Warhead’s insanity with their totally in control heavyness. Still, the winner to me is Warhead’s Under The Moonlight as played by Tetsu Arei. Incredibly good!
3/3 (pronounced Sanbun No San), were successors to the weird ◯△▢ and predecessor to the mighty Friction. They recorded the tracks on this LP over the course of several months in 1974 in several rehearsal studios and live spaces. The music is garagy (how the fuck do you spell that?!?), wah-wah-heavy psychedelic proto-punk (the opener is a 9-minute song!). It’s definitely interesting to hear them going wild on their instruments before stripping their sound down with Friction.
This version here is a bootleg of the original LP, which was released back in the day in a staggering run of about a dozen copies. There’s also an official CD release with a lot more material by 3/3 which includes tracks that later morphed into Friction songs.
On this 7“ single from 1986 Gastunk felt like mixing their trademark, metallic hardcore punk with some stereotypical spaghetti western, wild west music tropes: acoustic guitars and these hoove-imitating, stomping drum shuffles included. Side A -Geronimo- is obviously a hymn to native american Goyaałé (aka Geronimo), while side B’s title may no longer quite be the, err, preferred nomenclature.
Toxic Noise and The Damnable Excite Zombies! (exclamation mark! Yeah!) released this split 7“ in 1993. (As I happened to write before) Both bands remind me of Nightmare‘s sound during the eighties: played at breakneck speed, catchy, not quite melodic songs, with almost singalong crew shouts.
狂気の日本 