Category: Mastervation

Masturbation’s S/T 7“ ep came out in 1983 on ADK records, and it’s another one of my favourites among early to mid eighties japanese punk. I absolutely love their „full handbrake“ approach to punk rock, which makes for dark, plodding and ominous music. The repetitive and super simple riff of the opener „Become A Soldier And Get On The Battle Field“ is just fucking awesome, and even though the next track „Masturbation“ is faster in tempo, they’re also holding back here, resulting in some kind of repressed aggression which just kills me. The last song „Duplicate Person No. 2“ has some hint at a melody, but only very subdued and not very pleasant.

Fuck, this is soooo good.

Masturbation’s 12″ titled Higaimōzō, meaning persecution complex or paranoia, was released on ADK records in 1984. Musically, its 6 tracks are pretty similar to their 7″ from the same year: dark, brooding and ominous, often atonal, mostly slow, a crude mix of punk, hardcore and post-punk. As far as I know this was their last release during their existence; most of their stuff was later re-released on a couple of compilation CDs, with bonus live tracks thrown in.

Get it!

Masturbation were one of the those bands whose style of punk could not be described in just one word. Like Niku-Dan and Kikeiji (at least in some songs) they played something between dark, disturbing and slow punk, death rock and sometimes (proto-)hardcore, although they’re not really alike. No Trend or Flipper might be a possible comparision, too, although Masturbation are not quite as dirty. So that’s why you’ll get one long, brooding dirge of almost 4 minutes and one short hardcore-like smasher on their 1984 flexi 7″ Shinigao (“Face Of Death”, maybe?).

死顔