Worshipping japanese hardcore since the day before yesterday!
Zouo released only 6 tracks during their time. Luckily someone discovered an old live tape of theirs from 1984 which had a decent sound quality, so Crust War could release this monstrosity in 2011 for uplifting gormandizers like us.
By the way, could there have been a better place to find an old Zouo recording than an occult shop?
The second of three money saving compilations, and what a monster: it starts out with the untoppable of all releases: Zouo’s “The Final Agony” 7″, which I’ve already worshipped here. Next are Tranquilizer, who recorded their tracks with the aid of an out of tune guitar and a vacuum cleaner. With the exception of the intro style “Never go to war” they all start and sound virtually identical and surely made Kuro ashamed of their tame niceness and clean sound! Manbiki Chocolate (Shoplifted Chocolate, what a great name!) are the closest thing to real music on this compilation. They have some melodies and actual structures in their songs, but are otherwise as fast and hardcore as the rest. Last are G-Spot who sound like that one night when you invited all your leather-jacketed, spiked and studded friends to your practice place, got wasted and then recorded the ideas from last week’s party on a boombox!
I‘m a peaceful guy, definitely. But if anybody were to claim that „The Final Agony“ by Zouo (which means „Hatred“, by the way) is not THE very best japanese hardcore 7″, I might get into some real beef over this shit. Everything about this 7″ is completely over the top, insane greatness: its low-fi, heavy, raw production, the crude cover artwork, the „Crass meets Discharge“ style poster, and of course the great, vicious „what if Venom were from Japan and actually cool?“ style tunes! Hell, even the two sides are called „Demon Side“ and „Evil Side“!
Since I‘m not rich (why not? I should be!), this here is the re-release on Crust War, not the original on AA Records.
And the band members? Cherry, Milky, Mapy and Happy!
This compilation LP from 1984 is something of a misnomer, since there’s quite a lot of non-hardcore on it: Cobra, Laughin’ Nose (absolute unlistenable and unbearable lyrics on this release) and Baws are more Oi!/punk than hardcore. The rest are real heavy weights, though: Zouo were the darkest band in japanese hardcore, Lip Cream deliver heavy thrash, Outo are pure distortion, Mobs play dark, somewhat melodic mid-tempo hardcore and GISM are pure evil (as usual)!
狂気の日本 