smörgåsbord

From Sapporo (on the northern island of Hokkaido), CTR play guttural, raw, anti-social god-son of GISM punk, and put a lot of effort into their outfits, poster design and live performances that seem to involve chainsaws and smashing stuff. CTR takes its name from the 1980 movie 狂い咲きサンダーロード, or Crazy Thunder Road 「the Japanese reads literally, and somewhat poetically, madness(狂い）blooms/flowers(咲き）」. The lead singer was formerly in Knucklehead.

I haven't seen this movie beyond a few youtube clips, but it, and CTR the band both definitely draw influence from Mad Max (which, though I won't got to the mat for it like I might for Conan the Barbarian, is nonetheless a pulp classic).

THUNDER ROAD

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Very good Icelandic synth-pop with the right amount of bleakness in the bubble-gum. Includes a cover of 'Killing in the Name of'.

FM

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Drum & Bass / Dubstep Mc & Producer, his favorite tracks of mine were done w/ producer TC, like several of the songs on here, and the one in the video below--which is not acually on this release, but is known to me from this excellent compilation.

Deep like Titanic

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Cheap drum machine post-punk with fractured Americana guitars played by scraggly French hipsters. Claustrophobic, weird and on occasion rather catchy. The few throw-away tracks here are matched by some brilliant ones. I throughly enjoy this band.

s/t


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Grimey British thuggery; the Mr. Slash produced tracks are especially worthwhile.




C for Cocaine

HARD CORE MAFIA

Pounding, borderline industrial hardocre from Gokuaku which means 'very evil', and their subtitle is HARD CORE MAFIA, so you know these guys mean business.

Hikari

Swarrrm : Thee Imitation Messiahs

Well, I suppose an imitation messiah is better than having none at all.

I posted this back on the good ship Lucid before it sank, and though it's easily available elsewhere on the interwebs (and in stores, even: buy it), I'm posting it again. This is album is superlative, love this if you love heavy and original music. Intricate, anarchic and abrasive but methodical and with weird hints of beauty; full-blown madness on a tight leash.

食らえ！

And now for something rather different

Big H; laconic crime-grime. Hard and British with rudimentary but often awesome beats. A bit outside of what I've generally posted, but the video above totally uses a sample from a Japanese video game, so I guess it sort of fits.




STREET CRIME UK

Kaiboushitsu

Fronted by long-serving Japanese punker and demi-god of crust, Crow (masked+listed under a pseudonym) and named for a Stalin song, Kaiboushitsu play dark old school hardcore punk.



The band's name translates as the 'dissection room' and their lyrics are a combination of splatter & sex: this was released on HG fact in 2009. Buy here.

CRANIUM CRANIUM CRANIUM