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

Foojitsu : Streamline English

Don't know too much background at all about this Russian band, except that I think they share members with the previously posted USSSY / Kruzer Ken and maybe also WJW.

Anyway, on this (2002) album, Foojitsu were playing some kind of noise rock/hard-core/electronic admixture (later releases are more or less straight up noise rock), long on eclectic, short songs, blasts of guitar noise, electronic effects & spoken world samples. Mostly on the noisier side of things despite the somewhat poppy tune below.

STREAMLINE ENGLISH

Trencherman

Pretty busy and no special recent enthusiasms to put up so here's a miscellaneous post of stuff I'd upped and forgotten to, or decided not to post, or upped for somebody, etc...  

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Some more oddities from Finland:

Short drones & noise experiments from the NWOFHM :

HOT GUITARS

A rock band from the same label:

STRANGE TRIAL

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(Post)Punk/Rock-n-Roll w/ some good guitar lines & awesome drumming (2005):

TIGER BEAR WOLF

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Classic Burning Spirits Japanese hardcore band:

鉄 

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Industrial/HC/Postrock:

Previously posted here.

buy (Japanese Amazon ships worldwide & has an option for English)

LOST

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Last 　album from these guys:

セラピ

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Zouo were contemporaries of and not dissimilar in sound to GISM:

ZOUO

And Zouo's more metal successor:

DANSE MACABRE

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Female fronted Shoegazey indie rock/electronic band

LETHE

buy

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Thuggish Parisian Metal/HC. Who's running the show? These guys, that's who:

LES 150...

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DHR released (but nonetheless slow) german 'rap'/noisy electronics from '99. Weird fractured rhythms and odd FX (and surprisingly anticipatory of later grime stuff). Grew on me:

TOO BAD BUT TRUE

uSSSy

Love the cover.

Mostly instrumental post-noise rock agitation from Russia; Appealingly spare, frantic and occasionally rather catchy. Songs range from the short and sweet (below) to extended feedback drones. Related bands include I Am Above on the Left & Kruzer Ken.

wild moustaches

УСЫ

Hidden In Buildings : Draw Your Sword And I Am Not Afraid

Let's party like it's 2003, and the plurality of morons whose votes run this country is still consumed with fear of brown men with Korans, bombs & secret powders instead of health care reform and whatever the fuck they think socialism is.



Hidden in Buildings married airy post-rock with ninties era Dj-shadow type spaced-out break-beats and extensive samples relating to the great war on terror etc. Morose but appealing stuff, interesting beyond the musical content for its attempt to take a snapshot of a somewhat insane moment in a culture running on pants-pissing fear and ignorant rage which most people would now rather forget all about.




DRAW YOUR SWORD AND I AM NOT AFRAID

Monkey Son of a Donkey : Way Down

Dissipated Israeli lo-fi garage/punk/rock from the same label as the somewhat similarly raw and echoey Los Kikes. An excellent shambling mess of fuck-off lyrics, lurching guitars and drug retard vocals. I didn't really like this at first but a few listens convinced me of its weird charm.

Going Down was released in 2006, and was the band's first full-length after 2 eps.
They split in 2007.

note: (I couldn't tag the songs which have Hebrew titles, but the titles are in the scans which are in the .rar - there are lyrics too, but I didn't feel like scanning everything so if you need to know then purchase here)




WAY DOWN

Wait, I Still Function...

And here are one and a half excellent 7-inches from ORdER, of Japan's Aichi-ken. Their recently re-released full-length is solid, but their singles and splits my favorites. Space Junk from the Warhead (whose song is also good) split is an overdriven romp, while the Sex 7"'s songs are hookier, less distorted and include a slammin' Japanese language version of 'Stepping Stone'.

SEX 7"


SPLIT w/ WARHEAD

Wrench

Wrench have been around since 1992, playing various combinations of hardcore, electronica and industrial groove. They've always been a bit of a hit-or miss band for me; I like some of their songs but find others rather meh. Anyway, the main reason I'm posting this is because the second track contains guest-vocals from one of my favorite young Japanese actors, Tadanobu Asano, star of the brilliant Ichi the Killer (above pic) among other things.





DRUB

Won James Won : Theorist Attack

Awesomely strange and oddly coherent genrebang sound collage from Russia; all over the place musically, from electronica and supersonic Slavic rap to death metal riffs to rock, pop and punk.

This release is from 2005 and no longer seems to be available, but you can get their other stuff here, or through their label.


THEORIST ATTACK

The Astroglides : Channel Surfing with the Astroglides

The Astroglides were a dark surf band, mixing metal, hardcore and experimentation into their reverb-drenched sound. This 2006 album, which draws its themes from Israeli television, was released on Sshaking Recordss, the band's own label (which also put out the charming Los Kikes release I posted last week), and is more straight surf and less distortion than previous releases (unfortunately both band and label seem to have gone the way of the dodo).

Update: Thanks to Lee-or from the Astroglides who provided much more correct info in the comments: This was a 2003 release on Fast Music records (I confused it w/ a later release), and Sshaking Recordss is still in operation. Sorry for the sloppiness!

Buy


CHANNEL SURFING

Grind Shaft / No Value

Grind Shaft are not a grind band. They play raw-throat, high-energy, thrashy hardcore with liberal doses of harmonica.

No Value are grindcore, and sound like a not particularly large but rather angry drill.


価値のない物を。。。

Fuck Disco Beats

...While I kinda agree with the sentiment--the era was something of an aesthetic wasteland--I must admit that if I'd been alive I probably would have spent some of the late 70s bopping around in a tight white suit with a coke spoon nestled in my luxuriant chest hair.

The point being that the the Hunches are great; garage, punk and grunge taken to distorted extremes, with good songs under the thud and feedback. On this release 'Jakob's Voices' is especially good.


FUCK DISCO BEATS

Los Kikes

Now I love the surf/grind stylings of the Noise A Go Go's, so when I came across a cd by this Israeli band described as a surf/death combination, I had to pick it up.



Their self-titled release is a tinny, lo-fi affair, dedicated to booze, sex, violence and skating: cardboard drums played off-time, howling layers of black metalized vocal distortion and diseased surf guitars collide and fall down in a surprisingly appealing heap.



LOS KIKES

Mangrove 2002

A sampler from the Mangrove label, released, as you may already have deduced, in 2002, and containing a mix of noisy punk, garage, psych & hardcore from what seems to be a collection of mostly Tokyo area bands. Some of the more pop-punky stuff isn't really my bag, but there are some excellent tracks on here.

1 Evil Hoo Doo, The - Hell-O Haunted
2 Evil Hoo Doo, The - Black Strings
3 FirestARTer - Dear My Sweet Radio
4 Private Ways - Post
5 Usuals - Wasted Time
6 First Alert - T.V.Masturbation
7 First Alert - Pinpoint Attack On My Alarm Clock
8 Barebones - Mind Breaker
9 Smash Your Face - Can't Get Out
10 Smash Your Face - I Believe In My Way
11 Delta, The - Compressed Paradox Disorder
12 Boris - Dronevil
13 Death Comes Along - Death Comes Along Part Ⅰ
14 Death Comes Along - Death Comes Along Part Ⅱ
15 Deride - I'm Making My Future With The Border Patrol!
16 Foodchain - Naka-No
17 Nine Days Wonder - Bleach Away
18 Man Friday - Last Destroy Dawn (Live)
19 Man Friday - Hesitate To Have My Share (Live)

MANGROVE2002

(p.s.- medifire's been wonky as fuck for me: let me know if you fine people are having trouble dl'ing)

Best wishes from CROM.