Goodbye 2009!!!

Here is my yearlist of 2009 which is influenced a bit by my amazing two months stay in Japan last summer.

Records:

1. UG Man – Ah Good
2. Paintbox – Trip Trance & Travelling
3. Anthony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light
4. Kickback – No Surrender
5. Struggle For Pride – Change the Mood 7″
6. Wasted Time – Utility
7. Integrity/Creep Out split 7″
8. Animal Collective – MPP
9. Organisms – Hope
10. Struggle For Pride – Cut Your Throat

I also discovered a lot of old stuff.  Of course a lot of Japanese HC with Judgement, GISM, Warhead, Gudon  and Outo being my favorites. Right now I’m listening to Japanese psych music.

Best shows:

1. Hijokaidan ,Bears Osaka

2. Zyanose, Bears Osaka

3. Goverment Warning and Wasted Time Occi Amsterdam

4. Pixies, HMH  Amsterdam

5. Nightmare, Socio Osaka

6. Gewapend Beton release show, Occii Amsterdam

7. Merzbow, Het Paard Den Haag

8. Night Fever, Occi Amsterdam

9. Angel OD, Osaka

10. Doddodo, Osaka

My favorite Zines:

Ignorance is Strength, Adverse zine and Tales of Shatou!

I’m looking forward to 2010. A lot of good things are coming and I’m also working on the third issue of Jagged Visions zine about Japan this time.  Happy new year!

Struggle For Pride

When I was in Japan at hardcore punk shows I asked a lot of Japanese kids what their favorite current band was. There was one band that a lot of them mentioned: Struggle For Pride. First I was kind of put off by their terrible name which reminded me of some tough guy European hardcore band from the mid nineties, but I got over it and bought their EP “Change The Mood” from a Japanese distro.

 On first listening it was something totally different from expected, a hard harsh noise layered over the whole song with something as a band playing short explosive pieces in the background with a lot of feedback and distortion. The other side was also one song and more of the same with some distorted high-pitched screaming through it. I mean I love noize music, but I couldn’t figure out why all these Japanese kids were raving about this band. I checked out YouTube and found videos of their concerts that also sounded like one continuing cacophony of noise. Not really like what I expected to be the favorite Japanese hardcore punk band, still the videos had a lot of hits. So yeah, they are popular in Japanese underground, but still I couldn’t really get it.   

Now 3 months later I listened to the EP more and more and I’m getting it. This band is awesome. Let me explain why. A lot of noize bands, not to mention all these dreading sludge bands, have this approach where the sound is getting thicker, heavier and denser building up to some kind of a climax. Struggle for Pride also builds up the tension, but something else happens then as well and that is probably also why they appeal so much to these hardcore punk kids, they fucking explode! Over the layers of noise and feedback the singer starts screaming to unleash feelings of rage and hate that make you want to mosh through your room and destroy everything. Something like a mix of Boris, Merzbow and Gauze. Fucking brilliant!

 Struggle for Pride just released a new cd “Cut Yourself” that I ordered last week from Japan. There are also some old releases available including a split with Japanese garage punkers of Guitar Wolf and there is project with Merzbow in the pipeline. Talking about Merzbow I saw him last weekend in The Hague doing an amazing set. He had a drummer with him on stage and still proved to be the God of noize. I only still have peeeep in my ears…..

Anarchist Fascist Toyama Koichi

Below you can see a election video of Toyama Koichi who was  the independent candidate to be governor of Tokyo Chu in 2007. This anarchist-fascist has quite a nihilistic point of view:

Japan has a long history of nihilistic and anarchistic figures, but I was wondering if this dude (chech his punk boots) is a  G.I.S.M fan or has an anarchistic punk background?

Seein’ Red 20 Years anniversary

Last weekend I went to see Seein’ Red’s 20th years gig in the OCCII in Amsterdam. Special for this occasion they recorded a 7″ with 8 covers of old Dutch punk bands like The Rondos, Jesus and The Gospelfuckers and The Bizon Kidz.

The Seein' Red 7" and poster

To be honest I’m not a huge Seein’ Red fan, as I almost never play their records at home, but I always enjoy their live shows.   This time it was better, because they played all these covers. Especially their version cover of Pandemonium’s  “We Fahren Gegen Nazis”  was amazing. Seein’ Red is always quite outspoken about their principles, sometimes a bit too dogmatic for me, but like the singer said: “bettter be black or white, than grey“. I hope they continue for a while, especially in the current climate of fear and hate in Holland.

The support bands were also cool. Possible Suspects had this cool post punk vibe with multi-vocals and played a great cover of Wire. The other band was the d-beat crust Ruidosa Immundica from Austria with a small girl from Argentina on who did some really really brutal vocals. Check it out if you like Los Crudos.

Edit: Check here a great quality video of the whole Seein’ Red set: http://www.vimeo.com/7660174

 

Origin of Madness

  

Hiroshima has the doubtful honour to be the first city to be hit by a nuclear bomb. Besides this, or maybe even because of this macabre past, they also have a good history of punk. Most well known band is Gas thrash punk with female vocals, their classic 7″ ”No More Hiroshima” goes for insane amounts of money on Ebay. The other famous HCHC band from the early eighties is the chaotic thrash punk Gudon. Guy, one of the members of Gudon  started Blood Sucker Records, who released a lot of Japanese HC classics. In the 2000’s he went on to form Origin of [M] with members of Warhead Junk and Cavemen.

 

…I think Origin of M is one of the best kept secrets from Japan. This band fucking rocks.  It’s hard to label them since they are influenced by a lot of different styles. A mix of groovy Metal and Hardcore I would say. One band that comes to my mind is Judgement and also a bit of GISM. Of course coming from Japan they are great musicians as well, the groovy bass even reminds me of Candiria. Origin of [M] released one self titled full length on Under the Surface Records, which I unfortunately don’t own. However I do have the Terro-Rhythm split cd, which contains six tracks of them. The killer opening track “Thirsty” can be downloaded from their myspace. The opening riff of “Twins” wouldn’t be misplaced on any NY Hardcore classic, all six songs are damm good. Check this live video of “Thirsty” and “Suicide”. A video of the song P.V. Outta Ke from their self titled cd is on youtube:

  

 

It wouldn’t be hard to find their cd, so check it out. I’m fucking broke at the moment otherwise it would be my first buy with the new Paintbox. Anyway to buy Japanese HC you don’t have to spend crazy amounts on ebay if there still so much good stuff coming out these days and this could be a classic in ten years…

 

Tranquilizer

Above picture shows Japanese  war atrocities during WWII in Nanking China. It is a ep cover of the old Japanese punk band Tranquilizer from the island of Hokkaido, who played really fast noizecore like you never heard before. They have released two 7″ inches, which are pretty hard to find these days. You can download their first 7″ from 7inchpunk blog. Listen to the fucking weird howling singing. Insane!

Anyway their singer became a doctor and married a famous Japanese female pro-wrestler Jagur Yokata. So this lead to the following funny moment on a typical Japanese TV show. The guy with the funny haircut and the glasses was the singer of Tranquilizer.

She is pretty tough:

Anyway cute couple, I love these short typical Japanese videos (what’s the deal with them??) and amazing noize punk band:

Zinestars #2

There always has been a good tradition of zine making in Holland, but in early years of 2000’s there weren’t that many new zines coming out. So it is great to see that last years in an age of blogs, twitter and e-zines a new wave of Dutch zines has appeared each one with its own unique feature. 

    

Some Will Never Know #1 (****)   

   

Zine made the singer of Said and Done which already came out in summer of 2008. The zine is 86 pages thick and printed on high quality shiny paper which really shows its  professional looking design without losing any of the DIY feeling it still has.  The fonts he choose throughout the zine and the effects he uses are great and only really simple the words “Some Will Never Know” on the cover look really cool.

Some Will Never Know #1

 Pim states in the introduction that he wanted to do personal, in-depth interviews in this zine, like in Anti-Matter. He really succeeded in doing that. There are cool interviews with Jonah Jenkins (Only Living Witness) and  Patrick Kitzel (True Blue and Spawn), who moved from Germany to the US to start Reaper Records, the hardcore label of the moment.  The interview with Andrew of my favorite mp3 blog aversionline is a bit disappointing, because it doesn’t get really really personal. It’s probably due to the fact that the interview is done by mail. I guess people are less open through the internet, especially when you never met them in real life. By the way a small thing that bothers me about these mail interviews are the smilies. I think they don’t look nice in printed zines, maybe on a blog you get away with it.  ;)

 The Dutch interviews with Harm Haverman (Reaching Forward, MLIW, etc), Rob Huiskes (Light The Fuse Fest) and Ronald of Not Just Words Records are interesting and personal, but my favorite interview is the one with the Belgium kid . Didier Baert talks about a rare lung disease he got during an accident at work, which gave him  a lot of financial trouble and  caused him to break up his band Losing Streak.  Heavy stuff, especially when he also explains about his family background.

 There is also a cool feature on how to run a label, do a zine, to put up a show and to shoot photo’s at shows with feedback and useful tips by a lot of people from the scene who have experience with it. Great zine with personal interviews. I can’t wait for Some Will Never Know #2.

Twisted Wrongs and Crooked Rights #4 (****)   

  This already the fourth issue of this zine by Daniel and Rowald, which is getting better with every issue.  The cover of this issue is done by Javier Ruie who made a great drawing. Only the  fonts chosen for the name of the zine and the bands don’t really do justice to the cover in my opinion, which is a pity because the lay out inside the zine is like that of a professional magazine.  

Twisted Wrongs & Crooked Rights #4

There are 7 interviews , a special on cruelty free cooking and lots of reviews. The special on vegan cooking is cool. It doesn’t come with the usual ”meat is murder” blanter. The interview with vegan chef Patricia Ganswind just shows how good vegan food can be, especially raw food according to her. I also like the interview with straight edge band  Stay Hungry from Sweden, where the singer also talks about being vegetarian and he admits that he feels wrong to wear Nike shoes.                       

The other interviews in the zine are also worth to be read. The interview with Cave In is an interview with 3 different members which is cool. For a non-Cave In fan like me it is a bit too much info, but if you like them you  get to read a lot about their new projects and they even announce a new Cave In record after a hiatus of more than 4 years. The interview with co-editor of the zine Rowald about his old band Pantherland was for me a bit too much an in-crowd interview about history of the band than the in-depth friends talk it potentially could have been. I mean if you can interview a friend of you, than you have damn good excuse to ask him things you normally wouldn’t dare to ask. I kind of miss that, but it is still a good read. By far the best interview in this issue is the long interview with Damian of Fucked Up. He rambles on about a lot of different topics and is just like on stage a funny guy.  There is already a new issue of TW & CR in the pipeline with interviews with Propagandhi, Neurosis and Trapped Under Ice. I will come out this winter. Make sure to pick it up!

Ignorance is Strength #1 (****)

Ignorance is Strength is the new zine by Wouter who did the Clocked In zine before. I only checked out one of the 3 issues of Clocked In, but what I know from it this new zine is a big leap forward. The zine has a nice cut and paste lay out and a lot of cool live pictures. Small remark here would be that most pictures are from Facetheshow website, the pictures are great,  but still have the hiphop style logo on the picture which is a bit ugly a zine. I like the drawing of the rat on the cover by the way.           

   There are 12 different interviews in the zine, with a lot of cools bands.   I would have prefered to see  a bit longer in-depth and personal interviews, instead of a  lot of short interviews that seem to have been done by e-mail. Still you got to know quite a lot about a lot of upcoming bands. Cornered, Oathbreaker, New Lows, Black Breath and Blind To Faith are definitely bands that im going to check out from what I have read. Keep it Clear and Goldust are my favorite interviews. Especially the Goldust interview stands out to me. It seems to be an interesting hardcore band who is doing its own thing and with interesting ideas behind the songs. I’m definitely going to check out their release “ NOIR”.

 The best part of the zine are the Casting Shadows columns by different hardcore kids who are not introduced. So  from some I don’t know who is who,  but I guess most are bands and do zines and stuff. They wrote about a song from which the lyrics have a special meaning to them. It lead to a lot of impressive personal stories. My favorite pieces were the ones by Coorde, Dre and Wouter himself who picked a song by Supertouch. Especially the story by Coorde of Dead Stop who picked ‘I can see clearly now’  by Johnny Nash which was played at his mum’s funeral is really touching. Great zine! 

UG Man – Ah Good

UG Man, the name sounds more like a grime mc from East London or the little brother of Beenie Man . Hell yeah, UG Man isn’t a dancehall star!  No, UG Man is my favorite  hardcore punk band from Japan! Their new cd ”Ah Good” comes in a superb designed A4 envelope and is one of my favorite releases of 2009.

UG Man envelope which contains the cd

The cd starts with an a cappela rap “Grass Pit” of   Tokyo based rapper Z3. I don’t really understand where he brags about in his Japanese slang. He has an awesome flow. Tokyo Nanda!? Ori ga chi ya? UG man Hardcore! Nanda!?! Ghetttoooo…  Something like that. Awesome intro. Then the band boost into 9 short fast trashing hardcore punk tunes like you never hear before.  A lot of current Japanese hardcore bands that are known over here like Framtid or Crude have a real crusty edge and are influenced by Discharge.  I guess you can place UG Man more in the line of bands that don’t have this metallic sound like Vivisick and Break Fast. UG Man however has some special thing that set them apart from other trashcore bands like the crazy guitar riffs in “Too Much Law Ism” or the weird breaks in “100円ショップノモノサシ” that reminded me of late Minor Threat stuff.  There is also a bit of a mad Melt Banana vibe, but UG Man is definitely more hardcore than them.

This is actually the second cd by UG Man. Two years ago UG Man released the also excellent ”Without UG” and before that a split with Charm on 625 records.  That’s all I kind of know about this band, except that they also play in some other non-punk bands.  Info here and live video here.   I’m wondering who is going to release this on vinyl? This cd definitely deserves world wide distribution. I can’t upload any mp3’s to this blog, but found some excerpts on Tower Records site.  Check it out, but you better buy the envelope! Best hardcore band since Dead Stop!!

Sakevi of GISM

Last week Koenjicalling posted this amazing video of GISM where  singer Sakevi walks around with a flame thrower into threats the audience. Fucking sick intense atmosphere, especially with the droning industrial noise  and haunting guitar solos by Uchida, almost surreal.  

Here is part 2 as well, which is bit less  interesting. At the end Sakevi argues with a kid a camera who apparently made a photo he didn’t like…

 I found some more videos with weird behaviour of Sakevi. Punk band Laughin’ Nose live in Yokohama with Sakevi doing guest vocals. He is full of rage, throws a chair into the audience and at the end some fire crackers explode.

Here is a GISM live video of the song “Still Alive”. Half way the show you see Sakevi beating the shit out of some one.  Take also note of the amazing guitar riffs that Uchida plays.

Finally the famous video where Sakevi comes on stage during a talk show on National Japanese television from 1982. He grabs the microphone from the singer of  Jagatara,  I guess he screams  “Die”  and ends up in a fight. The quality of the video is a bit shaky, but still more than enjoyable.  Fucking legend.

More about Sakevi later in an interview I did with Emily from the before mentioned koenjicalling blog.  Last night went to see the second European screening ever of Shinjuku Mad  by Koji Wakamatsu who is famous to put revolutionary messages in pink films.  A movie about a man who comes from Kyushu to Tokyo to find out why his son has been killed. He discovers that his son has been killed by revolutinary leftist hippie gang on motorbikes, because he was a spy for the police.  The revolutionary ideas of Shinjuku Mad and his hippie friends  remain a bit unclear, they are in good Japanese tradition, not unlike Sakevi, really nihilistic. The old man understand why they had to kill a traitor like the Edo militia also would do in the past, but doesn’t really get their loose morals of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Best part of the low budget movie is to see how the hippies lived in Tokyo in 1970 and the amazing jazzsoundtrack by John Zorn.

Zinestars 1

I don’t have reviews in my zine, because it is hard to be up to date if your zine only comes out once a years.   Still I would like to write reviews of other zines, so that was actual one of the initial reasons to start this blog. So I start Zinestars on my weblog where I will review zines of all kinds. First I will review Japanese zines that I found on my trip over there. Most zines are written in Japanese,  which I can hardly read. I still enjoyed reading them and tried to give my opinion about them.

Tiny Shoes (****)

A small cute personal zine made by Sakae Fukade with beautiful illustrations. There are 5 parts spread over 36 pages. The illustrations are beautiful drawings. I don’t really know where the long story is about, but if you can read Japanese that must be a nice add to the beautiful illustrations.

Kaotik Hero # 8 (***)

This is the 8^th edition of this punk zine of only 8 pages. The lay out of this zine looks really professional with some old skool cut and paste alternated with some cool computer made designs. There are interviews with Unarm, Low Vision, Angel OD and Cosmic Neurose who got asked the same 7 questions. Finally there is an interview Destino Final from Spain who were on tour in Japan in July. From what I understood they talk a lot about Discharge, anarchy and FC Barcelona. Cool zine!

Yocchi in World War II (***)

A small comic zine by Yuutan about a boy named Yocchi. Yuutan wrote this 13^th edition of the comic about WWII because these days there are less people who experienced the war themselves. So he uses the character of Yocchi to imagine how the war was.

 Yocchi works at a textile factory where live is tough and almost no food. One day when Yocchi is on his way to work, there is an air raid and he has to hide in a shelter. When he goes back to work he finds his factory destroyed by the bombing and some of the cute girls he was working are killed. In the last drawing you see Yocchi standing in a queue to carry water to the fire. This experience of the war was the reality for a lot of the Japanese people. Most Western people know about the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also most cities have been totally destroyed through allied bombings and killed a lot of people.  So Yuutan lets Yocchi experience the war through the victim’s postion which is interesting. I know the Germans didn’t really allow themselves to be victims, only recently there have been released books and movies that show the German also as a victim. On the other hand I wouldn’t mind seeing Yocchi in the next comic as a Japanese soldier torturing civilians with chemicals, raping woman and fight himself to death in the name of the emperor.

Low Vision fanzine (***) 

14 pages fanzine made by the guys of Low Vision from Tokyo. It contains two short interviews with UG Man and Angel OD. There is a short review section with reviews of records of Nightstick Justice, True Colours, RTTM and Mind Eraser, which kind of tells you what kind of hardcore they play.  The zine also has a bit of that Lockin’ Out vibe with two pages with photos of graffiti from Tokyo, two pages with flyers of the shows they played, live pictures, columns and cool drawings. Cool idea to make a zine to support your band and friends, more bands should make their own fanzine!!

 Adverse # 2 (*****)

On first sight this zine looks rave flyer from the early 90’s, but going through the 80 pages of the zine this definitely seems the most extensive Japanese zine that I have seen. The zine start with the a review of the reunion show the mighty Judgement did earlier this year in Texas.  Main article is an extensive interview with Paintbox which makes me regret that I didn’t pick up their new LP. Of course I don’t understand a fuck of where the interview is about, only the names of bands are written in Roman script, so I read twice the name Poison Idea, their music is describe as hardcore psychedelia and I know that these guys have been in punk bands for more than 20 years. Their new album Trip, Trance & Traveling should just be a killer. Furthermore there are interviews with a biker who runs a record label, a dude with sick tattoos who played in Bastard and Judgement and now plays bass in Range & The Dirty Hospital  and an article about Erieza Royal  who played in the feministic SM noize punk band Anadorei  and now in a new band ecodamned. There are also write ups about European and US bands who were on tour in Japan this summer like Pisschrist, Fyfan, World Burns To Death, Unit 21 and Extreme Noise Terror. There are some short stories, columns, an article on the Swans and the last pages of the zine are about grindcore.  A very nice nice zine which gives you a good view of today’s Japanese extreme underground culture.

If you are interested in one of these zines you should be able to pick them up at the Japanese punk distros. I got them from online zine distro Lilmag and  I picked some up at shows.  A good way to practice your Hiragana or Katakana! There is also a review of Jagged Visions Zine #2 in Japanese at blog of Punk & Destroy shop. Check it out! Meanwhile we also made it to Zine top 10 of the latest edition of Maximum RocknRoll zine.  Hurray!