I originally picked my copy of this up while I was studying in JP during 2002. Like I said in my previous NMP post, I did carry them for awhile in my distro, before selling out. Now, it's probably super hard to find or something. ANYWAYS, I'm rambling because it's Friday and I'm tired.
This is the first release that I know of from Nitro Mega Prayer. They're playing some sort of metallic emotional hardcore. I'm not sure where it fits compared to everything else. It's not bad, but it isn't going to be the NMP you expect (if you haven't heard this). I think the lineup between this and their first album is mostly the same, but they definitely had a different direction on this split.
On the other side is Blue Sky Resemble Sorrow, whose website is still up after a super long time. They are the highlight on this split for me. They play this old style of Japanese emotional hardcore/screamo that is so, so good. I know next to nothing about these guys, but it looks like they broke up shortly after, which is really too bad.
OH MY GOD I JUST FOUND A VIDEO OF BLUE SKY RESEMBLE SORROW ON YOUTUBE FROM 2001:
When I was studying in Japan, I would spend hours every night in the computer lab, following link pages, finding new bands. I would usually find 2-3 bands a night, and catalogue them somewhere to remember them. Not many had audio samples, usually just those mobile sites with almost no information other than a band name. One band did have sound samples, and a show coming up soon in Osaka. That band was 24ページ, who we'll just call 24 page hereafter (technically it would be "page 24", cause when they're in a classroom and say "Turn to page 24" they would use the term 24ページ. But, that changes the flow of the name, so 24 page works better for me).
I attended the show at the smallest club I'd ever been to (I can't remember the name, but I have a ticket at home). At the door they asked which band I'd come to see. I said 24 page, and the doorman marked a single tick in the blank area under the band's name. I'd heard of this practice before, but it never happened at any of the other shows I went to. Descending into the basement, I came into a room that was about double my bedroom. Seriously, the place was about 1500 sq. ft. with even a little bar and sound engineer corner. I stood in a corner and tried to make myself inconspicuous, which was hard being the only white guy there.
24 page finally played, 2 guys and a girl on keyboards and guitars with a drum machine providing the rhythm. It was heavenly and amazing, a complete contrast to the grimy neighborhood I'd passed through. For about 20 minutes I experienced their set. In some ways it was raw, but not like I usually use that word. It was raw like early Beatles would be raw, like an unrestrained pop genius. These simple but deep electro-pop songs totally hit the spot with me.
I stayed for the other bands, and then left. On the street outside the club, one of the guitarists from 24 page motioned to me. He asked if I had come to see them (I guess since I was the only one, the doorman told him it was me), and we talked for a bit. I bought their demo (will post that later) and we traded some contact information. They seemed really excited. I wasn't really sure if it was because someone that they didn't know had come to see them, or because I was a foreigner.
We kept in contact and after I returned to the States and started my distro, I carried some copies of this release, which was their first EP. Here are seven tracks of laid back electro-pop with soothing melodies. This is perfect music to chill to, sleep to, drink to, whatever.
Surprisingly (I had a WTF moment), their new album is available on Amazon, and probably iTunes. If you dig these tracks you could do more wrong than to buy their album and support these guys:
Ah, Yarmulke. It's odd how Japanese bands will be together for so long, but have such a small output. Yarmulke sort of bucked the trend, but kind of not really. I first saw them in Kyoto at a show that I was attending to see Some It Air. I was up front (there were maybe 30 people there), and as soon as they started playing I hastily pulled my video camera out. Right off, their envy-influenced screamo was right up my alley.
It took them 3 more years to actually release their first EP. In that time, they'd released some demos, but this was really their first release. They funded it themselves, and I contacted them to get some copies for the distro. These 6 songs are the best that Yarmulke released, in my opinion. They worked on them for years and honed them to a fine perfection.
I picked this CD up at a used media store in Nashville called The Great Escape. They carry comics, music, movies, toys, cards, games, whatever, and get their product from local people selling stuff to them. Framtid seems an awfully obscure thing to sell to a place like that, for sure. But, there's an older scene of "crusties" in Nashville that were grouped around early Nashville crust bands like From Ashes Rise and Asschapel. His Hero is Gone being two hours away in Memphis didn't hurt. A lot of these guys got into Japanese punk and crust through 625, Prank, and MCR, so there's occasionally remnants of that stuff floating around Nashville places. I bought my first envy CD's at a local record store, 12th Ave. Records, which has since gone under. That place always had good stuff and stocked a lot of Japanese stuff like Forward, Exclaim, and some HG.Fact stuff. So, yeah, that line of people is probably where this CD came from. Ironically, I never associated too much with those guys, probably because I don't dress punk enough or something.
My other personal touchpoint with Framtid was in the Netherlands in 2007. Cease Upon The Capitol was playing Trashfest, which is a pretty old and well-respected music festival. We played earlier in the day, but I noticed that Framtid was one of the headliners. We had to leave soon after we played, but I saw them in the parking lot, hair spiked a foot high of their heads. A part of me wanted to go talk to them, but I'm super shy about speaking in Japanese, so instead I hopped in the van and we took off.
This CD collects an LP and EP they did around 2002. The music is pretty fast crust punk that is by the numbers. There isn't much of this stuff in Japan (can probably count the crust bands on my digits), but Framtid is pretty solid regardless of their origin. The sound is firmly Swedish, following after early Wolfpack or Skitsystem stuff. It's good, though, but doesn't have the melodies I would hope to see from a Japanese band. It's funny how Ekkaia, a Spanish band, integrates the Japanese style of melodies into crust, but a Japanese crust band tries to stay away from those melodies. I guess that's just how the world works, or something.
First, sorry this is late. It's been a bit of a lazy week for me. Ugh....
Now then, I got this CD one night after a show at EMSeven. I was walking home with the 3cm Tour guys, and one of their friends, who was in this band, handed me the CD telling me it was his band. That is about the entirety of my knowledge of this thing. The band was already broken up, or broke up shortly after I met him. I have a feeling that someone from the band went on to play in a more well-known band, but I can't tell from the members list in the CD.
So, what you have here is some brutal crusty thrash. It's pretty dang good, outside of the extremely fuzzy guitars that sound a little ridiculous. The song-writing and playing is tight and harsh, just like it should be. Overall, pretty damn good shit to go to sleep to.
First, I have to apologize. This release was really hard to get a good picture of. A combination of my scanner destroying colors and the three-dimensional nature of the release itself. But, I tried.
This is a CD single thingie that Killie released in 2007. They made 100. Yoshi was nice enough to stuff one in a package when we did a trade. There's only one song on it, but some noise fills up the rest of the CD. The actual CD itself was also made available without the nice fabric packaging. I have one of those, but I'm not quite sure how they gave that out to people. Then there's the insert, which is a form of some sort. I didn't bother to translate it to figure out what it is, so I'll let somebody else do that. Or you could just use your imagination. I think it's a form to get a license to sell ice cream.
Anyways, I'll be posting Killie stuff all this week, except for Thursday, which will be something special. Enjoy!
Here's one of the first videos I saw of Killie. That's Yuichi from Gauge Means Nothing in the corner:
Egoist for Men is a weird group. Their sound is pretty wild. I played a show with them in 2003 while I was playing guitar in Gauge Means Nothing at a Community Center in Tokyo. The singer hooked his vocal mic up to a few effects pedals before the show, and wow, did he use them. It's not as obvious on this demo, but their track on the 'Light Your Way' compilation shows a lot more effects.
I love the artwork for this. It was done by Ryuzaki-san, who also did artwork for the Gauge Means Nothing ep and 3cm tour/After Forever split. His own band, Bright and Dark Side, played that same night at the Community Center.
I'm not sure how to describe this. It's not really screamo, even though they played with a lot of screamo bands. Maybe punk/emo? I don't know, you'll probably just have to listen for yourself.
God, I'm so glad it's Friday.... Have a good weekend!
I don't always make the best decisions, even though I've gotten better as I've matured. August of 2002, I was in Tokyo in the green room at Shinjuku Anti-Knock talking to Kensuke from Nine Days Wonder. In the main room, Kulara was playing. I'd never heard of them and somehow in my short-circuiting brain, I thought that meant I wouldn't like them/they weren't any good. I peeked out from the room a couple of times to see the vocalist pounding on some bongo drums, but that was it. Yes... I had the chance to see Kulara and instead stared warily at a drunk guy in the corner and chatted with a dude who would ignore my emails thereafter and order me to take his band's live videos off my Youtube channel. I'm a fucking idiot (or was... well, probably still am).
Somehow, when I saw this CD in a record store some time later, I had the foresight to pick it up. Packaging was the first to catch my eye, I'm sure. It's a (fairly) solid piece of cardboard perfectly cut to hold a CD in. It was shrinkwrapped, but I was in awe with how they'd put it together.
Once I got home, I was again surprised by the music. 2 songs, roughly 30 minutes (doing this from memory), but the song structure wasn't post-rock or anything. Kulara takes this chaotic song structure and stretches it over two long 10-15 minute songs. It's amazing. A multitude of instruments, riffs, dynamic structures are spread throughout. I even wrote a paper about this in my college music class (I tried to find it, cause it would be funny to post, but it was garbage anyways). Later I would get the collected CD from Waiting For An Angel, and kind of prefer their early songs better (due to my musical ADHD), but this release is really Kulara's masterpiece. The pinnacle of the structures they were trying to form.
Members went on to be in As Meias, Hununhum, and Z (I think Z, not 100% sure), and honestly none of those bands have matched up to the originality and perfection that was Kulara. Here is one of threepennie's legendary videos of the group:
Whew... what a week. I do get a little tired trying to write about bands everyday. I wasn't a journalism or writing major, so I usually have a limited vocabulary to write about music. I guess I've improved, but it's still tough. So, usually I schedule things on Friday that I'm really into. This ends the week on a good point for me and gives me some motivation to keep going through the week. At first I didn't do it on purpose, but now I try to bookend the week with two releases that are easier for me to write about (because I love them). This also lets me exercise some flexibility during the week and post stuff that I might not know that much about. I listen to a lot of different kind of stuff (right now I'm listening to the Persona 3 OST), and not all of it would fit on this site, but I try to cover almost everything in the Japanese underground (except maybe the noise/experimental scene. That's suicide trying to go after all that stuff). But, today is not that day. Today is about distilled Japanese screamo and Tetola93.
TO THE MUSIC!
Sometimes I dive directly into a band, sometimes I dip my toe in and slow go deeper. I first heard Tetola93 on the Phone/Tetola93/AO split. It was streaming on spotify, and I heard about it through phone (maybe I was looking at their myspace?). It was pretty immediate, they were amazing. But their myspace had very little information. I listened the the split songs several times, and then it slipped out of my memory.
Later, I was sharing some music with a friend, and they shared Tetola93's 3rd demo and an EP. That was when the love affair started, but still slowly. I listened to the songs and liked them, but they hadn't sunk in yet. I would listen through both releases together, the epic emo-violence washing over me, and it would be over before I knew it.
But then, they put up their bandcamp site. Have I mentioned how much I love bandcamp? Yeah, probably. I had watched a trailer of their upcoming split with Visyaa, and drooled a bit. So when I saw it on their bandcamp, I listened and listened and listened. I might've listened to those 5 tracks 10 times in the first day. It was wonderful, they were perfect. It reminded me of how I used to listen to Love Like... Electrocution's full-length. There would be these small parts in each one of the songs that would only last maybe 10 seconds, but they were perfect, so I would listen to some songs on repeat, just over and over. With Tetola93, it was the same thing. Each song had so many different feelings, emotions, and sounds that I would listen and re-listen. And I didn't get sick of the songs, I just kept finding new things in them.
You might listen and think Killie or Louise Cyphre. Maybe a mashup of the two. And I'd agree to a point, because there is definitely a similar song structure and dynamic range between all three bands. But where those bands stay pretty focused on a very narrow sound, Tetola93 opens it up just a bit and lets in some light. One of the most obvious expansions is the sung vocals that overlay a lot of the screaming. I admit, at first I didn't get it; I thought it sounded a little weird. But now I get it, and see how perfect it is and how much it changes the sound. Agh, just listen to OVID on the 3rd Demo at 0:20 and you'll see exactly what I mean. It's singing, but not how other bands do it. It's like this intense, desperate, begging singing, asking the screamo gods for mercy. It just adds so much to the music, and its something that if it was not in the music, it would sound completely different and not as perfect.
I don't know much about the band, so there's not much else to say. I really got chills when I watched the video I posted up above. Just the intensity in that video and how perfectly it matched to the music is pretty rare. I think there's something really special about this band.
On a good note, I'll be getting copies of this split and the Phone/Tetola93/AO split in my distro soon. Look for it!
Another release that seemed to appear magically in my collection. I don't remember how or when I got this. The first time I can remember hearing Anchor is on the "Light Your Way" compilation. They stood out mainly because of their instrumentation. Throughout most of their song, this epic acoustic guitar was playing. It totally worked and shaped the sound to just be totally unique.
Once I got this EP, I saw that it wasn't just a fluke on that song. They really do use acoustic guitar on almost all their songs, and it really works. They have this really folky, metal, screamo sound. It's like some Norse mountain music impersonating a Japanese screamo band. It's hard to explain, cause it's so unique.
We've got 6 songs here, which is a good number to really get to know a band. They are still together, surprisingly, even though this is the most recent recording they've released. They appeared on a Festival DVD in 2007. Hopefully they're working on some new songs or something.
Here's the only vid I could find on youtube. There is another band called "Anchor" in Japan, but they are a rock/punk band (so confusing).
This is one of those mystery CD's. I got it sometime between 2006 (the release date) and now, but can't quite trace back when I got it. It was probably something I ordered from Oto Records. Whenever we would do trades, I would always try and grab some extra things that I hadn't heard before. In some ways, it's surprising that I even got this. Most english speakers would agree (or maybe I'm just standing here by myself), the band name and title of this ep are both stupid. Note? Really? It's like naming your band 'Red' or 'shoulder.' It's meaningless and not that cool sounding. I'm sure they just wanted four letters to sound like envy, and the long ep name which is also meaningless and stupid just supports that assertion. But, for some reason I thought this might be worth listening to.
Well, it's definitely worth listening to. It's totally great and exactly what I like. "All the footprints..."-era envy is like my favorite thing ever, so whenever there's a band riffing on that stuff, I definitely want a part of it. Note plays it intense and melodic and leaves the post-rock at home. They do enough different things that the music is interesting and fun, but always stays close to that epic screamo sound. There are seven songs here with dumb names like 'milkstand.' I'm sorry, it seems like I'm just insulting this band for their bad choices of english names, but it almost seems like a joke to me. Milkstand? Really?
I'm not sure what their current status is. Their myspace hasn't been logged into in 3 years and the site listed on this CD doesn't exist anymore. Their name makes them positively un-googleable, so I don't know any other way to find information on them. I think it's safe to say they are gone from this earth; in other bands or salarymen by now.
Do I know a lot about this band? No. Did my scanner do something weird to the colors of this cover because it was printed weird? Yes. Will I continue to write in a question/answer pattern? Maybe.
I really don't know much about Mind Touch. They broke up in 2006. They were around for 6 years, as their blog says, but I think this is there only release. It is pretty well done, a mix of Japanese metalcore with some broader melodies and hardcore influence. They have more variety than the usual Japanese metalcore band and are pretty interesting to listen to. Only two songs here, but they are a good representation of a band that could've done more. Hope you enjoy!
There is a band that I love. I met them in their hometown of Okayama after hearing about them from every Japanese friend I knew. I'd seen their patches on shorts and backpacks. They were spoken of like some legendary, mythical entity. When I met the guys & girl from Dip Leg, they seemed pretty normal to me. Their music was truly other-worldly, though. Unfortunately, after a split, full-length, and EP, they took an indefinite hiatus that seems to have turned into a definite one, 5 years later. Their sound was one of passionate vocals, unaware of trends and fads, angular and tense guitars, rumbling but jazzy bass, and complicated drumming. They were a tight four-piece that were all playing with one accord. Since their EP, it seemed that their unique sound was gone, forever hidden in the bodies of the members who were moving on with their lives.
When I first listened to this Document Not Found (DNF) demo, I didn't really make any sort of connection. At first, I thought of 3cm tour or black film dance because of the vocals and heavy bass lines. But after watching the video I'm including below, and re-listening to the demo, I get it. This sound is reaching for the same thing that Dip Leg was doing. On this demo, DNF are still finding their voice, but they've since released a split and if the video below is any indication, they seem to be hitting their stride. I wouldn't say this is a Dip Leg copy band, but the pieces that made Dip Leg so great are present in DNF. As they write more songs, their unique identity solidifies and seems to make a great companion to Dip Leg and even some Nitro Mega Prayer.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. I really have to go buy their other stuff now!
In 2005, I was still in school in Murfreesboro. I worked part time and pulled in about 400 bucks a month. This was barely enough to pay for rent, food, and gas each month. At the same time, I was still trying to run I've Come For Your Children and release stuff. Distro sales were non-existent at the time, so all money had to come out of my pocket. To add to the money difficulties, I was trying to release legit versions of everything (ie. Real CD's or Vinyl), so large chunks of money had to be doled out for each release. That meant that each release took a very long period of time to release, and I was really impatient.
So, with my friend Chris, we decided to start a side label releasing 99 copies of CD-R's. Chronocological was a funny way we mis-pronounced chronological when trying to come up with a name for a label. Our first release was a reprint of Utarid's demo, then a CD-R version of Cease Upon the Capitol's End of History EP. Finally, we did a reprint of Tiala's demo, which is what we've got here. We were both friends of Tiala's and loved the band, so it just made sense. Instead of doing any screenprinting (like the Utarid demo) or weird paper and cuttings (like the CUTC ep), we focused on weird design instead. The booklet inside is only about 1" x 1", but the cover is a replica of the outer jacket. I thought it was a pretty neat conceptual insert. The CD-R itself was stamped with a hand-cut stamp. Overall, I was really frickin' proud with it. It ended up being the last Chronocological release, even though we had several more planned (as you can see on the site).
Tiala sounds like The Futures, The Carnival of Dark-Split, and Jerome's Dream put into a blender, sprinkled with cayenne pepper, and vomited out after a 24-hour bender. Their sound is nuts, and their live shows are fun as shit. They've taken on a more eclectic sound now, with saxophone and some different members, but this stuff was always my favorite from them.
The video quality is crap, but here's a show that I videoed:
Something I picked up from Oto Records a while ago. Unripe was new at the time, but since then they've released a split with The Cops Are Inside Us and another with Midnight Parade. To add to their releases, it seems their sound has changed quite a bit. The video below has a much more rocking screamo sound. Their demo is way more post-rock.
I don't know much about the band. One interesting thing is that they're from Okinawa, which is way the fuck down South of Japan. Honestly, I'm not sure how these guys travel to other towns when they play shows. They would have to either take a ferry or fly, because there's no way that there are bridges to Kyushu.
So yeah, the sound is very clean and post-rocky, and at points it gets crazy and screamy. It's not totally end of the world epic, like envy. It reminds me more of 3cm tour if they had 9 minute long songs. It's good stuff, and even though I don't care for long songs, these are pretty good.
Unripe - Demo
1. A Faint Sound of Her Feelings
2. Resound Room
I had a dream the first night I slept in Japan. I went to sleep listening to "All the footprints..." and in the dream, Envy came to Nashville and played at Indienet, a local place for shows. Somehow I was there, and it was incredibly intimate. You could say that this was some sort of premonition, because a week later I got off an overnight bus in Tokyo, ready to see Envy play that night. I had been in contact with some bands before leaving for Tokyo, and I met Yuki from After Forever in the entrance of Shinuku Anti-Knock. We traded some words. My Japanese was really poor, so it was difficult to communicate on a deep level, but he was nice enough to give me a copy of his band's demo. That was the end of our contact that night, but I listened to this demo so much afterwards.
In some ways, it's hard to describe After Forever. I don't really think they sound like any other band out there. Each band member has their individual style, combining to create something unique. The drummer plays some sort of pop-punk or new-school hardcore type drums. The guitars play metal riffs with screamo melodies. The bass is like this constant moving, deep rumble, like in some of those newer death metal bands. And then there's the high-pitched screaming. It makes this desolate and melancholy sound that is just amazing.
They've sort of broken up... maybe. I honestly don't know, since they supposedly had an EP come out a few years back. It's sad that a band so amazing and unique ended up having the same name as a crappy goth band that got popular. It kind of drives the lesser known band into obscurity.
I got to see After Forever on multiple occasions, and their shows were always pitch perfect. Here's one from 2003:
I ordered this from Oto Records after doing some trades, sometime around 2008-2009. I hadn't been paying attention much to the Japanese scene, just catching the occasional band that popped out (like killie and hiha). So, I went through his distro and just grabbed whatever looked promising.
It turns out, I didn't do so bad. Hemp Coaching Juicer is fucking awesome. Their sound is pretty noisy hardcore that ventures into thrash, but they have that undeniable Japanese sense of melody. You get 6 songs here, which is much more than a demo. The cover is cloth, essentially a patch, although sewing this on my shorts would leave me no cover for this CD. This is for fans of Tiala, The Carnival of Dark-Split, and Breakfast.
I just got their split with High Tension Sex Girl, and it's amazing. I'm hoping to post a review or something sometime soon.
This is still available to purchase (I know, I'm kind of breaking my philosophy a bit here), so please support the band if you like this. I kind of realized this was still out there while I was trolling some record shops. Buy this here: Record Shop BASE Senseless Records
One of my favorite releases out of Japan and a total luck buy. Kana-shibari was a short-lived band, 2/3 non-Japanese. The singer sounds Australian, but no clue on the other guy. Their only other release, to my knowledge, is two songs on the "This is Pop" compilation, which are from this release.
Anyways, if you're familiar with My Disco, especially their earliest stuff, then you'll already love Kana-shibari. They play a jazzy, screamed indie rock, with touches of post-punk and shit. Honestly, it's hard to describe. There's a very heavy groove, and lots of emotion, and guitars with 'tudes. That's a better description.
No videos. Anywhere. That I could find. And I searched pretty hardcore for them.
Just a short one today. Here's a one song promo thingy I picked up from Curve. I'm not sure the year on this, because there's no data on the release. I think it's before Broken Beautiful Product, which would put it around 2003 or something. So yeah, that's what I'm going with.
Curve recently had a release that is available outside of Japan. Bear Records put out a split CD with Curve and some other Japanese & American bands. You can buy it right here for only 6 frickin bucks.
Oh yeah, so to describe Curve I usually go with a more epic and aggressive Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World. He plays with a lot of screamo and hardcore bands, but definitely doesn't play that. Maybe emo that appeals to that crowd, you could say? Either way, his stuff is pretty good. From the video below, it looks like he's added another dude to the band (used to be a two-piece), or maybe that's just for live shows.
I first heard infro on the first "Here Comes the Bottom Line..." compilation from Impulse Records. They had two songs that just rocked so good. There sound takes some cues from 1000travels of Jawaharlal, Turbostaat, and early envy. Kind of that whole rocking, but melodic, and screaming punk or hardcore. Not sure what to call it, but it's great. But what I think makes infro so good is that they get better the more you listen to them. Their music is so deep. There's so much going on that you won't notice at first. Listening to this demo again after 7 years, I'm still finding new things to love about it.
Luckily for humankind, these guys are still fucking rocking out. Their site has tons of information, and they even put out a split 7" last year. Impulse Records has put out an almost album (7 songs) and another EP, which is a good amount of stuff to sink your teeth into (I'll probably be posting Melody soon).
Funny note: in searching for this video below, I found that a shit ton of youtube people don't fucking know how spell "info." It's not "infro" you dummies. God!
