Sukeban Boy (2006)

This has to be one of the worst films I've ever seen. I love watching awful movies (that is the whole point of this venture!) but this just fails to entertain. I mean, in all rights it should; it's a tale about a boy (?) called Sukeban who looks like a girl so he goes to a girls school, dressed - rather convincingly - as a girl. There he meets a whole array of bizarre characters that are have no hesitation getting naked and violent. It is verrry weird, up to the point where his friend Kanko gets her legs chopped off by a masked female, and then it gets even weirder. A topless villain starts shooting bullets out of her tits. Similarly, Kanko's stumps turn into guns and she starts gunning people down too. Sukeban grows tits. Everyone else has their tits out too. A bunch of naked chicks tie everyone up in chains and then a bunch of people die. Did I mention there were tits involved?

All of this happens in under an hour, and by all rights it should be massively entertaining, even with the lack of English subs. Unfortunately however, the entire thing is so drab and badly edited that it is almost excruciating to watch. The lighting is awful and the choice of locations (almost entirely within a school) is dark and musty, but in the worst, most amateur way possible. The acting is (unsurprisingly) beyond saving and the fight choreography looks like it was cobbled together by the type of people who wear fedoras, drink lots of Monster energy and enjoy playing with toy lightsabers. Even for exploitation filming, this is abysmal. All DVD copies of this should be fired into the fucking sun.

Masonna - Spectrum Ripper

Masonna (not to be confused of course, with Madonna) is a staple and legend in the noise world. He is "famed" for his intense live performances, where his body is seemingly nothing more than a channel for pure chaos; as if some invisible higher power is playing the poor guy like a marionette and pouring the result out as harsh noise. These performances can be seen on YouTube, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. Spectrum Ripper, is the perfect audio-only representation of the Masonna chaos, split into 25 parts of various lengths, but flowing as one misanthropic ear exploding performance.

It's incredibly impressive when someone can carve their own sound out of of the harsh noise world; the scatty, super-distorted, vocal-led "pieces" are instantly recognisable despite being often imitated. It sounds like a cut and paste soundtrack to a descent into a mechanical hell, with delay pedals emphasising the machine-like repetition through the walls of sheer noise. Maybe it is hard to coin this a classic of the noise music / non-music genre, but this would do no wrong as a fantastic starting place for those curious to what noise is, or what it has to offer. 

Gore Beyond Necropsy - I Recommend You... Amputation!

Gore Beyond Necropsy are nothing short of legendary on the noise/grind underground for a multitude of reasons (the hilariously titled split/collab with Merzbow springs to mind). They have long since changed their name and disappeared into total obscurity, but for a short while they kinda flew the flag for this kinda noisy shit, and this 12 minute EP showcases a slightly different side to the band's infamous noisy grindcore.

It all starts off with horror samples and down-tuned, dirty guitar playing, but then the drums kick in after the slow intro with this over-arching industrial feel, it's like the drums are purposefully programmed in a machine-like way - as they blast away there's a ticking mechanical heart to the proceedings; a clanking abdominal creation keeping the beating heart of this shit alive inside it's exposed chest and eviscerated gore. Imagine Godflesh and Carcass melding as one in the mid/late 80s, for a ridiculous ballpark idea! 

Unholy Grave - Unholy Bastards EP

What we have here is a chunk of grinding wax from one of the scene's purest purveyors of mental blasting noise. Little to my previous knowledge, Unholy Bastards is a live EP (that ol' chestnut!) but this time, I haven't stumbled onto some sucky live recording that sounds like it was taken by a camera phone. Honestly, apart from the odd bass-rumbles that show it was recorded in a live environment, it doesn't sound too dissimilar to the type of noize that Unholy Grave spew out on a regular basis, so I'm down with this slab of living, grinding, festering mass.

 

What goes along with this 7" is a cool little tour diary by Takaho (the UG vocalist), which details the group's mini tour across Japan with the band Little Bastards. Not much else I can really say I'm afraid, but this is really cool. This EP was brought to you by Agromosh Records in the USA and is limited to 1000 copies, 300 being on red wax.

 

Sete Star Sept / Rotgut - Split 7"

I remember Rotgut from years ago (ah, the Myspace days!) and back then they played this really ugly, sludgy and noisy shit. Now, things are a bit more refined; Rotgut have become this absolute grinding Malaysian menace. The sound is fatter than the bloated corpse of a beached great white, and the vocals are totally insane; wicked rasps and shouts that hark back to something altogether more 38 Counts...era Pig Destroyer. Ones to watch, I would think!

Sete Star Sept are making a name for themselves. They've been going for a good few years now but 2013 seems to be the year of Sete Star Sept, what with a lot of worldwide touring and I keep seeing their name pop up absolutely fucking everywhere. Which is good news, of course. But Christ, what a mess this band is! Nasty, sloppy, horrendous noisecore is the order of the day. It's completely vicious as fuck and I absolutely love it.

 

This split of "turbo tornado power grindcore" (their words, not mine) was put out on December 25h 2012 by the great people at Dogma Artistic Guerrilla Records in Malaysia. I have number 152 out of 300 copies.

To Die - Jiwa Jiwa Yang Terkumpul

Now this is what I'm talking about! Trading pays off when you get gems like this! Starting off sounding like demo-quality Converge with Iron Monkey's Johnny Morrow on vocals, it doesn't take long for To Die to burst into mental grindcore and body-slamming breakdowns. Most of the songs are notoriously short, but they are mental as fuck and really really rabid. The guitar has a really mournful undertone to it, almost like black metal riffing in a way. The record is dubbed on a c10 and it's shorter than the tapes capacity, but it is well worth a listen. At the end there is a couple of live blasts, and then it's all over.

I've never considered Indonesia to have any semblance of a grind scene before, other than Wormrot, but I got some research to do. To Die are definitely ones to keep an eye on, and I'll be treasuring this tape for a long while. As of the time of writing I have a few copies for sale / trade over at Pointless Records, so get a hold on that shit! Alternatively, get on Japan's new (and off to a great start) label Fuck The Industry, which is all totally DIY and awesome as fuck. Get in!

PS: Please excuse the recent lack of updates...been a busy few weeks. Normal posting schedule should be back within the next few days.

Agathocles / Shikane - Split 7"

A quick note on looking back at this blog's beginnings: I realise how harsh I was towards Agathocles in some posts. Whilst I do tire of them constantly re-hashing the same old stuff over and over in different shitty recordings, they are an excellent grindcore band (yes, grindcore!) and when they actually make original material it is usually very good. Not to mention they are fucking excellent live!

I picked this 7" up from Nic's Bones Brigade stall on the Wormrot UK tour. It was staring me in the face and was the only thing in the 7" pile that really tickled my fancy. I had a sneaky peek inside and didn't recognise any of the tracks as being the usual 30 or so that are re-recorded again and again for splits so I took a risk and slung ol' Nic three quid and went home. What I got was one of a 1000 repressed with a blue cover and a red disc. Original pressings (also 1000 pieces) have a black cover and a transparent orange vinyl. All versions were put out in 1997 by Keloid Records. 

Shikabane are fucking excellent grindcore and I will be checking these guys out more when I get some time! Japanese hypergrind anyone? Think Carcass Grinder but not as awful. Think Unholy Grave but happier and less noisecore. It reminds me greatly actually of a band I was meant to split with before called Infiltro, but the project fell apart. Sounds very similar. Excellent grind anyway, and the drum sound is brilliant. Nice bright ping ping snares all round!

 

Agathocles have original tracks here, so once I got over my minor heart attack I dropped the needle to the wax and enjoyed. Fucking bliss! Seriously guys, you should do this more often! Ha ha. All jokes aside, it's nice and upbeat "mince" from AGx, but with Jan's usual growls / shifts replaced with yelps and odd laughing sounds. Excellent and entertaining lyrics as usual. I will say that the AGx side is over way too quickly though. Nevermind! That means I'll just have to collect more 7"s, right guys?

PS this track is a Shikabane song from a different release. I can't find any videos for this split.