Karen Nash is a great 6 minute song, going from this beautiful clean guitar to metallic riffs, it's certainly the highlight here. The other two tracks are some cool mid-tempo tracks. Great Japanese HC EP!

I'm not surprised that Juntaro Yamanouchi is a fan because this 4 minute long hardcore EP kicks ass!

Kisou is the last album of what I would call the band's original visual kei run, as they started toning down their visuals after this, and it's somewhere in-between the previous two albums and Vulgar in sound. Imagine a more consistent MACABRE, and inject industrial (as in industrial rock) steroids and metal into its veins. The best of all three, maybe even better than some later albums.

MACABRE gets heavier and even weirder than GAUZE did. I'm going to give a little example.
Myaku (the first single, btw) might make you think it's going to be one of the heavier tracks, then it starts building up and BAM, poppy chorus! The rest of the album fluctuates between more "usual" tracks and stranger ones; sometimes it's heavy, sometimes it's beautiful. The title track sees them making an epic 8 years before Vinushka!
It's certainly a unique entry in ... read more

Dir en grey's (major) debut, and it's amazing! GAUZE is an alt rock album; it's vkei on the poppier side—That's what I would say if more songs were like most of the album's singles (all of which were produced by Yoshiki of X Japan). It's a pretty wild ride, it starts off heavy, goes into what I mentioned before, gets heavy again, gets weird, you know the drill. I'm not gonna spoil much, just give it a spin.

It's funny thinking that they probably ... read more

Want to listen to these songs? You better have a VHS player! Ash and Garden are re-recordings, Sangeki no Yoru is the uncensored version of Kiri to Mayu and Karma is completely exclusive to this.
The music videos are cool and all these tracks are bangers. If you like early DEG, listen to these.

Dir en grey's first ever proper release and while maybe not as solid as their later releases, it's a great start. An improvement from La:Sadie's and an evolution of that sound in a way - we're also getting the heavier side of the band here!
This certainly grew on me from the last time I listened to it. (A raise from 82 to 85 doesn't seem like much but whatever.)

The last La:Sadie's release before they disbanded. The exact reason isn't known but it's probably because Kisaki wanted to stay independent and the rest wanted to go major. I'd say this is as good as early DEG, maybe I'll change my mind after I revisit MISSA.

All tracks from all the Juujika ni Sasageru Yume tapes compiled and remixed.
These are some pretty nice tracks. Either the tracks grew on me with a single replay or I'm just going crazy but this gets a higher score. I'll probably be returning to this less often than to MISSA though.

Before DIR EN GREY, there was La:Sadie's. (and before it.....)
Being a fan of Diru, I might as well check out the band that came before it. This is an alright visual kei song, I don't really have much to say

Recorded live at the Museum of Tama University on the 29th of June, 1996, and released the same year. You know what else was released in 1996? Pulse Demon, Oersted, Magnesia Nova, Mercurated, and more.

Akasha Gulva is a 73-minute-long, unrelenting wall of noise; it might as well be the harshest Merzbow release. It's not straight-up HNW, though, as it does have some variation. Remember that power drill skull massage bit in my PD review? This is a jackhammer pummeling your brain. Holy shit, ... read more

This remaster is no longer 5 points above the original for me, they're on par now. Maybe it's slightly better? Extract 1 is still a banger.

Pulse Demon shouldn't have been this famous, not because it's a bad album, but because its popularity extends beyond noise fans. Someone will give it a spin on their headphones, as loud as possible, and then curse the entire noise genre, despite the fact that this is a HARSH noise album. Do I really need to mention that not all harsh noise albums are like Pulse Demon? If you want to get into noise, look elsewhere. Even Merzbow himself has very different-sounding ones.

PD was released ... read more

The second split with Sedem Minút Strachu! Gero's side is just spoken word (the man says Kebab a lot) given the noise treatment, nothing amazing. Don't know what the person is even saying, could be Japanese, or it could be a member of Finnish hardcore punk band Kaaos just saying shit. Who knows? Sedem Minút Strachu's Monolith Dance doesn't have the weirdness that Rehabilit Dance had, but it does have more steady drumming. A constant stream of thin electric ... read more

3 amazing hours. When this really gets going, that's when it gets really good.
I should probably give Secret Black Box a re-listen.

Apparently THIS Live at Tokyo Gay Center isn't THE live at Tokyo Gay Center everyone is talking about, the track from the compilation that's just buzzing. According to Juntaro this one "include masturbation voice only", so yeah I highly doubt people's rating of this would change. But hey! We would have another record to crank to if this wasn't a lost, limited release with 10 copies!

A man and his guitar 😇
Folk from hell. Kengo's vocals are disturbing - they range from "normal" singing and screams to complete gibberish - and his guitar playing definitely contributes to the grim vibe.

Made 14 years after Military Affairs Neurotic, it clears that and Detestation, certainly G.I.S.M's best.
So how does it begin? With a jazz track of course! If you had forgotten what album you're listening to during it's 7 minutes, the next one will kindly rip your head off. Over an hour of pure insanity; crust, thrash, hardcore all thrown into a blender, hell there's even some industrial and drone at the end here. Raw production - in a good way and Sakevi is completely ... read more

1 word for each hour.
Yeah, this was some great background music.

35 CD BOX / 12th CD / https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/chtc/album/856869-35-cd-box/
Recorded on New Year's 2009 just like Groon Lesson. For a box called Drum & Noise, there's not a lot of drums on this one! Some rhythmic thumping appears in the middle of the first track, the second one finally has a drum loop, the third one only has some at the beginning, the last one has just a simple unchanging drumbeat for the entire duration. The noise is alright or something. You know ... read more