Contributors: Lord Mokrap, T, C, Danny Martin, and Yonder Tarr
Hayaino Daisuki’s Speed Metal Dojo
Any band that substitutes a picture of a bunch of chicks imitating the back cover of “Reign in Blood” for an actual photo of the band in their liner notes probably has their hearts in the right place.
Hayaino Daisuki (“we love speed” in Japanese) is a living love letter to ’80s Japanese thrash and speed metal put together when Jon Chang and Takafumi Matsubara aren’t doing Gridlink. So far, they’ve released two EP’s, “Headbanger’s Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire” and “Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell…or Did You Mean Hawai’i Daisuki.” I bought their first EP thinking 1) that the name was hilarious and 2) that it would be some sort of grindcore, given the pedigree of the players.
I was way off, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so completely won over by a band so quickly in my life. Opening with a scream that would make a young Tom Arraya blush, “Into the Throat of Berserk” kicks off HKCDF. Chang’s banshee screech. Dry raspy guitars. Pounding drums. Thrumming bass. Brief pause. All hell breaks loose!
You could drop the needle anywhere on either EP and have your face peeled back! Chang abandons the high/low attack he used in Discordance Axis and focuses instead on a throat shredding, piercing shriek. In keeping with the band’s ethos of “way too much for you all the time,” he just never shuts up, unleashing a nearly constant barrage of insanity. He pauses only to allow mindbending guitar solos to slash out, and presumably to occasionally breathe. Unless he can do that Kenny G breathing thing. I think he can. At 1:57 into “Haitro Ikotsu Gakidou,” up second on HKCDF, Chang pulls off the most badass thing I’ve ever heard him do in any of the bands he’s fronted. I’m out of synonyms for “scream,” but I can tell you the hair on my arms stands up every time I hear it. On my first spin, I actually started laughing. It was so amazing no other reaction seemed possible. Michelle Bowlin is listed as a backup vocalist, but the only song I can say for certain I hear anyone other than Chang on is “Kirei” from the second EP. Just as piercing and unhinged as Chang, but with a sort of punk edge in her voice, she more than holds her own alongside the Grindcore Ninja Commando.
The guitar playing on both EP’s is quite simply orgasmic. Lots of tremolo picked rhythm lines set up furious eruptions of face melting shred. The soloing is much more speed metal than thrash, focusing more on warp-speed melody than whammy bar abuse (although there are a few leads that would make Kerry King smile). Soaring twin guitar harmonies zip by at obscene speeds, as if early Helloween got stuffed into a blender with some Bay Area thrash. There are even some harmonies that sound a bit like something a second wave Norwegian black metal band could have written. The short run times of their two releases may worry some of you, but fear not: there are more riffs in HD’s roughly 27 minutes of recorded music than most bands could ever hope to write. Everything is happening all at once, always.
The bass is audible, always thumping along just underneath the churn of the six stringers. Nothing fancy, but it does the trick just fine. The drumming is possessed of an appropriately breakneck abandon. Snapping thrash beats, lots of cool fills and rolls. This music, true to the form to which it pays tribute, is all about the guitars and the vocals. However, HD’s rhythm section has the speed to keep everything rolling and are loose enough to keep everything frantic and desperate without being sloppy.
Both EP’s have a “recorded live in the studio” sort of charm to them. None of the quantized, sterile “hospital metal” sound that is so popular today. This sounds real.
I highly recommend this band to anyone who appreciates speed metal or thrash. HD are clearly madly in love with speed, especially the Japanese scene in the ‘80s. They’re poking a little fun at the style and still falling prostrate at the altar of FASSSSTERRRRRRRRRR!!!! An homage without being “retro,” fun without being a joke, Hayaino Daisuki are utterly one-of-a-kind and any speedfreak needs to hear HD slay.
The Emperor wishes they would cut a few notes.
-Lord Mokrap
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Torche: Meanderthal
Get your happiness out of my metal!
There are times when I become acutely aware of just how inappropriate the machine-gun bursts of blastbeat aggression that make up so much of my music collection are for what’s happening. This happens to me quite often when I’m walking my dog on warm days. There we are: man and beast pushing our way through a pleasantly overgrown field. The sun is up, bright and fuzzy. A warm breeze whispers about grass and pine trees. Mieszko Talarczyk screams, “AN EMPTY SHELL IS ALL THAT REMAINNNNNS!” This isn’t working.
I remember a summer when my musical myopia seemed particularly inadequate. I had just started dating a girl, had just graduated college, and was spending the last few months before law school making sure I had a really, really good time. Suffocation just didn’t cut it. I think I went an entire week without a single “HURRGGHGLLRRRR” or Tom Arraya scream.
Not to say that metal isn’t uplifting. Slayer makes me happy. It really, really does. But it’s a different sort of happy. It’s a more intense, let’s run in circles and make faces and do pushups sort of happiness. There’s a reason black metal bands look (even more) fucking ridiculous if they’re playing in the daytime.
Yesterday was warm and fuzzy. It’s been a fairly bitter winter by Alabama standards, so I was pleasantly surprised by the sunshine. As much as I pretend to enjoy the cold, I’m really looking forward to spring. That’s where “Meanderthal” comes in.
From the angelic mass choir of opener “Triumph of Venus,” the album blasts sunshine into your skull until the surprisingly heavy and depressed closer. Fuzzed out Sabbath thump props up soaring guitar melodies and overjoyed mountain man howling that is almost always delivered in a harmony. If you really want to piss off a troll, tell them this is “sludge pop.” The songs are rather short for this sort of music, which is not a bad thing: they’re only short because Torche are playing them fast! This is what stoner rock sounds like if you play it on the wrong rpm, I think. At around 1:30 – 2 minutes a pop, Torche cram every second with positive energy and batshit melody. Until the album’s closer “Meanderthal” sounds like it’s grinning ear to ear, even when things get heavy.
If you’re the kind of asshole who likes to drive way too fast on those mythical backroads where it’s “totally ok because no one is ever on them” most of this album would sound great in your car!
And then there’s the title track. Closer “Meanderthal” is all ominous bass rumble and building tension. Pounding war drums and scathing feedback scream “DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” A true sucker punch.
So, my advice to the pale unwashed masses: spring is coming. Get off your ass, go outside, smile! It’s quite alright to do these things. In fact, I say it’s fucking metal.
-Lord Mokrap
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Vektor: Black Future
Vektor are the absolute best fucking thrash band from Arizona.
Ripping tech thrash! 2009! Fuck?
Ok, that’s not completely unheard of. Revocation are whiplashing like mad in the 21st. Vektor trades in Revocation’s “death/” for a grittier production and a taste for Voivodian alien epic.
Traditional thrash hammering gets contorted into tremolo picked, warbling dissonance and drawn out onto dizzyingly beautiful mountain-top triumphant soloing. Thrash beats are whipped into near blast-beat skanking frenzied black metal runs. The bass thunders and gallops in Steve Harris fashion, bounding along and occasionally offering melodic counterpoint to the chugging guitars. Blistering epics about the cold brutality of the cosmos and mankind’s thirst for its own blood are spat and stuttered by a rasping voice which occasionally shatters piercingly into the upper reaches. This will be the most likely sticking point for casual thrash fans (not fans of casual thrash, which I guess would be Symphony X fanboys?): if you absolutely cannot stand the vocals on early Destruction or Sadus albums you will not be pleased.
Otherwise, this is mandatory. The pile of bands that have broken themselves at the altar of “fuckin’ oldschool” thrash is massive. Few are improving upon the masterworks, and fewer present anything new to the genre. “Black Future” falls into the latter category, sounding not like something that could’ve been released in 1987, but like something that should’ve. “Black Future” is from an alternate timeline where thrash never died and where a schism between technical prowess and thrashing fury never developed. There was a point when bands that ripped out blazing solos, complicated arrangements, and occasionally fucked off into other dimensions were also some of the ones actually kicking ass. Think Atheist or Coroner.
Vektor never made any hard decision between sci-fi and their Sadus albums.
- Lord Mokrap
