(Following up on yesterday’s Part 1, today our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri brings us Part 2 of an article focused on Asian bands, narrating the effect of four EPs released this year.)
Having succeeded in subverting the norms with not-so-subtle subterfuge in an article containing very little metal in recent weeks – a tactic learned from Waylander of David Gemmell’s fantasy was that of hiding in plain sight — here we have four offerings that are connected to Part 1 geographically, but also aesthetically, albeit genre-wise we’re dealing with offerings of a more mongrelized persuasion. Anything suffixed with ‘core’ is a curse word in some circles, I prefer to spread the mycelium- and spongiform-afflicted ear holes of mine in myriad directions.
KLONNS (Japan) – Heaven
Released April 26th
Heaven clocks in at 18 minutes and 14 seconds. Not one second is wasted on the EP by a band Iron Lung Records labels as the new wave of Japanese hardcore.
KLONNS was nice enough to devise a hush of electronic tranquility before the storm. After the legit legerdemain in sleight-of-hand trickery of the opening stanza, KLONNS obstreperously lead not just with a ‘one-two’, but a ten-punch combination finished with a coup de grâce that only those supremely confident in their abilities can pull off with as much immeasurable merit.
Once the deluge of tempestuous furor of “Heathen” ensues, in no time “Creep” slaps you with a heft of tonnage like a bridge collapsing into a river fit to breach. Even when the experience attains a substantive celerity in “Beherit”, every note of the bass, tremor of the guitars, and slam of the drum leaves an indelible yet concussive mark; while sounding as if everything was recorded in a dimension of pulsing gravel.
You can’t but be compelled to turn the volume up notches past the safe decibel-d reaches of your speakers and earholes. For a great rendition of what KLONNS are all about, “Realm” showcases not just the tractor-beaming bass and raucous riffs but some kind of unfathomable entity providing lyrics in a ghosted soul haunting tone.
There is what could be deemed a solo on “Another”; it’s over too fast to register, yet KLONNS did not come here to spend any time noodling around. After a frenzied paroxysm, “Nemesis” could stand at the doomier end compared to everything else on here, but the record expertly interplays with the push and the pull of barely restrained hysteria and instants of catching your breath between waterboarding endurances. Like in “Hill”, which has a long feedback, looped to deceive you into believing there is a letup, before it disgorges into a voracious morsel of efficacy and economy of notes.
Image by Chihiro Yoshikawa
This isn’t hardcore, this is doom-grind played with a vibrancy, love, and enduring search of the ecstatic truth that sometimes only the grandest of music can provide. Heaven is pound for pound the hardest hitting album to be released this year in anything -core. One of their members once read the word ‘stale’ in a review somewhere, burned down the reviewer’s house, went on a vengeance spree against every person connected to them, and then commanded hara-kiri for any member that even thought for a millisecond of sameness. Because no matter how hard you try, you can’t find any here in the main 10 offerings.
The title track is the second longest song, being beaten by “Heathen” by a mere 2 seconds, and that I feel was orchestrated, for the last line in “Heathen” proclaiming “heathen purgatory in my eyes” juxtaposed to “Heaven’s”’ 3rd line “I will reach the gate closed.” Grind and other short forms have a universe of possibilities to fuck with expectations and for innovation in the different shades of asperity we deal with in extreme music. KLONNS just gave everyone a lesson in spacing and vitality as Heaven is over in less time it takes to read this review, less a heaven than a heaving for more.
Static-laced trip-hopped-chipmunked outro is not what you’ll expect either, and it’s exactly how the album should have ended. Plenitude attained. KLONNS’ll knock any other hardcore album this year the fuck out. Inveterate beings of insatiate musical consumption need not look further than Heaven to scratch that itch in the search of riffs of providence.
KLONNS are:
Shimpei Miura – Guitars
Shu Oshima – Vocals
Kasumi Hayano – Bass/electronics
岡本成央 – Drums
https://www.instagram.com/klonns_jp/
https://www.facebook.com/KLONNS/
CÚT LỘN (Vietnam) – Bắc Thảo
Released August 22nd
Gone are the Pikachu suits (they do still love yellow). A progression not just of image, but of frequency. If you’re familiar with CÚT LỘN’s previous efforts, do yourself a favor and start listening at “Xui”, track 7. A step in the direction lyrically and sonically that draws from wells alternate and possibly more refined. Not that in their inchoate previous form they were unfledged, it simply is a transition into an effort and subsistence of more enduring acuity.
With Bắc Thảo – which means century egg – CÚT LỘN have not only transversed merely being labeled a hardcore punk band, they have enriched and heightened their lyrical acumen and injected their sound with a vitality akin to steroidal equilibrium.
“Chơi Tiếp” hits with fury right away. Vocalists have changed numerous times for this band, yet Vui Quá on vox believes that vocals should be performed in none other than an unrestrained rage of literally screaming one’s lungs out until they’re sucking up not just air but the grime, sweat, and blood-soaked floor they were discharged onto. Put simply, to ordain you into submission.
“Ngặt” enters doomier steppes, where CÚT LỘN have somehow channeled elder gods into suffusing outer dimensional mass, while “Chúc Em” contains one of the more satisfying drum performances I’ve heard this year. Sergey Bochenkov and crew got rid of them Pikachu suits for good reason; try playing in that for a full set and not pass out from heat stroke.
Image by Out The Run events
With “Ấp Úng” there is a weaving of soundscapes of atmospheric grandiosity, keeping it founded in a bass and percussive assault that deal as the sonic equivalent of a hand-poked tattoo on the auditory cortex.
“Rướn” is straight up hardcore punk, and by now it is apparent that Bắc Thảo is founded in a ferociousness of insistency. They used to have quite a bit of thrash mixed in with the punk and you’ll be happy to find some gang vocals hidden in for good effect.
“Cà Phê Sáng” means morning coffee. This sophomore serves it, for when you’re late for work and have a mere 22 minutes and 45 seconds to down that coffee like a boat-race beer, shit-shower-shave, find respectable work clothes, and brush your gnashers on the go. Could be homage to the rocket fuel brew of grinded robusta beans and condensed milk served at street stalls on Saigonese streets fit for an apoplectic episode and a simultaneous skull-crushing.
The lyrics are all in Vietnamese, but I would suggest that if you do enjoy this record as much as I do, the translation machine on the elgoog machine has improved at least to the point where one can ascertain a semblance of the depth contained within the poetry bled out there.
The final tetrad hears the band going heavier and bleaker, with a steadfast resolve yet never truly letting go of their core sound. Entering foreboding metallic territory by doing a sonic reading of Bone Tomahawk in genre-fusion with closer “Nhìn Vào”; by the time the closing acoustic picking eases the listener into oblivion, I couldn’t help but think that it’ll be a great segue into the next full-length. A band to look out for, especially if you live near South East Asian shores, their live shows are not to be missed.
CÚT LỘN are:
Sergey Bochenkov – Drums
Quang sọt – Guitars, Vocals (backing)
Nguyên Lê – Bass
Vui Quá – Vocals
https://www.instagram.com/cutlonband/
https://www.facebook.com/cutlonband/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/09dPNgJWi8ch7mKJoMsVg9
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWSpf1EtpNiGqqI1a4v1igQ
Dying Fate (Malaysia) – Trail of Blood
Released March 3rd
Sometimes it pays off to follow the art. Fascinated by the cover painting of Obscurial’s Heretic covered in Part 1, I looked up the artist on the archives to see who else they’ve been commissioned by. And sure enough, Arifullah Ali also provided the gorgeous oil painting for the cover of Dying Fate’s EP.
Following this Trail of Blood leads you straight to the carnage. There is a sense of urgency and also a love of those screeching ’80s thrash leads that careen and then crash down with aplomb. Here is a band with an intimate knowledge of – and vital adherence to – the fight against thrashing obsolescence. If you don’t like crisp production, hearing every instrument, nearing binaural reaches of quality, yeah, skip this. Haha. It’s a massive nod to get your EP mixed and mastered by the guitarist of Nightmarer, Keith Merrow (MERROWSOUND Studios). And Merrow did an exceptional job.
The 5 tracks of clamorous persuasion on offer here serve a stupendous blend of addictive finery that urges you to commence marching from the south once more the second the EP draws to a close. Eden Yong delivers a commanding and grandstanding vocal execution that even matches the frenetic pace of closer “Party at Your Mom’s”, while perfectly enunciating on every mad-paced beat to make it sound easy. The guitars delve between Rust in Peace melodicity and the blistering string acrobatics of Seasons In The Abyss, and then keep things truly interesting by blending in some hard- and metalcore for spice.
It’s difficult to single out one track, but the drum performance by Dhirhaj Jeevan on “Fading Memory” is insanely satisfying. And then it just gets ramped up in “Cursed Illusions”. Comparable to a sonic form of strobe lighting on steroids, a kind of fragmentation of knowable experience made audible in a staccato dance with an absolutely demented asphalt coring machine.
When recording an EP, the goal should always be to leave the listener yearning for more, to be dumbfounded as to why there can’t be one more track. Dying Fate essentially augmented an aural feedback machine with Trail of Blood by cheat-coding the demo-to-EP loophole with the inclusion of their riotous 2020 single “Suffocated”. Besides, the triple-timed banger of a closer necessitates your coercion to replay the damned thing by hypnotically chant-screaming “LISTEN TO ME!” Show me a more fun, compelling, and riffs-packed-to-the-rafters EP from this year and I’ll probably still revert to these accursed illusions.
Dying Fate are:
Eden Yong – vocals
Criss Liew – guitar
Dhirhaj Jeevan – guitar (drums on EP)
Wayne Boo – bass
https://www.instagram.com/dyingfate_official/
https://www.facebook.com/DyingFateOfficial
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4hkYQKuCqvn1IiVe7c3yRw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9mJRQUQZC7yyoJwYp1VX0w
GAI 荄 (Vietnam/New Zealand) – SAME OLD STORY, GUTTER RAT, VIVE LA DÉCEPTION
Released May 10th, June 14th and August 2nd 2024 respectively
We finish off with a trio of videos by the Vietnamese beatdown slam band GAI, though they possibly coined a killer term in labelling themselves ‘nü death’. They have not released an album this year, nor an EP, though there are rumors of longform efforts next year. A band that went the Ulver route by releasing their music one video at a time. And with a vocalist that has this much to offer (link to a cover of Nile’s “Annihilation of the Wicked” with Rêvasseur’s nefarious conjurer of riffage, Satoshi Fukuda), the videos were more than worth a watch.
“Same Old Story” was a dangerous choice in song title, however they do not in fact tell that same tired old yarn. The vocalist channels his inner Fat of the Land at times, whereas the band goes into a fulminating post-slam aesthetic of ear-splitting intent. The melodic lulls are a welcome break from the caustic visceral violence that the instrumentation provides.
“Gutter Rat” opens with a cyberpunk fugue and minimalist rap that transitions into a charnel house chagrin of waking up in one’s coffin post-suicide. GAI are livid and they’re here to make sure you know that. It’s what happens when you ask a death metal vocalist to provide grunting duties on your slam beatdown tracks. Goddamn if that doesn’t sound like Korn’s self-titled in vocal form painted with a core-instrumented palette. With a percussive and stringed assertion like the forklift operator dropped a fucking pallet of concrete right on your skull.
The French lyrics aren’t there as a gimmick in “VIVE LA DÉCEPTION”; the vocalist from Mordor is fluent. If you’re going to press play on just one of the three, you won’t be (pun-intended) disappointed if it should be this one. At least for the vocal delivery; if the ‘reeee’ sound was a meme by now, GAI’s Liam Wright took it and made it art again.
Beatdown deathcore doesn’t sound like something I’d normally be jamming to but these alchemists of core breakdowns are stewing something jet-fueled, that when if ignited and surrounded with the bulk of megalopolis skyscraping engineering could melt steel beams and result in quaking implosions.
https://gaiband888.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@gaiband888
https://www.facebook.com/gaiband888
https://www.instagram.com/gaiband888/