Artist: Crow Title: Last Chaos (reissue) Release: 1994 Label: Overthrow Records
1. Anarchy Chaos destruction 2. War 3. Crow 4. No Violence 5. Give Up All Hope 6. The Day of Annihilation 7. Last Chaos 8. Storms of Despair 9. Is This Fiction? 10. Hiroshima Nagasaki 11. For Fucking State 12. Give Peace a Chance 13. Air Attack 14. Last Chaos
So unless you've been living in a cave you know that in the aftermath of the apparent defeat of the draconian "SOPA" anti-piracy law here in the U.S. a bunch of file sharing sites got taken down, most notably Megaupload. Others, like Mediafire, began disabling access to a great number of files voluntarily. I won't go into what I think about all that (take a guess) but I will say that should anything happen to the files I've posted here I'm prepared to spend the time to repost them if needed.
I really don't like making meta-posts like this, but Zer over at Church of Zer really inspired me. All of his files got wiped. But he's back and now all his files are FLAC! I cannot commend him enough for sticking with it and using what surely was a discouraging moment to make what he posts even better. If you like anything I post here there's a very strong chance you'll love what he posts if you're not already aware of his blog. I don't know if I'll switch to FLAC, but I sure won't stop sharing.
I don't get many comments (or readers, do ho ho ho), so I'm going to use this chance to solicit some. If you want to request something then take a look at my list of records and let me know if there's anything you want me to rip.
I recently dropped a silly amount of money on records from Punk Alive Records (and you should to!). As I was browsing Matt's wares I came across this LP. I'm not exactly literate in Japanese so the only clue as to what it was was the H.G.Fact logo on the back. I tried to look it up but my 3G wasn't working at a reasonable speed so I decided to take a chance and buy it without knowing what I was getting. Not that it was a risky bet or anything, I can't think of a single release on H.G.Fact that I've heard and haven't at least liked a fair amount.
Now, I had a sneaking suspicion based on the artwork that it might be something Crow related. Some Crow records share the distinctively creepy style of line art found on the cover (I really wish I had a scanner big enough to do LP covers). Turns out I sorta was right, it's not a Crow record, but it is a Crow side-project. Kaiboushitsu means either Autopsy Room or Dissecting Room. I think Autopsy Room sounds cooler and Google image search turns up plenty of pictures of morgues and autopsy rooms so I think that's probably the more accurate translation. Google also turned up this blog post with a link to their first record. As luck would have it, this thing is super limited, 700 copies with no plans for a CD release!
So what does it sound like? Well, it kinda reminds me of Paintbox combined with Crow's other side-project Death Comes Along. Wailing vocals that sometimes border on carrying a tune but mostly sound like a agonized ghostly howl. The music walks a very fine line between being just downright gloomy and being standard Japanese punk from the 80's. The songs range from barely a minute to 16 and a half, with tempos to match. I think my favorite track is "谺", it's fast and is surprisingly catchy given the overall vibe of the rest of the record.
Here's a video of Kaiboushitsu playing this last December:
Artist: Crow
