As a skater/punk kid in the upstate New York countryside during the ’80s, a big factor in educating my would-be musical taste was reading Thrasher when I could get my hands on a copy. (Note that this was in the last few years that Thrasher still devoted a lot of time to punk.)

There were a number of articles on Japanese thrash and hardcore bands, stuff that would only make it into the hands of affluent record collectors in NYC, not the hayseed outskirts of Albany. I was consuming a steady diet of early thrash, speed metal, crossover, and punk and hardcore cassettes.

Somewhere along the way, a friend gave me a cassette that had a few Lipcream songs on it, and this was the proof in the pudding — the ferocity of those songs outmatched a lot of American bands. They were stripped-down, forceful, and grinding. No solos, no over-the-top glammy vocals, just hardcore-by-the-numbers, but played with speed and acumen that really stood out.

Fast forward 20 years and the wonder that is the internet has unearthed a ton of rips of vinyl from those golden years where I missed out on everything. I’ve been listening to a lot of them lately and have compiled what will potentially be the first in a series of podcasts that capture the essence of Japanese crust-oriented punk, hardcore, d-beat, thrash, and assorted metal micro-genres.

Volume One is fairly pan-Japanese in scope.Iconoclast hail from Kanazawa, Hakuchi from Niigata, D.O.N.D.O.N., Lipcream, and Disprove from Tokyo, Effigy from Takamatsu, and Gudon from Hiroshima. This volume is fairly Gudon-heavy, as I just really like their music — aggressive, fast, growling hardcore played with nerd-like technical ability and recorded with detailed production.

File: mp3
Feed: .rss feed for iTunes etc.

Track List:

1. Gudon “Hikashibou (Stoic Violence)” (from the “Hikashibou” EP, 1986)

2. Lipcream “Top Fight” (from the Anglican Scrape Fight compilation 7″ flexi)

3. Iconoclast “Silence equals death” (from the “Who Does the Freedom and Equality Exist For?” 7″ EP, 1985)

4. Hakuchi “The tragedy to be expected” (from the “Gods Disturb” 7″, 1993)

5. Damnable Excite Zombies “Sect (Suck your soul)” (from the “Suck Your Soul 7”, 1992)

6. Bastard “Slick plot” from the “Controlled in the Frame” 7″ EP, 1989)

7. Disclose “Just Another Warsystem” (from the Disclose/World Burns to Death split 7″, 2004)

8. Disprove “Deep mist” (from self-titled 7″)

9. D.O.N.D.O.N. “Nuclear Reek” (from the “Commercialism” 7″, 1990)

10. Warhead Junk “Troops to Murder” (from the Warhead Junk/Gudon “Bloodsucking Freaks” split 7″, 1991)

11. Iconoclast “Warlike Nation” (from the Meaningful Consolidation” 2×7″ EP)

12. Mink Oil “Youth of Height” (from the “Smashing Odds Ness!!” 8″ compilation, 1988)

13. Gudon “Burst your Head” (from the “Hikashibou” EP, 1986)

14. Gudon “Egger” (from the “Howling Communication” EP, 1987)

15. Effigy “Mortalwar” (from the Effigy/Aparat split 7″, 2000)

16. Effigy “From Hell (Summer Devils)” (from the “From Hell” 7″ single, 2001)

17. Gudon “Power of Dusk” (from the “Howling Communication” EP, 1987)

Soundmark vocals by Sam Farfsing and Snowy D. Bear. There is a surprise bonus track in here, as well. First person to correctly identify it wins this. (Hint: It contains Cookie Monster versus Skexi vocal stylings.)