Society. Whatever we mean with this term, punks absolutely hate its conformity, its alienation, its cruelty. Sometimes, a teenage punk yelling "fuck society" signifies that he is proper pissed with his mum for not letting him wear massively oversized tartan bondage trousers at school, not the least sensible of advice in retrospect considering the aforementioned spotty but undeterred lad ended up in a wheelie bin the last time he did. True story that. For other, more experienced and articulate, punks, society has been shaped by years of cultural bigotry, religious teachings and class exploitation (kindly provided by capitalism or state socialism) and thus can be used as a relevant political synecdoche to make your brilliant anarchist propaganda more accessible to the masses (also known as "people who did not go to uni to study sociology"), asserting your intellectual superiority over your mates in the process. Society is very much like "the system" in punk's collective psyche, it can be difficult to actually define it but you know you have to resist, protest and fight it. I mean, that's what our shirts say so we, at the very least, should write a very angry post on Insta.
But society does suck of course. Menace thought it was insane, Special Duties violent, Chaotic Youth sad. The prophets Discharge were victims of society, Mau Maus its rejects, while some wondered if it was civilised indeed or inevitably headed towards the collapse. The band we are dealing with today thought that society was absurd - enough to literally call themselves "Absurd Society" - an idea that surely rings true everywhere but nowhere quite as strongly as in Japan, the country of absolute contrasts where extremely conventional salarymen can rub shoulders with people dressed exactly like the thugs in Clockwork Orange. Neither outfits look really comfortable actually.
Absurd Society were from Sapporo, up North, and were around from 2009 to 2013 which makes them part of the oldest bands that I will tackle in Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust. Of course the Japanese punk scene has been renowned for its amazing and unique crust bands for years and a specifically Japanese crust sound, with several connected but distinct branches and its own visual, musical, textual and referential tropes, has emerged so that even a casual listener of crust should be able to spot even an average specimen with relative ease. Beside they cemented the culture of the crust pants, a future candidate for inclusion in Unesco's intangible world heritage (intangible but very odoriferous it has to be pointed out).
AS were never the most popular name but I still see them as being solid and very representative of the typical Japanese crust sound. The band recorded two demos, a tape and then a cdr (well, it was the late 00's/early 10's you still could get away with cdr's and Japanese punks never had the snobbishness to give up the format) that would be reissued on a tape entitled Demo's Album in 2012 on Noise For Mobbish (!) from Malaysia. Just in case you had any doubt about the crustness of the band, the tape's visuals included the classic celtic knots, a crow, a crustier-than-thou font and a cartoonish crasher-styled drawing of the band. The first demo offered four songs of raw and crunchy metallic crust not far from crust masters SDS' early period or a more crustcore-oritented Effigy while the superior second one was a much more powerful and relentless effort of harsh thrashing stenchcrust not far from SDS' mid-90's sound (everything should be measured on an SDS scale methinks) seasoned with Defector's manic versatility and Stormcrow's apocalyptic cavemen stench before being drenched in distortion. Clearly not for the weak of the heart or posers.
I have no idea whether many people knew of those demos outside of Japan, or indeed outside of the close crust circle of the archipelago, as I only found out about the band with their 不条理な社会 Ep from 2013 and got to own the tape a few years after the band's demise. This late Ep has everything one is entitled to expect both from a metallic stenchcrust band and from a Japanese crust band in general. The sound is more compact and not as harsh as on the second demo but AS built from the same material. Classic '96/'98 SDS, early Effigy and 00's stenchcore songwriting like Cancer Spreading with a blownout crashercrust texture, aggressive evil vocals, punishing fast galloping crust and heavy filthy mid-paced moments and old-school thrashing crust riffs. The second song "Refusal of the change" is the real hit here with its magnificent metalcrust crescendo that would have a deadman mosh.
AS are not reinventing the wheel I for one do not believe that they will be hailed as "a classic band" in ten years. However it is a record that does a solid job at providing quality traditional Japanese stenchcore and, let's get really, we just cannot have enough of that right? It is a shame the band split up shortly after the release of the Ep in 2013 (though it was recorded in 2010 apparently) and I haven't been able to tell if the members kept the crust going in other bands. 不条理な社会 was released on Tokyo-based Strong Mind Japan, an active label responsible for records from acts such as Attack SS, System Fucker, Asmodeus and even fucking Disorder! The Ep looks brilliant with a cover artfully drawn by Mid from Deviated Instinct which pretty much insures you get the maximum amount of crust cred as well as class gas masks and skulls (the band used to have a DI-inspired logo too) although it does not visually look like typical Japanese crust artwork which is to the band's credit. This said there is still a neat red obi so that you cannot really mistake AS for a Polish band anyway.
This one is for the "stench metal crust" maniacs, the cream of the crop.
I have this and the demo tape. Good stuff - sean rude
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