Last Night a D-Beat Saved My Life (part 4): DESPERDICIO "¡Impulso De Destrucción!" Ep, 2011

There are a number of things that all d-beat bands agree upon, elements crucial to the genre without which you just cannot qualify as a proper believer. Things such as disliking bombs but still using them as a main topic. In a subgenre based on the imitation and the emulation of a strictly established formula, there is obviously very little room for originality. The stakes are elsewhere. D-beat in its most orthodox Discharge-loving form (I'm not talking about the legions of bands that are merely influenced by it) can be described as "a tribute made genre". It fundamentally relies on a web of signifieds and signifiers, the meaning and implications of which are understood and accepted explicitly and implicitly among a group of listeners sharing common knowledge. To an extent all subgenres revolve around these dynamics but none as much as d-beat. Referentiality is intrinsic to the "D", to its basis and its end.

It doesn't mean that bands cannot play with conventions. A band like Thisclose, the ultimate self-aware meta d-beat band, was a comment on this peculiar phenomenon and brought tasteful humour to obligatory bleak aesthetics (quite the tour de force, few bands were able to successfully blend fun and the D without falling in the trap of awkward metalhead jokes about "rock'n'roll life"). But the genre cannot be said to be prone to changeability as it values predictability and how accurate and intertextual a band manages to be (No Fucker being a great example). Basically, the covers of d-beat records, as part and parcel of the tribute and of the web of references, seldom lie to the punters. You must be able to spot a traditional, orthodox d-beat record and the church it belongs to from afar. It is all a matter of subtleties.

It would be dishonest to claim that Desperdicio tried to mislead the honest d-beat fan but I have to admit that I was not really expecting this style of D when I grabbed ¡Impulso De Destrucción!. I owned the Acceleration to Destruction compilation Ep (an oft overlooked, good little record) when I got this one but could not quite remember what they sounded like with precision. In my mind, judging from the cover, the error margin was but non-existent: Desperdicio must sound just like Destruccion. The Ep cover is a copy of their split Ep's with the equally raw Sida: it has the same setting, the same composition, the same style and the same intent to produce a naive but punk-as-fuck representation of d-beat as "hardcore radical" as the locals put it. The visual copy was so enormous that it made me curious of how close Desperdicio were to Destruccion, especially as a Japanese bandhaving a go at singing in Spanish. 

Such linguistic endeavours are not rare occurrences in the Japanese punk scene. Indeed, local bands aiming for a highly specific language-based hardcore genres would sometimes adopt the foreign language to make the music sound closer to the original (which is both daring, admirable and more than a little extravagant). Distorted käng fanatics Frigöra or Ferocious X sing in Swedish, Laukaus and Poikkeus in Finnish, Isterismo and Tantrum in Italian and Voco Protesta in Esperanto (and Corrupted sing in Spanish too of course). This trend is actually fascinating as it implies that languages make and create national genres as much as the music itself and the idea emphasizes the importance of linguistics (with the scansion, accentuation, tonalities, flow and so on) in punk. And well, Japanese punks are crazy enough to try to sing in a language they know nothing about. What about French then? 

And there you go, Desperdicio sing in Spanish and yet do not sound as much like Destruccion as you would expect by now. You would assume a d-beat band en Español to be all over classics like MG15 or Destruccion or Mobcharge but Desperdicio are a little more (or less) than that. There is a delightful simplicity and straight-forwardness in the riffing that do point to the Spaniards, but the enjoyable balance of distortion and aggression reminds me of Disaster or indeed Deadlock, a Japanese Disaster tribute band of sorts. We are not wandering in fast and filthy rabioso d-beat land here but the music pummels its way through a well-paced d-beat with an almost hypnotic quality. Beside the slower number "Pesadilla" that I don't really get, the three other songs are ideally predictable but some details point to that characteristic sense of epic songwriting that you find in a lot of traditional Japanese hardcore like the opening guitar lead on "Tomar un futuro", the Bristol-crasher drumming on "La ciudad portuaria pequeño" or on most of the energetic and mean backing chorus, although this may partly have to do with the heavy and highly signifying Japanese accent. The vocals can be seen as the Marmite effect in Desperdicio who are pretty easy to appreciate on the music alone. Recognizing the Spanish language straight away can be a little difficult because the flow and accent patterns are so different to Japanese but I don't dislike the band's choice as I think it does make one pay attention, which, I admit, is not necessarily a good thing in some cases. Beside the vocalist does not growl or yell like a nutter, he is of the shouting variety with a reverb (bands using the effect were still few in 2011) so that you can actually make out what he is on about (although you will have trouble actually understanding). On that level Desperdicio are more in line with a band like Final Bloodbath, even though the intent is different, and I can enjoy this type of vocal style for the duration of en Ep. It makes me think of a man lost at the top of a snowy mountain crying for help.  

It is not a masterpiece but it is a fun and well-executed humble d-beat Ep and the inspiring longevity of this clearly passionate and still active band who believe in their recipe is inspiring and other recent Japanese raw punk bands in Español like Stimulus, Consocio Sentencia and Povlacion owe as much to the national tradition of singing in foreign languages as to Desperdicio. ¡Impulso De Destrucción! was released on the emblematic label Overthrow Records who would also take care of their two subsequent Ep's.

Desperdicio + Destruccion = <3

     

Last Night a D-Beat Saved My Life (part 3): KYLMÄ SOTA "S/t" Lp, 2010

Kylmä Sota is a band I know I have seen twice but that I have absolutely no recollection of. They had been booked at the sadly defunct and almighty Play Fast or Don't festival in Czech in 2009 and even though I was indeed parading that year in Hradec Králové and despite always making a point to check out all the bands on the bill (I still do), I don't remember seeing them at all. They apparently did play in the afternoon but I was nowhere near pissed enough to use intoxication as an excuse. Maybe I should have been drunk. They also played in Paris in 2013 and I do remember well seeing the opening bands but my memories of the Finns are blank, a tragedy made even sadder by the fact that, by all accounts, they were great on stage.

The brain works in mysterious ways. Whereas I have crystal clear memories of abysmal bands making fools of themselves 20 years ago (the list includes some of my own bands), I am unable to remember some good bands I specially went to the gig to see. I try to pretend I do most of the time just to keep my notoriously high level of punk points safe. Sometimes repeating to others a story of how superb the band was, even if you can't remember fuck all, is enough to convince yourself that you actually do remember. You basically have to fill in the blanks and create a believable story based on more or less reliable outside reports and voilà. 

It has to be pointed out that Kylmä Sota - meaning "cold war" in Finnish - is a band that is still remembered in the grand collective punk psyche and indeed I see them as one of the best Finnish bands of the era and quite possibly my favourite one (which makes my memory loss even more frustrating). The band released a number of good records and lasted ten years, between 2005 and 2015, a very decent run at a time when bands' lifespans were growing shorter and Kylmä Sota's existence happened at a pivotal time. When they formed in the mid-00's, social media and youtube were not around and the punk scene, its inner workings and its representations were still very similar to those of the 90's. 10 years later, things were very different and punk and its codes had changed drastically. But the reason why Kylmä Sota are still mentioned in elders' discussions is that the band were precursors, unintentionally, as it is often the case, as they brought the uncompromising distorted d-beat style to Europe.

Kylmä Sota is the only band on my list that does not strictly abide by the holy d-beat scriptures. Don't get me wrong, they undeniably stood as a d-beat band. But they were not as orthodox or monomaniacal (mean people would also say as unoriginal) as the rest, although not by that much (according to these same mean people). I felt I had to include them because, beside being a great band, they brought something new or rather they brought something that already existed to a new place. From their humble beginning until the end, their use of a layered super fuzzy Japanese-style distortion applied to traditional Discharge-loving käng hardcore was just not done in Europe. Listening to this wonderful Lp - their strongest material in my opinion - I sometimes have the impression of vintage Disclose covering Diskonto and Dischange with a Finnish hardcore singer and this distinctive Suomi flow and sonorities. The riffs abide by the Swedish d-beat tradition but textures differ and if the aforementioned heroes from Kochi are obvious influences, classic Japanese noisepunk acts like Confuse and Gai or even crasher classics like Collapsed Society or Gloom. 

I am not forgetting Lebenden Toten who used that piercing Kyushu guitar distortion as early as 2003 but they did not partake in d-beat and very much remained in the (then not quite construed) noisepunk category (like the Wankys shortly after). By the start of the 2010's more and more bands worldwide would take to the "wall of noise" approach (Japan has always had its own dynamics so I'm not taking it into account here) but none were total d-beat bands like Kylmä Sota were as even the excellent Giftgasattack (other pioneers from Sweden) were not as Dis-oriented as the Turku punks. Kylmä Sota's music was very energetic, galloping and intense, with a definite punk edge emphasized by the fast-paced shouted, but not growled or harsh in any way vocals. In spite of it being a 10 song album, not the easiest format to pull for d-beat, the listener is grabbed by the throat from the start and never set free. Intensity-driven hardcore punk. It has to be pointed out that it was not the members' first (nor last) band as they had played in acts like Stumm, Selfish, Khatarina and others I am not really familiar with and right from the band's demo indeed, you can tell that they know what they are doing (when sober at least).

A very strong record that appealed to the d-beat fanatics, scandicore lovers and just old-school  hardcore audiences that at the time had not been overfed the "distortion and echoed vocals" hardcore trend. It was released on Feral Ward in 2010 so you know it's quality stuff. Do take a listen to the rest of their discography, you are going to be disnoised.

Kylmä Sota

Last Night a D-Beat Saved My Life (part 2): ATENTADO "Todo está oscuro" Ep, 2009

As I remember, hazily I have to admit, in my tiny 00's mind, a large part of the Spanish scene very much revolved around neocrust. It would be easy, tempting, to blame Ekkaia and, well, the state of thing had a lot to do with Ekkaia's emotional take on Tragedy's music. Was it always for the best? Fuck no. Interestingly there is a still an "emocrust" scene in Spain so that the style never really went away over there whatever one might think about it. But there was something else brewing in Barcelona and, although I only paid limited attention to it at the time - what with being busy keeping track of all the booming stenchcore bands - it proved to be highly influential, if not pivotal in a lot of respects.

Enter Invasion (renamed Destino Final in 2008) from Barcelona, something of a cult hardcore band whose influence, sonic, inventive and aesthetic, can still be felt to this day. My roommate at the time was a massive fan (he also overplayed Criminal Damage, No Hope For the Kids and Lebenden Toten, bands that truly left a mark on those years) and, if I was not as enthused as he was, I could get the appeal: mean, snotty, raw hardcore punk with a distinctly raging Spanish feel, both old-school and yet modern, or rather a modern vision of old-schoolness. It opened a lot of doors well beyond the Spanish confines (and certainly helped putting La Vida Es Un Mus on the punk map) and I see today's band Atentado as a spawn of that same spirit and creative intention. 

It was however not the only context the band grew from. A very raw primitive brand of Discharge-loving (noise not) music appeared in the early 00's whose most significant representatives were Destruccion. They are something of a legendary band these days (we all have our own self-created legends I suppose) for their famous song "Te amo d-beat" that everyone knows and loves or at least pretend to not to lose any punk point in my presence. At a time when Swedish discore had lost most of its contenders and when most bands were looking for a more polished, heavier, "metal" production (because neocrust), Destruccion, possibly as an answer, went in the exact opposite direction carrying the torch of the primal rabioso noisy hardcore sound that Spain was renowned for in the 80's. 

Destruccion was d-beat raw punk at its most literal. The most obvious reference was MG15, one of Europe's most convincing - and stripped to the bone - love declaration to Discharge from the 80's but the band more globally owed to the Spanish hardcore wave of Shit SA, Atack, Antidgmatikss or the unlistenable Delirium Tremens. Destruccion, and shortly after the even more minimal Firmeza 10, epitomised a primitive d-beat sound that suited perfectly the Spanish language and it is barely a surprise that many Spanish-speaking hardcore bands would be influenced by these bands, not necessarily their music but at the very least their concept. To be honest, I cannot say I was totally taken by Destruccion when it came out at the time but I was probably missing the point or just lacking in knowledge to really "get it". In the 90's there would be acts like Angry Mob and Mobcharge that worked faithfully on the d-beat (both of them had the Becerra brothers from Violent Headache at the helm), the former flirting with the "just-like-Discharge" philosophy while the latter were clearly very close to what we have to come to conceptualize as "d-beat raw punk" in the wake of Disclose and can be seen as modest precursors in that respect.  

So to summarize, Atentado grew from the same hardcore scene as Invasion (Guillem played in both bands), in terms of drive, in Barcelona, and went for that brand of 80's inspired d-beat raw punk en Español revived by Destruccion with a significant Disclose influence in terms of distortion and groove and a delicious Discharge-loving retro feel. Todo está oscuro is a solid short and sweet Ep that is often forgotten although I personally think that it is a significant example of d-beat raw punk done right. Old-school d-beat love done right with a chaotic vibe and a thought-out minimalism inherent to the national style. I love the raspy angry female vocals, a nice change because the strict d-beat genre proves to be mostly populated by males (Atentado's drummer is also a woman by the way), and the simplicity of the compositions (the band throw a brilliant early Discharge mid-pace number that had a terrific old-school vibe). If you are looking for a good illustration of what d-beat en español is all about, it is a perfect choice, but it is clearly a niche band that is unlikely to convert anyone to the D. A modern vision of old-schoolness as I wittily pointed out earlier.

This Ep was actually the first release of Discos Enfermos, now an established label expert in offering top notch raw punk (notably en español), as a co-release with Crust As Fuck Records. Atentado would release a full Lp in 2012 on La Vida Es Un Mus that was something of a disappointment as the Ep format proved to be far more suited to their primal d-beat approach. If you have five minutes to spare and you enjoy Discharge Todo está oscuro should delight you during your fag break. 

Todo esta oscuro