Alright, I'm back. It would be something of an exaggeration to claim that I'm back "from the dead", although it would certainly make me sound really cool and I'd become the "Phoenix of Crust" which would definitely boost my online popularity and the status of Crustus Immortalis would probably increase engagement on the blog (whatever that means). The closest from the Hades I have been to since the last post was when a pizza delivery guy almost ran me over last week though. So no, I just had things to do - "IRL" as twats say - and lacked time to sit on my arse and write far too enthusiastic words about unlistenable music that few very devoted people love as much as I do. Am I happy to be back? Indeed, old bean, indeed. What I am trying to eventually achieve through Terminal Sound Nuisance is still not quite clear, beside offering something to read instead of a like button and a click culture, but I keep getting back to it anyway. They say that the journey is more important than the destination but then you often find on inspirational posters in people's bathrooms so it is difficult to take seriously. Quixotic I presume.
I won't be doing an actual series for once and will just write about recordings that I like or that I find interesting, the only common attributes being the sacrosanct tape format. The material difference between a demo tape released in 1992 and another one twenty years later is absolutely huge although they are both technically punk tapes. Once the most relevant cheap DIY format, ideal in its very nature for its convenience in order to share and spread your music, has the tape become something of a romantic punk shibboleth, a material tribute to a golden era, the format almost as important as the music, seemingly carrying a message by itself? Still, tapes have remained relatively cheap and you could argue that most people interested in our little niches have always owned, or rather never stopped owning, a tape player anyway so that the contemporary trendiness enjoyed by tapes do not matter that much. It must be different for the people who are too young to have lived in the original era of tapes. How do they see tapes? After all, it was never a relevant format to them, they were born in the mp3 era and I don't see many bands releasing cdr's either.
All this to say that I will be writing about tapes without any real unity of time and place even though I realize that, for all the criticism, I myself have been buying quite a lot of tapes in the past 10 years - more than ever before in fact - so that we will not go too far back in time in general (with delightful exceptions of course). And because I was dying to deal with something completely different to the last series about Japanese crust compilations, the first installment will be... a fucking "Raw-noise mangel attack" from Osaka. I picked it at random and yet I am back right where I stopped. I suppose it says a lot about my tape collection.
Lastsentence (the spelling possibly picked in order to differentiate themselves from the legions of preexisting Last Sentence) can be said to be one of those bands that fans of the subgenre are acquainted with and enjoy to a well balanced, reasonable extent, but that people with a casual liking to Osaka noize will very likely be totally oblivious to. Why bother with Lastsentence when you have Ferocious X? Well, precisely. If you cared to bother with Ferocious X then why not get an extra slice of goodness from the same crew? Think of Lastsentence as the third band of a "3 crasher mangel acts for the price of 2" hardcore punk deal. The band has been going for a while now, made up originally of members from Devastated Goes, Nationstate and Ferocious X (duh) with a first demo released in 2008. The band was a different animal at that time as they had a female singer (Oda from Nationstate) and the music was much more distorted, very close to Ferocious X actually (duh again) as their Beginning of the Closed Mind can attest. By 2011, the sound changed and guitar player Nabe took on vocal duties. Rawer and not as distorted was the guitar and the band focused more on the heritage of Frigöra and early Gloom, the space between them, rather than the "wall of noise" school. It was the right choice because not many bands go for that raw distorted Mob 47 vibe and the energy is contagious when it's done well in a pummeling mangel fashion.
On this 2017 recording, recorded at the infamous King Cobra Squat, a new guitar played got recruited but the sound recipe remains the same with songs that will fit right with your usual Frigöra-holidaying-in-Osaka morning routine. Lastsentence do well what they set out to, with gusto, and even if they are a humble Osaka "raw-noise mangel attack" and will not shatter the earth crust, it is not, by far, a bad spot to occupy. It is in fact a brilliant tradition to proudly represent. Since 2018 (I think?) the band has had Jacky Framtid on vocals (the drummer Aladdin actually joined Framtid earlier) and he does the job with obvious passion. The Solitude tape Ep was released on Doomed to Extinction Records, a label with more than a passing fondness for Japanese crusty hardcore that I warmly recommend if you like your punk obscure and noizy (the label had released a split between Lastsentence and Tokyo's Voco Protesta two years before that tape). This will appeal of course to the completists but the average Swedish hardcore fan will dig this too.
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