People do silly things. Like that one time, years ago, when a school friend, out of the blue as we had lost touch, offered me to deejay, for just an hour, at her birthday party. I have no idea what she was actually thinking I was going to do. She probably just supposed that, since I have always had a lot of records at home and was involved in a radio show, I must have known my shit when it came to music and been familiar with songs that have people dance flirtatiously but still feel sophisticated about it. Obviously I agreed to the task and brought with me some bands that, I thought, were listenable or at least bearable enough for an audience that, if I'm being honest, was totally unprepared and for whom Rage Against the Pumpkin was the most extreme band they had ever heard. I did get to play Chaos UK, Discharge and was about to unleash some Sacrilege when I was, understandably, cut short as the room had quickly emptied. For a laugh I had planned to play some Asphyxia as a mercy stroke or a coup de grâce. I was never invited again. Oh well. The gig did come with free beer.
I would argue that Asphyxia is not a band you would get into without context. A novice cannot listen to the demo, if they can make it to the end that it, and be positively amazed. If you are clueless about the historical significance of the band, about its birthplace and about the convergence of influences it represents then most of it will be lost on you. Not that the recording is fatally unenjoyable without background but it's not unlike watching a wrestling match with a Canadian wrestler doing a sharpshooter while being totally oblivious of Bret Hart's work. It remains a good move but it doesn't really meaning anything. Still a great submission move though. Do try it at home.
Although this Ep was released in 2002, the recording is actually a good decade older since Asphyxia were only around between 1991 and 1993. At that time the now legendary Osaka crust scene - that I have previously discussed in ancient times - was very much in its infancy, if not in an embryonic form. Indeed the band that is generally recognized as the inventor of what will be referred to as the Osaka crust sound was still very young: Gloom. With Gloom's two tapes, Self-Interest and The End, being released 1991, Asphyxia were clear contemporaries and should be considered as emerging from the same filthy bowl of soup. In actual facts, the band included a former Gloom drummer, Honda, cementing the connection between both bands. On vocals was Jackie Crust War, now famously delivering scorching käng riffs in Framtid, and Asphyxia was, I believe, his first band - the first that at least made it to a studio anyway - and only about 20-30 copies of the demo tape were ever made, distributed for free at gigs. But if a "studio" was involved, do not expect anything fancy: even for fans of the Osaka raw punk style, the Wardrugs demo will deter more than a few audiophiles, leaving only the true noize warriors standing, deafened and proud.
Asphyxia played raw (duh) and fast raw hardcore punk with a significant UK influence (Jhonio mentions that the band was equally inspired by the nascent Squat or Rot NYC scene but I personally don't really hear it). The rough production - or lack of any thereof - as well as the speed and riffs do point out to no-frills, all-out hardcore bands like Asylum, Dirge and especially Plasmid. Arguably UKHC would be the driving force on these seven songs with (very) obvious nods to Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror too although Asphyxia do not cross the crust and grind borders - the vocals remaining rather clear and spiky. Early Antisect, Anti-System and Warwound would certainly have received invites as well while Iconoclast and early Final Conflict definitely got a friendly phone call. But at the end of the day, Asphyxia were a typical and representative example of what a late 80's anarcho-infused raw hardcore band was supposed to sound like when played by genuine lovers of raw hardcore and I think the best synchronic parallel would be Private Jesus Detector. I would locate the two bands, as far away as they geographically were, on the same punk scale in terms of influences and intention (even if they don't sound that much alike at the end of the crust day). And the fact that Osaka crusties have been loving the Belgians is well-known and has been proven by many academics through out the years.
At the end of the day, this Ep must be seen as a significant piece of Punkstory more than an obscure overlooked masterpiece of Japanese raw punk. A part of the early Final Noise Attack scene (they played one of the first, if not the first, gigs), Asphyxia never had that Gloom effect that makes one goes mental at the ferocity of the music, probably because they didn't have the time, never really achieved that furiousness and split up before they reached their full potential (a common story it seems). However if you claim to be into Japanese crust and are intent on exhibiting Gloom patches online, knowing Asphyxia comes as compulsory if you want to avoid being called out as a poser.
Following the band's downfall, guitar player Okamoto formed Defiance with members of Gloom, Gun formed Despair and Jackie joined Condemned (I totally forgot I knew this, that's the stuff of trivia glory), all three bands appearing on the mythical Final Noise Attack compilation Ep in 1994. As I said, History in the making.
Do I need to mention that Wardrugs was released on Crust War Records?
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