Robyn Writes

Fights and Fires / Thirty Six Strategies / The Best Revenge – Firefly, Worcester, 30/5/13

So. This gig. Three “hardcore” bands two storeys up above a moderately scummy side street in an inoffensive county town in the Midlands. On a school night. Grateful for it happening – not much happens in Worcester. But expectations were not excessive. By way of context, the venue – the Firefly – is a three-storey Georgian pile with a maze of rooms, a competition-class range of draft beers and a quirky top floor gig space like some kind of stylish boutique drawing room. The place does occasional open mic nights and puts on the odd band – but nothing regular or high visibility. The place keeps a fairly low profile – no website, minimal publicity outside its own walls, even their facetube page is a bit undercooked – but has the makings of an absolute gem of a venue. Seriously. And the place was, to be fair, packed out. £3 – Three quid in. Bargain. Quid a band. Not going to argue with that. And so. What evening’s entertainment did you get for this princely sum?

First on – The Best Revenge. Spunky skate punk. Coulda been watching Snuff or Jailcell Recipes in May 1991 at JB’s in Dudley with a copy of RAD magazine in the pocket of my Skull Skates pants. In my book, that’s a good thing. A very good thing. Proof of the strength of the formula that it still sounds as good and bright now as it ever did. Nice.

Next – Thirty Six Strategies. Melodic female-fronted hardcore. Now. Some proper heavy hitters with serious alt and punk pedigree in here – not least the fairly legendary punk vet Ian Glasper (google him and you’ll see what I mean). Female Vocalist exactly as it says on the promo material – Debbie Harry, but maybe a touch of the Shirley Manson. Great, great voice, great look, professional strength songs – although maybe could do with moving around a bit more. But what do I know. This can look undignified. I remember seeing a sweaty Brody Dalle over-enthusiastically rocking out to her music at the old Birmingham Academy (nee Hummingbird) some years back, and it was all a little embarrassing. In any case there’s a lot of the high-end proto-emo Dischord / Dag Nasty about this band. Rocking out just wouldn’t go. Leave that for Paramore or that shocking vehicle for that chick out of Gossip Girl. This band only formed last year, and are already getting coverage in the national music press – and are apparently supporting the venerable (and downright glorious) nomeansno when they play London in a week or two. And very, very damn good luck to them indeed.

And finally – headline act. Fights and Fires. Never heard of this lot before. Only afterwards did it click that all the merch on sale was theirs… Four chirpy kids in matching shirts and a bit of a speccy geek up front. Nice line in banter. Thinking this’ll be breezy pop punk at best. Then the geek made a noise. A righteous, proper hardcore noise.

Now. Bend me over, smack my arse and call me fucking Gabriel. I was not expecting THAT.

Energetic, tight as you like and with a sound like Trash Talk at their most melodic, with very Bronx-style vocals… and nothing wrong with that (damn… that geek, he’s good). Whilst the influences are undeniable, these boys have a real distinctive sound of their own – a line in heavy ultra-chugging breakdowns that the kids went wild for and that in its rock and roll-ishness is very now indeed.

Despite knowing a hell of a lot better I have to report that I found myself being sucked in to the moment and went a bit feral. And spent a good part of the remaining evening running around with teenaged boys on my head. Which they seemed to appreciate, anyway. That I found myself doing this with half of the previous band on (Thirty Six Strategies) – I definitely had my head in the bassist’s armpit, I remember that – all added to the experience. Awesome. The remarkable thing is that this band (Fights and Fires) have been going for 5 years and have a serious back catalogue. A back catalogue that you can pick up on Bandcamp in ten minutes for less than a packet and a half of fags – go on. Do it. They deserve you.

Apparently too they play all over Europe. Relentlessly. They are probably one our main current punk exports to the Eurozone. But they exist entirely beneath the surface in the town where they all grew up and (I guess) still live. That’s right. They and in fact all three bands are from this self-same, nondescript county town… Worcester. It also turns out – thanks to the magic of the interweb – that the record label they are signed to, Lockjaw Records also originated in… Worcester [editor’s note – while Lockjaw certainly began in Worcester, the label was taken into new ownership last year and is currently prospering elsewhere in the West Midlands].

It’s not a big place. Great place to bring up kids. Good amenities. Good motorway access to the rest of the country. Nice people, nice countryside. Gave the world Elgar. But thought to have absolutely no underground music scene. Nigel Kennedy used to live out in Malvern next door to an old colleague of mine. But that’s about the length of it. You’re pretty much right off the beaten touring track – anyone heading for this neck of the woods either goes to Birmingham or Bristol. So unless you like tribute bands, blues and harmless acoustic, received wisdom was: nothing happening. If this unexpected triple-headed act of smashing it was anything to go by, you never know whether something just might.

I understand that this is planned to be a monthly thing – last Thursday of the month. Next one is apparently going to be mathcore. MATHCORE? In this town? Needless to say, I’m going. Will let you know how it goes.

J-Pop Sunday – Bump Of Chicken

“Cowards Strike Back”. Apparently that’s the name this week’s band “Bump of Chicken” wanted for themselves but something was lost in the translation. I suppose we should pause for a moment and have a giggle at the Engrish.

…Eheheheee. “Bump.” “Chicken.” They’re funny words. Hehe.

Have we all got it out of our systems? Good! Let us begin!

Quick Guide:
Act Name: Bump Of Chicken (…Hehe.)
Line-up:

  • Motoo Fujiwara: Composer, Lyricist, Vocalist & Guitarist. He also drew the artwork for two of the band’s albums. Can’t eat spicy food.
  • Hiroaki Masukawa: Pessimistic Guitarist. Likes video games and anime.
  • Yoshifumi Naoi: Bassist who jokes that he falls ill exactly four times per year.
  • Hideo Masu: Drummer with great eyesight but claims he can’t write kanji very well.

Years Active: 1994 – Present
Genre: Mellow upbeat rock.
Kaito’s Choice Tracks: “Tentai Kansoku” (天体観測/Amateur Astronomy) (2001), “Karuma” (カルマ/Karma) (2005), “Arue” (アルエ/R.A) (1999)

First meeting in nursery school, the members of Bump of Chicken were classmates throughout their school years. First performing as a band together during a 9th grade school festival, Bump of Chicken is now one of Japan’s most popular rock acts, with all but two of their 14 singles failing to make it into the top ten of Japan’s Weekly Oricon charts.


I don’t trust the kid with the telescope.

Taken from the band’s third album “Jupiter”, “Tentai Kansoku” was the song that brought Bump of Chicken to the attention of the world – and coincidentally the first track of theirs I ever heard – so it’s definitely worth mentioning. Chilled, up-beat and rock-y, it sums up Bump of Chicken’s general sound quite well as well as being an enjoyable track to listen to.

Bump of Chicken often receive a lot of praise for their lyrics, as such the vocals tend to take up a lot of the focus in each of their songs. Sadly, my Japanese is somewhat limited – I can ask where the loo is and I can order food; that’s enough for me for now. Being unable to understand the majority of the lyrics means that some of their songs – while still enjoyable – end up sounding similar. Well, to my foreigner ears anyway. However “Karuma” seems to stand out, maybe it’s the guitar riff at the start? I’m not entirely sure why. Give it a listen and see what you think. Maybe I’m just going mad…


2005’s Karuma

“Arue” (Or “R.A.”) is my favourite song of Bump of Chicken’s. Yes, it’s another pleasant, chilled, rock anthem with lovely lyrics, but the reason it’s my favourite is for a much sillier reason. “Arue” was written as a tribute to Rei Ayanami, a character from the sci-fi anime franchise “Neon Genesis Evangelion”. Evangelion is one of my favourite anime franchises, with Rei being mai waifu my favourite character. This makes Bump of Chicken and I total bros for life. Or at least in my eyes. And that’s the main reason I like it.


Only in Japan would an emotional rock and roll tribute to a 2D girl reach number 2 in the charts…

Until next time!

More Bump of Chicken:
Official Site: http://www.bumpofchicken.com (Japanese)
Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bocjapan (Japanese)
Official Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BUMPOFCHICKENch

Dikembe – Chicago Bowls [EP]

Heading out of Gainsville, Florida – a fertile and artsy corner of the South East US that gave us Less than Jake, Against Me! and Tom Petty no less – and many more – this is the re-release of the debut EP from Dikembe, a slightly geeky but effortlessly credible four piece who have been kicking around the bandcamp space for a couple of years. Stylistically, I guess this is a kind of a mixed bag – floating between and above what some may call emo (clean vocals, chiming guitars, no chugging or screaming), old-school lo-fi (punk in evolutionary origin, but looser and more introspective – think Superchunk or Sebadoh), and post-hardcore (a generic term I’ve never quite got my head around, but that sees widespread usage for this sort of thing – i.e. Texas is the Reason – so I’ll just go with it).

There’s less than ten minutes of noise here, and no one track more than two and half minutes long. There’s no filler, no bar wasted – but somehow they don’t make it seem rushed at all. Full of personality, unobtrusive energy, sticky with anthemic chord structures, catchy and enduring little lyrical hooks, and instrumentally right tight as you like – this is densely packed with stuff for the purist to properly love. Whatever you go for, I reckon this deserves its audience. And I reckon they might get it too – I hear nice things being said about them right across the alt-music press right now.

One of the most endearing things about this – as well as being really rather good – is the understated and esoteric sense of humour. And if it was one thing I never took to about the works of Mascis and Malkmus (who I’m aching to compare this to although that would be to bracket this too tightly) it was their inability to laugh at themselves. The song titles are apparently all corruptions of the names of famous NBA players, fiddled about with to sound like cryptic crossword clues in Stoner magazine – or something like that. Now, this could be really arch and annoying. A marker of the strength and of this is that these guys make this almost Big Lebowski style silliness basically charming.

Quality release from a band of self-evident quality and potential. Bring it on boys. Let’s see what you got next.

4 out of 5 high fives!

Shout out: New letlive. album out this July!!

Exciting stuff – the new letlive. album is on the horizon! The Blackest Beautiful will be released on 8th July and their new song, ‘Banshee (Ghost Fame)’ is available now.

Jason Aalon Butler has this to say about the track – “This song explores the tragic humor in entertainment as an industry as opposed to an art. Sonically this track was a pretty suitable representation of the record’s sonic spectrum. We also employed some elements of groove that we have always been fans of.”

You can pre-order the record from the band’s store and if you do, you’ll get this track to download RIGHT NOW. It’s the start of a new era, ladies and gentlemen. Get ready for letlive.

Only Fumes And Corpses – Selfish Act II [EP]

Still existing resolutely under the radar after a good few years of touring and recording, Only Fumes And Corpses fly in the face of convention with their latest musical “fuck you” – Selfish Act II. The record sees the Irish punks challenging not just their own musical abilities and powers of song construction but their listener’s expectations by releasing a single seventeen minute track. The release sees the band striving for longevity in their song writing, the polar opposite to 2012’s Selfish Act I which contained thirteen tracks in even fewer minutes and encompassed a staggering array of disparate elements into a selection of rollicking breakneck hardcore punk tunes. It’s refreshing and encouraging to see a band who have yet to fully assert themselves within the scene challenging themselves and looking upon compromise as a declaration of weakness; utilising unorthodoxy as an integral part of the group’s outlook and refusing to bow down to whatever pithy fad is currently being nurtured by the fickle hype machine.

Selfish Act II is all raging hardcore, underpinned by some rather ruthless drumwork with sticksman Benny deserving upmost credit for managing to keep his arms attached to his body through repeated flurries of devious fills and blastbeat workouts – cruelly denying himself any respite for the entire duration of the track. Reigning in the genre spanning intuitions of Selfish Act I, the group’s musical vision casts a smaller net than its predecessor whilst upping the intensity and brutal nature of their vast array of riffs. For a seventeen minute song, Only Fumes And Corpses aren’t keen on simply filling out time through any ambience or atmospheric interludes as would most bands undertaking a song whose length lays within the realms of prog rock territory. But once the obligatory opening wall of feedback has pricked up ours ears, the band kick into a furious demonstration of impossibly fast hardcore. The anger is still there for all to see – vocalist Momme quite clearly monumentally pissed-off like any true punk should be in these worrisome contemporary times. He rails gruffly against societal ills through thinly veiled analogies covered in a generous layer of caustic bile that will make you sympathise with his long suffering vocal chords.

A level of frantic immediacy is maintained throughout much of the self-titled track, speed injected into their playing whenever the pace begins to slack – everything careering towards cataclysm via a brief two-step friendly excerpt complete with cheeky pinch squeal for good measure. The closing minutes foreground the guitarist’s abilities. Fingers dance across the frets, apparently never keen to linger on a single chord for more than a second, instead digressing into spasmodic tremolo-picked twenty-notes-per-second runs. It’s scrappy as hell, but a million times more listenable than any Dragonforce fret wankery.

It’s disorientating at first – seventeen minutes of continuous screaming and intense hardcore clattering appears a little hard to digest. After a few listens however, structure becomes tangible and there’s a realisation that there may even exist a deceptive chorus amongst all the hell-bent ferocity. Together with the first part of Only Fumes And Corpses Selfish Act series, the Irish punks have more than proved their competence and much needed desire to suggest alternatives to homogenous hardcore and its tired clichés. If justice were always to prevail, Selfish Act II should be the release that lifts Only Fumes And Corpses from obscurity and into the hearts and minds of the multitude of pissed-off kids across the country.

4 out of 5 high fives!