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| DRUM:KANLouisville2004 Waver Waver 
  Review by: Jesse See others by this writer ![[staff]](/images/icons/staffsticker.gif){kind=icon}
Waver-Waver Records (link) Only registered users can post comments 
 Published on July 2nd 2004
This band is Japanese. They sound like a four chord indie/pop/emo group from the US with a Japanese accent. The songs aren't badly written, but it's all written in English. I get easily annoyed with foreign bands learning English to conquer the U.S. market. The song titles are simple and boring. "I Know," "Alive In You," "Nothing Is Left In Me," "So Long," "Lasttime," "Crying More," this band read the book on how to be an indie-rock band, then re-read it, then asked the interpreter what the big words meant, then complied with every guideline it laid down. Please login or register to post comments. What are the benefits of having a Punknews.org account?
Drumkan is so fucking great.!! i love them.... But The Blue Hearts took a serious downward turn after their first album. Best Japanese band ever is the Blue Hearts. Probably because the states already has a billion bands like Eastern Youth... All I know is that they sellout gigantic outdoor venues. Hrm. I guess no one on the indies scene gives a shit about them and neither do the Oricon charts... Oh, well. My brother lives in Japan. Trust me; they're huge. Maybe not Modest Mouse huge, but they are really, really big in Japan. In the states, they couldn't sell out a show to save their soul. In Japan, you're happier than a pig in shit if you can get any sort of tickets. I've heard that a lot of Drum : Kan fans dislike this album a lot, if that helps at all... i wasn't saying anything about you not knowing a lot about japan. In the case of DRUM:KAN, all their songs are your basic silly love story. There's not really a driving point to get across, and they could have left their lyrics in Japanese. In the case of other bands, yes, maybe they DO have a point to get across. I hardly think Japanese crust thrash is going to out-sell American crust thrash and thus cause the downfall of the American punk scene. I mean, compare how many people listen to Disclose to the amount that listen to Discharge. Well, they're not really known in Japan, I mean, I hardly consider them Japanese music at all since they have a bigger following in America. The same goes for several bands (Malice Mizer, Dir en grey, Balzac, Nicotine). I think the english debate is really very subjective. If you really care about lyrics like many people have stated that they do, then it's probably going to bother you. However, for a lot of people, it's a lot more about the music than the lyrics, so it doesn't matter if you can't understand the language or if it's a mangled version of english that's being sung as long as the music is really good. Hell, there are some bands whose english is so bad that it's actually pretty charming (Mongol 800 comes to mind). Also, there are bands whose english is so good that you wouldn't really notice their country of origin (Nicotine, Elle Garden, Love Psychedelico, and many many others). The reason I don't like bands singing in English when they don't speak it is because it's just a step towards trying to corner the US market. Yes. Because if someone is into independent music from a specific country, they are going to know every band, even if they don't listen to that genre from that country all that much. YES! YOU WIN! I WILL GIVE YOU MY TITLE! IT WILL BE LIKE WRESTLING OR SO MUCH BALLZ! dude, you're best qualified to review independent japanese music, but you don't know who disclose is? "Exclaim is sort of like the Suicidal Tendencies meet Guitar Wolf's level of lo-fi/high distortion-ness" Look up Kill From The Heart sometime, probably the best overall site on oldschool hardcore, it features extensive overviews of every country's scenes. The Japanese section is small, but there weren't that many Japanese hardcore bands in the 80's. Also, Sound Pollution (Assuck's lable) distributes a lot of Japanese import thrashcore. BSD: where do you get all your japanese music? I have never seen any mention of these bands on any forums or on Soulseek. The guy didn't say they were. Read his comment more carefully :^D Haven't listened to this band yet but i just wanted to say that the band Skitsystem are from Sweden not Japan :) Hahahaha. RIGHT ON, BRO. Yes you can call my cel at 555-JROK if you ever need any more summaries. Wow, thanks for the sumamry BSD! It's good to know that when I need a summary of Japanese rock bands I know where to go! Disclose is basically d-beat punk rock, of course inspired by Discharge, with doomy gloomy political lyrics. Jesse, you should feel really honored to have someone like BSD dislike you with such a passion. It's a beautiful thing. Normally I can't get into non-english cd's as lyrics are the most important part of a punk/hardcore record for me. Stalin, in particular Stop Jap, is an exception to that general rule (only a couple more Japanese bands, Los Crudos and SkitSystem immediately come to mind also). There's something inexplicably special about it, I'd like to see someone who speaks Japanese review it, so go for it. I want to review Stop Jap! but i think the chance of anyone taking the time to download it is zero. In fact, that's why I haven't readlly done shit, I'm a pessimist. Mostly though, I know current indies stuff, like I haven't even heard of the first two bands you mentioned... I have been meaning to check out SOB though. I should do that... Get started with SDS, Disclose, and the somewhat popular Exclaim. Then hit the old stuff like Stalin and SOB. I think I might be the only person on this site with enough qualifications to actually write Japanese Indies reviews. Anyone want me to start doing that? Who cares if their song titles are boring? Foreign bands singing in English annoy you? So you must not like much non- US/UK rock, huh? That's pretty closeminded considering how much better other countries are at playing our music. |
