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Last Target

One Shot, One Kill (2005)
BYO Records

Reviewer Rating:

Contributed by: Jesse
(others by this writer | submit your own)

Published on April 20th 2007

A Japanese female vocalist formerly of Thug Murder who gruffly sings mostly in English over straight-up, highly polished street punk. What else do you want?

Japan has a problem with highly stylized subculture, with fashion taking the forefront of damn near everything. Rarely will you find a Japanese band that doesn't take their fashion sense as seriously as their music, which becomes a problem when the fashion becomes more important than the music. Because then, you have shitty music. But if you have a band that can get the music part down pretty good, who's going to complain about that perfectly spiked hair?

Clearly the focus is on Ryoko, who takes her singing into a rambling discourse with herself on a few tracks. Chord by chord, you could match this album to 3/4 of all street punk bands out there. But I can't say no to Japanese unintentional camp. Fuck, half the time I listen to Guitar Wolf, it's just so I can hear those accents trying to pronounce the words "roaring blood." The second half is so I can hear the added syllables to "jet-o generation."

This biddy was in a band called Thug Murder, which is badass. She kind of sounds like Brody Armstrong (or whatever her last name is), which isn't badass. I could go either way on this album.

But in conjunction with whatever the hell I proclaim to be my set of beliefs, I proclaim Last Target the Best Japanese Street Punk Release to See American Soil That Was Released in 2005 That I Didn't Get Around to Reviewing Until 2007. There are 13 songs. The last one's called "We're the One," which doesn't make sense. Another song's called "Don't Shine Your Boots with a Half-Baked Will," but in my work's iTunes it shows up as "Don't Skedhine Your Boots with a Half-Baked Will." I don't know why. You really shouldn't have read this review all the way until this sentence.

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SilentStorms (April 24, 2007)

Envy and Evylock put every other Japanese band to shame ... in my opinion. This sounds pretty shitty though.

Ianw (April 22, 2007)

Unholy Grave is the shit, as is Bathtub Shitter. I'm pretty sure in order to be in a Japanese grind band you have to be seriously and totally fucked up individual.

therhetoric (April 21, 2007)

So the Avengers had a song called " We Are the One," is the song on this album a cover of that?

feeeding5000 (April 20, 2007)

Ianw - you didn't mention Unholy Grave! Unholy Grave is amazingly amazing.

LMChc (April 20, 2007)

i saw this band in ithaca ny back in 2002

their guitarist stood on one of the PA speaker

he still didn't seem that tall

Anonymous (April 20, 2007)

obligatory Melt-Banana namedrop.

Anonymous (April 20, 2007)

Japanese bands can be fucking awesome. The more of them I hear, the more I want to find to listen to. Most of the time, it's extremely fun music.

Hi-Standard is perhaps my favorite Japanese band, but I've found a bunch of others recently, however it's rather difficult to get their music without paying shitloads of money.

I Excuse (songs from their first record sound a hell of a lot like Dillinger Four), Beat Crusaders, Nicotine, and FC5 are all good. I'm going to have to find a record shop and buy some stuff when I go to Japan this August. I'm definitely going to try to catch a punk show while I'm there. I'm sure it'll be insane.

-r3venge therapy