What’s this? Another review so early? Yeah I know. I seldom ever do this but I’ve had a good run of awesome music lately and I figured since there will be yet another long absence before anything new is written and since there’s fuck all to do in Dural except play music, Half Life 2 and watch Arrested Development all day when I’m not working and suppose to be studying I may as well write some more reviews.
So this one is an interesting one, because I’m almost certain that there is not a single review of this 7” anywhere, if not at least one that is written in English.
Dudman is a hardcore band hailing from Japan, good luck finding any information about them on the internette. I only heard of them when I saw them on the 17
th of September at Blackwire Records, which admittedly I only went to because Internal Rot and Doubled Over was playing (if you love grind and you missed out on this gig, you definitely missed out alright) and I have to say they left an amazing impression on me! Maybe its because I am a complete sucker for any hardcore band that sounds like they can fill the support slot for a Das Oath gig, but Dudman sounded so relentless and energetic, something that a lot of western hardcore bands fail to grasp. Punters that night didn’t knew any of their turbo-punk-charged material and yet they were jumping off the walls, including myself, and the whole band itself had a fun-tastic aura about them, especially when the vocalist Shuugo (names from the liner notes) was doing his rounds of the lamented “buy our merch” segment of the gig in gleefully broken english.
After seeing Dudman, I’ve decided to reinstate my mission to listen and watch as many non-western foreign bands as possible. Sure I know the big ones like Boris, Melt-Banana, Boredoms (all which the gigs were over 18 when they came over >_<) and of course some of the legends like G.I.S.M, Fuck On The Beach and Gerigeogegege aswell as the countless irritatingly addictive pop as fuck theme songs of every anime that i've ever watch (especially the theme songs of certain works from Gainax and Studio Ghilbi…TO-TO-ROOOOO) but so far I can only count all the obscure Asian bands I listen to on one hand. Musicians over there have so much to offer, and yet hardly anyone here is paying attention (except Tenzenmenn, who is a boss at this sort of stuff so ima go hassle him for some more bands) and basically im going to broaden my horizons outside the western world, cause hell, if every band over there is just as awesome as Dudman was, then I am truly missing out.
Okay enough of that, onto the 7”.
This 7” is released under the Denied A Custom label, and they made that very VERY clear…
Lets talk about self-control for a second here, now this is not a point of criticism, but when I went home to open up Dudman’s 7”, I was not prepared for this;
HOLY CRAP! what’s up with that? Is this normal in Japan?...okay well surely I wouldn’t be complaining (I’m not but onwards) if these were all stickers..
Ummm, these are the only stickers here, real tiny ones too, that and there was another sticker on the plastic sleeve that I carefully peeled off and placed on my guitar.
Well, there are some pretty sweet stuff in here, that paper shuriken is neat, and these couple of amusing notes in broken English is cool aswell.
It also came with the main Japanese lyrics aswell as an English translation and supposedly another set written in kanji or something, not sure. It even has a small little bio of the band and the label. Not many labels do that so thats kinda cool i suppose.
But what am I going to do with these? I suppose I should just take the incentive of checking out these bands since theres only like 7 of them on 20 pieces of paper before cutting out the drawings and the band logos and gluing them on a collage. Like I said its not a point of critisim, but I certainty did not expect this at all, I supposed it’s the labels way of advertising, which has no doubt worked.
Onto the tunes now…and this is debatable, but I don’t think there is such thing as bad hardcore anymore, there is amazingly awesome and amazingly dull, but it’s difficult to point out what makes a hardcore band great and what doesn’t….what? Buried In Verona? They ain’t hardcore and the Bee Gees are more br000talz then those wankers..okay i’m getting off topic here. I guess you can only evaluate hardcore by their motivation, individuality, their riffs of course, possibly lyrical themes (which in my books is not a massive priority, though I don’t care much for childish lyrics either), their production, their….zazz…..and overall relevance really, there is almost no way of doing hardcore wrong if you are doing it right in the first place, just whenever you hold your own as either a unique or a mediocre band.
In Dudman’s case, they stand out as much as a explosive monster truck crashing through your ear doors before setting them on fire! It’s the blistering sound wave assault that can make Trash Talk blush. Full on all the way, no useless melodic bits or feedback drones (which I do enjoy, but has been a bit tedious as of late), does have one movie sample, but its this cool samurai thing so yeah, totally cool.
Even if there is not a single original riff left in existence (since Slayer has already thought of it) they are nicely constructed and arranged, never falling behind and always impacting, the vocals are also suit remarkably here, coarse and stunning, like they always should be. The production is harsh but not in a barely listenable one microphone way, in the proper “We are all going to kick down your speakers and punch you in the neck full on yeah” sort of way, which is the right way in my ears.
Lyrically its could’ve been typical hardcore stuff. HC represent, wondering about life, not being a square etc etc, and it is, but if I had to grade, it’s above-average from the norm, there are some real gold string of words here. Allow me to enlighten:
Like A Violent Swordsman
"Whisy-washy daily life. Half-way measures. You should think about your way of dying. Life and Death are opposite sides of the same coin. You live without any fixed aim, or you live for nothing but death? We won’t share our fate with you. While there is life, there is hope."*
Thrash Selfishit” (Exterminate your fuckin’ selfish)
"You will take care of yourself so much? Were you so angry with them for their making fool of you? You steal various things from some places so that you can assert yourself in life. You are as good as dead when you accomplished it."*
Usually not the sort of lyrics you expect from a hardcore band as ruthless sounding as Dudman, but these are some insightful lyrics, simple worded, but insightful. Most of their other songs follow along pretty well, sometimes they do get a bit imaginary, but nothing too stupendous. Of course they don’t speak these in English so I reckon that makes it better…and yes just to remind you that these are translated lyrics so of course it’s not grammatically correct, let’s see you write lyrics in another language!
The most important thing here is that it keeps you hooked all the way, it’s the kind of hardcore that motivates me to shoulder tackles down some buildings, juggle babies around and swing myself off a ceiling fan and land into a dumpster bin full of glass shards, rolling down a steep hill towards the oncoming propane truck. Dudman has created an identity and a slew of fast-packed punch-down tunes that sadly had they originated from a first world country, they would be more known. I’m not entirety sure why they chose to tour to Australia, but I’m glad they did. Goes to show that hardcore, and music overall isn’t dead, it just migrated overseas.
I assume that none of you know Dudman so this is for fans of Straightjacket Nation, Das Oath, Limp Wrist, Coke Bust, Fuck On The Beach and pretty much any liberating thrashcore with zero to minimal palm muting, drums at a BPM of one hundred million and a vocalist that sounds like he has to record his words quickly before going back into his asylum cell.
*NOTE: These are surely copyrighted lyrics, regardless don’t be a shit cunt and plagiarize them, capiche?
Actually before i go, please read how awesome this is:
I dont; think better words have been spoken, especially the last line, i too would rather fail in originality than to succeed in imitation!
