I have to say, this might be the most psychotic thing that Thrill Jockey have ever released in a twenty-five-year, nigh on 500 release career. In a nutshell, Japan’s Endon sound like an electronic-infested sludgy rock band standing around a pit while their vocalist is burnt alive, and recording the results.
It is chaotic and more than a little harrowing, as vocalist Taichi Nagura visits the bowels of hell in the band’s attempts at entertaining a stunned populace. Endon have been on the Japanese extreme scene since around 2010 and as we know, the Japanese know a lot about extreme music; just take Merzbow and Painjerk, for example. I remember having my ears sluiced out by Painjerk many years ago in a cupboard in Bristol and coincidentally, Endon have released a split cassette with them, so that gives an indication of their direction of travel.
There are only five of them but boy, what a racket! Apparently, this is a soundtrack to an imaginary horror film where the boy of the title is born from a womb of noise and how the world and his interactions with it affect him. As far as I can tell, the vocals are not always words and if they are, they are of a register that I am unable to make out. Opener “Boy Meets Girl” starts with a bloody shriek of feedback, spilling over an ugly guitar riff that grumbles like a stuck bull. Taichi introduces himself with a searing howl of pain that is blood-curdling to say the least, and it just feels as though if he were on fire, the rest of the band are trying to extinguish the flames by beating him to death. It is quite a shocking opener, especially if you were expecting Tortoise, Glenn Jones or something like that.Taichi sounds as if he is being sprayed with acid on “Born Again”, while the constructed horror lurking in Taro Aiko and Etsuo Nagura‘s electronics wraps him up in razor wire and rolls him down a hill. I haven’t said much about the rhythm section, but they are certainly at large, fighting to keep the tracks on the rails. The bass is a dirty wall of scurf on “Not For You” and, along with the drums, drags Taichi through fields of broken glass at intervals through out the album. Revved up 1970s riffs appear on “Final Acting Out”, and there is a slow and swingy boogie-ish intro to penultimate track “Red Shoes” — but wherever the band goes, the welling up of a soul being torn apart is never far away. How he can keep up such a throat shredding cacophony is alarming in itself, but it is an extraordinary performance from the whole band.
They are supposed to be on the road over here in March, so if you like the idea of the new real theme to Hellraiser playing on your stereo, snap this up and then go and have your blood curdled for real.-Mr Olivetti-
