Review: Shikabane “Living for Someone or Living for Myself” CD

This CD contains this wild Japanese hardcore band's 1998 12" EP remastered and re-released, as I assume it was out of print beforehand. Expect eight rather short tracks of furious hardcore/punk that ranges from midpaced and a little heavy to absurdly fast with shitloads of manic screaming. The grand total is just 16 minutes of insanity that never lets up a bit. Hell, opener "Self-Extinction" is practically all feedback, one killer midpaced chord progression, guitar noises, and completely random screaming - finally breaking into a concise and searing slab of hardcore after the first minute goes by! Some of the songs, such as "Nariwai", almost even flirt with grinding attacks when it comes to the force of the speeds. "Pessimistic" starts to slow things down again in large part, and "Collapsing???" also has more of a moderate pace musically, which helps things stand out (but the vocal patterns are still ripping, as are the often blasting drums); while "Shogyo" is a mere 52 seconds of furious hardcore that has more of an early- to mid-80's US sound happening. The title track closes and is by far the longest at nearly four minutes, including a minute-long intro that hints at lightly metallic chords before falling back on the blistering hardcore speeds - those slower passages are pretty brutal though, so I'm all for that. The recording is of course raw and sounds like it could've been recorded live in the studio, but it's effective so I don't care. Everything stays pretty much in line as far as the levels go, nothing's too noisy, etc. It's definitely not overly harsh or grating at all, so they've got a good feel considering their over the top style. The layout's all done in black and white, and aside from the illustration on the cover is made up entirely of collaged band photos and fucking awesome looking Japanese handwriting. Of course everything down to the song titles is presented in Japanese characters, so I can't read a damn word of it and have no idea what anything's about, but what can you do!? (I got the English translations of the song titles from the label's website.) This isn't the most memorable release I've heard from Japanese shores, but the relentless screaming vocals (which I fucking love) add a lot of character to the material that makes an impact. Not bad at all.