I have no idea how to pronounce Japanische Kampfhoerspiele and, frankly, I don’t really want to. It looks like someone has had a seizure at a keyboard. JK play a brand of music which isn’t particularly close to my heart: grindcore. Having said that, they’re not your regular back of shit that I come to expect from grind bands; these guys quite blatantly know what they’re doing.
Playing a mix of regular grind, meets Polysics with stronger-than-normal metal overtones, I get the feeling that there’s the intention here to aim this record at a slightly larger audience than your typical grind release sees. ‘der Mord fallt aus’ is a decent track if you ignore the burping breakdowns. Bizarrely, the opening 25 seconds sound exactly like a Turbonegro song – the name of which escapes me. ‘es tickt (Extrabreit)’ has some great guitar work thrown in – slightly more ‘rock’ riffs which bring a touch of variety.
Towards the entire of their record there are a couple of 5-minute medley-type affairs which shoot the record way off into the death metal horizon. Both completely miss the aggressively atmospheric mark they’re aiming for with some style and are far too long. ‘ich verabscheue…’ gets bonus points for including the lead from The Final Countdown in there and raises a welcome smile.
And that’s it, really. Despite the fact it tries hard, it’s not accessible enough to introduce someone to this sort of thing, and the converted will doubtless already have their opinions and be ready to tell me to get a grip in the comments. “Better than most grind bands” is about the best thing I can say about this.
Spud
www.myspace.com/jaka
www.myspace.com/silentstagnationrecords