Rashōmon

Reviews

Rashōmon Nin-Gen 12″

RASHŌMON is Japanese for “dispute.” And there is no “dispute” that this record is a grade-A banger. Of course, we are dealing with Japanese-influenced hardcore right here. A well-oiled, chaotic machine of vicious melodious hardcore à la BASTARD but with the crudeness of a Dischord band (they are from Washington DC). They don’t sound like a rip-off band as much as putting their own twist on the genre, and it sounds more abstract than your average Japanese-influenced band. An excellent innovation in the genre and it will not disappoint. Or maybe they were named after the Akira Kurosawa flick?

Rashōmon 病原菌X (Pathogen X) 12″

I certainly love guitar leads and frenzied hardcore, so DC’s RASHŌMON speaks my language. Those of us asking for more since their slick demo tape a couple years back have gotten as good of an answer as we could’ve hoped for. Dual riffs are blissful and radiant, sometimes swerving toward discordant and reminding me of ARTICLES OF FAITH. But this could just as easily been plucked from the Bloodsucker roster, as there is a definitive Japanese hardcore influence, made most obviously apparent by the Japanese vocalist. The warm, dry production highlights the glorious guitar and vocals, but the serious drum mastery deserves to not go unnoticed. Innovative drum fills and transitions are easter eggs scattered all throughout these six tracks. I’m sorry, but I just don’t care about the novel etching on the flipside of the disc, but I can simply ignore that in this case because the record is so damn great!