Kuro Who The Helpless 7" Test Press GISM Gauze Confuse
$
36
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Description
Kuro "Who The Helpless" 7" Test Pressing, limited to ??? copies, label ???.
Had this since the early 90's. Some slight surface marks that don't affect play.
Kuro was a Japanese noisy punk band with over the top vocals. Overall, their sound was more influenced by Motörhead than Disorder, and on the definitive “Who the Helpless” EP, one of the sharpest and clearest hardcore recordings ever, Kuro mix “HNSNSN” sweeping riffage with over-the-top distorted vocals with edges like a sawblade (due to the pellucid recording quality, each tooth becomes tangible). Confuse and Kuro shared a label, Blue Jug—run by a general, rather than specifically punk, music magazine—and both hailed from Fukuoka in Southern Japan, so it strikes me as notable that Kuro’s noise-core was qualitatively different from Confuse’s. What helps it stand out is the way it took an influence from already-extreme bands and refashioned it into something new and even more extreme. In this case, noisiness is inextricable from that extremity, from its other-worldliness. One can only hazard a guess that because these bands hailed from an insignificant place, far from Tokyo or even Osaka, where Japanese hardcore was notoriously developing, they felt a compulsion to set themselves apart, attract attention, and make a name for themselves as doing something worthwhile and remarkable—to add that character to the music. There is also the possibility, as exemplified by Neos, Terveet Kädet, Shaggs, etc., that bands from locales far outside the mainstream’s (or mainstream underground’s) attention often manage to create music more interesting, more deranged, and more extreme than what is going on in the big cities, where the hope or possibility of “making it,” on however minor a scale, distorts priorities. Whatever Kuro’s motivations, these nutjobs certainly succeeded at creating music of enduring appeal, both in the high-speed noisy explosion and menacing distortion of the "Who The Helpless" EP.
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