Nanahara Shuya- ‘Switchblades at Dawn’ (2008)

Here’s a bit of a navel-gazing post. Since I’m linking to other peoples’ records, I thought I might as well upload some of my own for sharing. So back home in Hong Kong I used to play in a two-piece thrash/stoner/punk band with keyboards called Nanahara Shuya. Looking back on it now, those were awesome times. We must have recorded close to 100 songs on our crappy 8-track tape player, using shitty mikes (at one point we were down to a CB radio mike) and released a few of them as full-lengths and splits ourselves. We also played a lot of gigs in our time together, back when the metal scene in HK especially was looking strong, and played with some pretty diverse range of bands, from Birchville Cat Motel to RAMBO.

This is a collection of songs that we recorded at least two years ago, but never managed to put out ourselves- but I really like them so I’m sorta ‘releasing’ it here under the name ‘Switchblades at Dawn’.  Some of the tracks have been individually released before, ‘Alem’ was on an anti-fascist comp out of Russia, ‘Night of the Castronauts’ was on an anarchist comp from the Philippines, and ‘Crippling Fear…’ was on a split with another HK band called Dying Process. But collecting them all in one place seemed like a good idea, and I also think they work well as an album.

As with pretty much all our stuff, the recording is pretty ‘DIY-‘, ‘kvlt-‘ ‘insert-adjective-for-shitty-recording’ sounding, though I think this is the best it has ever sounded. Yep, I’m very proud of this one.

Earlier this year when I was visiting back home I ran into my Shuya bandmate in a bar, and we ended up playing an impromptu ‘reunion’ set, playing together for the first time in a couple of years. Ah, the memories…

Nanahara Shuya- ‘Switchblades at Dawn’ (2008) via MediaFire

No Rest For The Dead- ‘The End of Space’ (2000)

I first heard of the Japanese “stoner-grind” band No Rest For The Dead when I was living in Philadelphia. My buddy Pedro had organized a show for them in York, PA of all places, and had brought in a stack of their CDs which he was encouraging people to check out. As far as I can tell, The End of Space is their one and only album, and the band seems to have broken up some time ago. But I still have fond memories of Pedro and my time in Philadelphia every time I put it on.

As their genre suggests, this album is a schizophrenic mix of grindcore with heavy stoner rock, psychadelic, and even funk influences… but no hint of hipster irony here, No Rest For The Dead seem completely serious about and into all the different genres they play. Combine that seriousness with an album cover that has camels marching in space, song titles like Breed The Freak, and ridiculous lyrics like “I am a sheep and a clone, my dick reeking with blood”, and this band pretty much comes off as insane. The final track Any Green Here is almost an hour long stoner jam, so there’s plenty of listening time too… check it out!

No Rest For The Dead – ‘The End of Space’ (2000) (via MediaFire)