Dawning of an Era: Tokyo's Grave New World and When Death Came Along
Article written by April
Clockwise from top left: Bondage, Crow, Kenji, Hitoshi
Active for four years, Tokyo's Grave New World is the unfamiliar work of familiar faces. The group's lone album, 1992's experimental crust epic "The Last Sanctuary," is uncommonly challenging and immune to easy comparisons. The band took the post-apocalyptic crust blueprints of Amebix, cut them into jagged pieces, tie-dyed them in a Jonestown punchbowl, and made a paper mache bust of Maurizio Bianchi. It's the shockingly unexpected output from a supergroup that rose from the '80s hardcore ashes of Asbestos, Crow, Last Bomb, and Crisis Kill. The band set out with the explicit goal of defying expectations, and has suffered a legacy of relative obscurity as the result.
Following the contentious dissolution of Tokyo crusties Asbestos the month prior, Grave New World was formed in November of 1989 by drummer Kenji (Asbestos), visual kei guitarist Hitoshi (Crisis Kill), and an ex-Asbestos bassist (possibly Matsu). Hitoshi was without a band when he met up with the ex-Asbestos members, having just departed a brief, ill-fated resurrection of Systematic Death. Considering the direction their sound ultimately took, the group surprisingly began as a relatively straightforward Discore band. The first impetus of change came with the addition of Crow, who relocated to Tokyo in 1990 to join the band. After the dissolution of his namesake, Osakan band the year prior, Crow continued experimenting with noise at Namba Bears (the legendary venue owned by Boredom's Seiichi Yamamoto) and began searching for other vocal opportunities. Yoshikawa (DON DON, Nouzui Records), who had previously bootlegged a Crow song on a Nouzui compilation tape, called Crow and suggested he come to Tokyo to audition for a few bands. A project with DON DON's drummer didn't work out, but the newly-formed Grave New World did.
Final performance of Asbestos' initial era, October 14th, 1989 at Shimokita Yaneura. Coretic Perdition Gigs were organized by vocalist Kan (Asbestos, Urgesnake)
Shortly after, the band's original bassist decided to leave and a search began to replace him. Ultimately, an offhand conversation at a gig led to Crow recruiting Bondage (former vocalist of Last Bomb) to play bass. Although a competent acoustic guitar player, Bondage had actually never played bass before deciding to join the group. With the addition of Crow and Bondage, the band abandoned Discore and made a deliberate decision to shed the traditional expressions of hardcore and get real freaky with it. When Bondage departed Last Bomb a few years prior, that group morphed into Final Bombs and actually doubled down on Discore. Perhaps the parallel is no coincidence.
If for some reason you need an example of how Japanese punks do it differently, the band spent a year practicing before playing a single secret show to test the water. That secret first show, organized by the late vocalist Kentatsu (aka Big-John of Crisis Kill and Discontent), took place in Fujisawa on November 4th, 1990. Two months later, the band made its formal debut at one of Yoshikawa's Best Run Fast gigs at Koenji 20000V. The lineup included Me♀ss, Assfort, Macrofarge, and DON DON, and the band distributed a lyric sheet to the audience. A gig review of the show appeared in issue #63 of Doll Magazine--a highly influential and sadly defunct punk zine that ran for three decades. The writer observed that the audience was screaming about "freedom," but trapped within the conventions of punk. In the same magazine issue, Grave New World wrote something of a manifesto that explained they were aiming to embody the hardcore spirit without its traditional trappings and form. Unusually, the band also expressed an openness to play with any type of band, regardless of genre.
Grave New World's sole release, "The Last Sanctuary," was recorded in September of '91 at Shinjuku Antiknock and released by Never Again Records on vinyl and CD the following year. Run by Yoshikawa, the short-lived label was a subsidiary of Media Capsule Records and the record store chain UK Edison. The label also holds a special place in hardcore history for releasing some of Gloom's earliest recordings on the "Fuck The System" omnibus. Following in the unfortunate footsteps of Asbestos' "The Final Solution...." (200 copies) and Crow's "Last Chaos" (approx. 200 copies), the Grave New World LP received a tragically low press run and has since become a collector's nightmare. In the words of Crow, audiences at the time were mostly "indifferent" and the small press run reflected the low demand.
With the exception of the album's opening song, Crow largely ditched Discharge's minimalistic, sloganeering lyrics (which he used liberally in his namesake band) in favor of the bleak, illustrative style of Amebix. The album follows a loose narrative, describing a dark, post-apocalyptic world illuminated only by the bombs that rain from above. Whereas Amebix often slipped small shards of hope into their music, Grave New World offers none. Inspired by Cal's falsetto vocals on Discharge's "Grave New World," Diamanda Galás, and his time in Osaka's '80s noise scene, Crow improvised his howling vocals differently at every live performance. His noise work permeates the album, making the dawn of the digital age sound like a step through the gates of hell. At points, the noise seemingly acts to indict technology for its role in humanity's destruction. The cybernetic skulls that adorn the cover of Discharge's "Massacre Divine" may as well be the spiritual godparents to "The Last Sanctuary."
Musically, the album takes a maximalist approach to thinly-sliced cuts of Amebix. Often taking a supporting role, distorted vocals act as a textural layer over the repetitive, thrashing NWOBHM riffage--a lesson learned from the repetitive, rhythmic foundations of songs like "Winter" and "Control." The slow builds of "The Darkest Hour" and "Sunshine Ward" seemingly spent a sloppy night together and gave birth to the record's titular track, which spends most of its 12 minutes in a post-apocalyptic crescendo. "Apocalypse," the album's wailing fifth song, is like macrodosing on the intro to "The Moor." If paintings worked like seashells, you'd hear the five minute track when you hold a Hieronymus Bosch painting up to your ear. The album's opener, "Never Ending Winter," may as well be the field recording of a nuclear plant melting down in a radioactive tornado. But why stop there? Inspired by krautrock and such classic Japanese psych as The Golden Cups, Jacks, and Flower Travellin' Band, the album is breaded and deep-fried in a liquified wah wah pedal. At one point, there's even a flamenco-esque guitar interlude. Deal with it.
Much of Hitoshi's varied contributions to the album can be traced back to his underground resume. In 1986 at the age of 16, Hitoshi joined Discontent—a short-lived hardcore group with vocalist Kentatsu, drummer and roommate Maeda (Juntess), and bassist Montes (Sqwad, Ghoul III). He left the group in early '87 to form a Hanoi Rocks-esque glam rock band, before later reuniting with Kentatsu in the crossover group Crisis Kill. Their reunion was brief however, as Hitoshi left immediately after recording tracks for 1989's "Nobody's Fault" compilation LP. According to drummer Yoichi (aka Yo-T), friction with another band member drove Hitoshi to leave after only about a year in the band. After a brief pitstop in the aborted Systematic Death revival, Hitoshi brought his mix of Glam, Hardcore, and Dead End-inspired Thrash sensibilities to "The Last Sanctuary."
The album's vinyl release was designed by Crow, with an additional drawing provided by Sugichan (prolific punk artist and bassist of SIC). Crow, who is a lifelong fan of Tokusatsu (basically special effects and costume-heavy Japanese media like Godzilla and Power Rangers), asked Sugichan to draw the band in the style of the enemy kaijin monsters from the TV show Kamen Rider. Bonus fun fact: Inspired by the crab monster Hasamiruge from Barom 1, Crow later adopted the pseudonym Hasami during his time in the band Kaiboushitsu. Given free rein and inspired by the silver print on Discharge's "Grave New World" jacket, Crow originally planned to make the album's cover a metallic silver. As metallic print was prohibitively expensive, he ultimately settled on the unusual (and impossible to accurately photograph) blue color.
The album's CD artwork, which is a completely different and arguably darker design, was the work of Kenji. In 1987, inspired by Conflict and hardline UK punk, Kenji convinced his apolitical band (Hyena, named after the song by The Mobs) to change their name to Asbestos and adopt an overtly political aesthetic. The CD artwork's bleak mixture of Discharge and NWOBHM continues the visual aesthetic of the first two Asbestos records, both of which he also designed.
In parallel to Grave New World, Crow began improvising with a noise unit organized with Kageyama Hiroyuki (Mensu, Mond Bongo Japan) in 1992. Although there was never a fixed lineup, drummer Hirata (Blood Soccer) and Takeshi (Rocky & The Sweden) were regular participants in what eventually became the psychedelic noise unit Death Comes Along. The name, incidentally, was derived from a print advertisement for a Dr. Shinigami (snappily-dressed villain from Kamen Rider) action figure. Crow's love of Tokusatsu strikes again.
Whereas German Oak (one of the group's primary influences) famously recorded their self-titled album in an abandoned WW2 bunker, Death Comes Along sounds like it was recorded on a Heaven's Gate bunk bed. The group smashed together SPK-esque dissonance, the cacophonous bang of 1960s space age optimism crashing back to Earth, and cult krautrock with all the force of the Hadron Super Collider. In the course of a decade, Crow had gone from dedicating records to Discharge, to dedicating records to Ed Gein. As Crow recalls, the noise unit was a consequence of the collaborative tensions within Grave New World:
"Each member wanted a different sound. I wanted more freakiness. As a result, I started Death Comes Along. I can't make songs that everyone can understand."
Despite greater aspirations, Grave New World ultimately succumbed to the divergent styles and began petering out in '94. A second album was planned, and only a fraction of the songs the band wrote were ever released. Iijima of Mangrove Records, who first met Crow as an employee at the Shinjuku record store Vinyl, offered to release something by Grave New World at the time. As a recent Osakan transplant in Tokyo, Crow made an impression when he spent a night waiting outside for Vinyl to open its doors and sell him a copy of Amebix's "No Sanctuary." We should all be so lucky to have someone in our life that loves us half as much as Crow loves Amebix.
Ultimately, Mangrove instead released the first Death Comes Along album, which incorporated bits of unused Grave New World lyrics and ideas. Inspired by King Crimson's aggressively raw "Earthbound," the album was recorded live at Shinjuku Antiknock by Fink (Teengenerate) in April of '94. Murakami (Mond Bongo Japan) played on bass, and Mangrove released the album two years later. Sales were sluggish and most copies remained in storage until UK music critic Julian Cope began proselytizing the band in the mid 2000s. A more expansive second album, featuring Crow, Bondage, Kenji, Hirata, Yuki (Evilspeak), Ajima (Aka), and Sugiyama (Gamehuche), was later self-released in 2002. As it included three-fourths of Grave New World, the album is unfortunately the closest thing to a reunion the world is likely to get. Death Comes Along, a group which essentially began as an overflow of Crow's ambitions within Grave New World, in turn ended up acting as a testament to those relationships formed long ago.
Seemingly unrelated, but considered the same band by Crow, Death Comes Along became Kaiboushitsu (translation: Autopsy Suite) in the mid 2000s. The band abandoned psychedelic improvisation and played traditional Japanese punk in the style of The Stalin (from which they took their name) and early ADK Records. Drummer Watanabe (Siberian Husky, Tōchika) joined the band after the transition, while bassist Jett (Tokyo era Crow) and guitarist Bondage remained on from before it. The band's lone 2010 album marked the final recorded collaboration between Bondage and Crow--a partnership that blossomed from an offhand conversation all those years prior.
Ultimately, Grave New World was a transient idea in search of an audience that didn't yet exist. Before passing away in 2012, Hitoshi continued to live a creative life. Despite draconian anti-tattoo laws in Japan, Hitoshi worked as a tattoo artist and made disco-influenced Balearic beat (basically Mediterranean bungalow house music) under the name DJ Zecky. Including their time in Death Comes Along and Kaiboushitsu, Crow and Bondage continued working together creatively off and on for more than two decades. In addition to Kaiboushitsu, Bondage also happened to join a second ADK-inspired band called Azarashi (which was also named after a song by The Stalin). Motivated by the release of an Asbestos discography CD, Kenji reformed Asbestos and debuted the band's new lineup in December of '95. After the small reunion on the second Death Comes Along album, Crow lost touch with Kenji over time. As people are wont to do, lives intersect and diverge. Although only representing a momentary chapter in the lives of its members, Grave New World remains an ambitious project worthy of its talent.
All images used with permission, from the collections of Nitta (LP photos), April (CD scans), Max (Death Comes Along LP photos), POTHEAD S.O.U. (Coretic Perdition flyers), Timmy Hefner (Huck Finn flyer), and Crow (everything else).
Written with input and help from Crow, Yoichi (Crisis Kill), Maeda (Juntess), Koba (Systematic Death), Iijima (Mangrove), Tom (General Speech), Luihung, and Satoru (Record Boy).
