Firstly: YEAHHHH !!! [はいいいいいいい !!!]
Had to get that off my chest. Gezan inspires me to get the F off of my bony A, get into the pit, and try to love someone. Across years of incendiary live performances, the Japanese noise lords / bar band from hell / death squad has amassed a cult following, and count Ruins mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida, Melt Banana shred god Ichirou Agata, and Acid Mothers Temple honcho Kawabata Makoto among their vocal advocates. The press copy for their upcoming album It Was Once Said To Be A Song, due March 25 from the ever-next-level Important Records, features a quote from Merzbow: “Gezan is awesome.” Uhhhhh ‘nuff said?
Have a listen to album opener “Full Claw Lunar Surface,” premiering below, and prepare yourself for the type of attention-deficit aural assault you’ve been missing since the early days of Boredoms. Gezan merge the scuzzy, DGAF rock aesthetics mastered by DMBQ with interjections of desensitizing harsh noise chaos. The four-piece band slops black paint onto their boxing gloves and rains randomized blows onto the canvas: alien gang vocals, fragments of fierce guitar soloing, a skewed rap verse. They match their grab-bag ferocity with a surreal sense of humor, achieving the balance between entertainment and alienation that makes antecedents like Pop Tatari and Scratch or Stitch such bewildering listens decades after their creation. Show by show, scream by scream, Gezan pushes the institution of Japanese extreme music down into new depths of joyous depravity.
I’ve never seen Gezan live. Maybe you haven’t either. We’re both in luck: the band is currently touring the US. They wrap up their dates with a performance at SXSW on March 12. I’ll be there. Maybe you will too. I’ll be the one howling “YEAHHHH!!” the entire time — be sure to yell “HEY!”
• Gezan: http://gezan.net
• Important Records: http://www.importantrecords.com
More about: Gezan
