CROW
Osaka-born, Tokyo-hardened crust merchants who helped ignite Japan's Discharge-worship movement in the '80s and are still dropping slabs of metallic hardcore forty years on.
About
CROW formed in Osaka in 1983, right in the white-hot center of Japanese punk's first golden age. Vocalist Crow, guitarist Dada, bassist Taku, and drummer Luchi built their sound on a foundation of Discharge and UK82 hardcore, but pushed it heavier and more chaotic than most of their British influences ever dared. Their 1985 EP "Who Killed Dove?" and 1987 LP "Last Chaos" â the latter pressed in an absurdly limited run of 200 copies â are foundational documents of Japanese crust. Radical anti-war lyrics, relentless d-beat drumming, and a fuzzed-out guitar attack that hit like a wall of static. They went dormant at the end of the '80s, but the records kept circulating through tape-trading networks worldwide. In the mid-'90s, vocalist Crow rebuilt the band in Tokyo with a new lineup anchored by guitarist Tomio (ex-JUNTESS), whose playing injected a heavier metallic edge into the Discharge template. The Tokyo-era CROW became a synthesis â the original d-beat fury fused with crushing crust metal riffs and searing lead guitar. They released several EPs, the "Bloody Tear" album, and hit the US West Coast three times, building a devoted following in the international crust underground through releases on San Francisco's Prank Records. "EYE," recorded at Noise Room Studios in Tokyo in 2022 and released in 2023, was their first new recording in twelve years. Eight tracks of crushing metallic hardcore with noise experiments threaded through it. Four decades in, CROW remain one of the most vital links between Japanese punk's origins and its present.