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Vivisick - Nuked Identity
Released by: Tankcrimes Records
Released on: September 11th, 2015.
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Hailing from Tokyo, Japan Vivisick's second full length album, Nuked Identity, is released stateside on Tankcrimes Records. I'd never heard of these guys before I got the invite to check out the promo being used for this review, but now that I have? It's time to make up for lost time because this album is just way too fun not to play over and over and over again.
The disc starts off with a two minute track called Surreal-rhythm that is a strange mix of surf guitar, off key ska sounds and a beat so big you'll want to bug out and dance to it, but it hits a crescendo towards the end that ends things on a considerably heavier note than that which they started off on.
Rootless Patriotism is up next, the longest song on the record at almost four minutes in length. The ominous sound of thunder and rain leads into some Sabbathy guitar tones that quickly shed the doom in favor of a more upbeat punk rock tempo… which soon turns into an unrepentant blast of lunatic speedcore. Sunao's high pitched vocals are offset by the more reality based gang style chorus chants but even then, this shit is crazy. The third track, Rebel Is Creation, is more of the same but parts of it are sung (screamed?) in English, or so it sounds. This is more upbeat, just fast, fun and completely unhinged the way that good punk rock should be. Great harmonies over the last third of the song too.
Kaleidoscope, the fourth track, has a more street punk sound to it, at least to start with, but thirty-seconds in and we're off on a pretty wild ride of shrieking vocals overtop of fast, fast, fast guitars - but those gang vocals anchor it in more traditional punk rock territory. Vague Of Me, the shortest track on the record at one minute and thirteen seconds, takes longer to write about than to listen to but it's more fast, heavy, fairly straight up hardcore. It Madball were fronted by a crazy falsetto-screaming Japanese guy they might sound like this. Peter Pan Syndrome Melancholy starts off with wind-chimes and children laughing (really) but seconds later launches into a full on fury of punk rock craziness.
The best track on the record, however, is called Why Must I Grab My Penis? and it's pretty much traditional hardcore punk played for two and a half minutes, nice and sloppy like with some wild tempo shifts to keep you guessing. Ideological-Hierarchieraruhi is more of the same, though it might be even faster and crazier than anything else on the record so far. It's all over the place but as tight as the band get, and they get pretty tight, it's the intensity and the WTF???? factor of the vocals that keep this stuff as wild and as fun as it is.
The Spider's Thread That Has Been Cut Off moves us towards the end of the record and at this point if you're not into it, there's no hope for you. At the same time, if you've been digging what you've heard on the first batch of songs then it's a safe bet you'll love this one too. Again, we get a bit of a street punk sound here, the over the top hardcore wailing is pushed to the side for a song that's both anthemic and intense. It's hard to say you can sing along to it when it's all in Japanese but you can probably figure it out and have a good time here. Asia Is Burning finishes off this fan-fucking-tastic record with a weird sort of tribal chanting complete with bells and jingles and stuff but that doesn't last long as the band kicks it into overdrive and closes things out with a track just short of two minutes in length that'll leave you exhausted and sweaty and gross and ready to do it all over again.
