This is likely to be the most intense, nihilistic record from a 60-something Japanese psych shaman you’ll hear all year. Reconvening Fushitsusha with original tub-thumper Ikuro Takahashi and bassist Mitsuru Nasuno, Keiji Haino incites rapacious rock’n’roll brouhaha over the rhythm section’s brutal, staggered syncopations. Subjecting proto-blues structures to a bestial storm of lycanthropic howl and guitar wail, he takes a torch to everything from the Velvets to The Doors to Minutemen, cauterising running sores with a hellish barroom boogie, before pureeing the whole shebang in a fiery flux. You can hear entire audio histories buckle under the heft of Haino’s opaque smokescreen, providing alibis for Nasuno’s marching order of soldier ants.
But Decision Of Core’s feedback gambit heralds a change of tack, as Hikari To Nazukeyo (“Let’s Name The Light”) closes out in a cacophony of capsizing toxicity. An inhuman castrato acts as a beacon amid the swirling morass, routing listeners toward their infernal end. Backs are broken on the shards of a splintered monad: oh, everywhere diabolical crags of oblivion. From the nadir, fresh hope springs.
