Let me tell you about my favorite band, bloodthirsty butchers.
bloodthirsty butchers were a Japanese band active from 1988-2013. (Yes, it is stylized as “bloodthirsty butchers,” without caps. Don’t let Wikipedia lie to you, it’s written that way in all their music videos and almost all their album covers.) Most websites have trouble categorizing them, so they go with “punk” or “indie.” Indie doesn’t mean anything, of course. Early on they probably fit the Punk label pretty well, akin to a slightly heavier Blue Hearts. At their peak, they were more like a punk/neo-psych fusion band. Most of the songs were high-energy, fast-paced, with unmusical yelling vocals and awesome, unique, lengthy guitar solos. Hideshi Yokimura couldn’t sing, but his guitar playing was entertaining as hell. I won’t vouch for the skill involved--I don’t play guitar and can’t tell technical ability. But I can tell whether someone builds tension well, and as far as I’m concerned he was the best ever.
The best bloodthirsty butchers songs end with several minutes of guitar noodling, sometimes longer than the lyrical portion of the song. Y’know Sleater-Kinney’s Let’s Call It Love? Y’know how it’s their best song? bloodthirsty butchers were basically ~20 years of that.
Here’s a rough guide to bloodthirsty butchers. If we go chronologically we’ll start and end kinda weak, so let’s jump around and find ourselves in the middle. ‘Kay? And if you don’t care, there’ll be a nice tl;dr at the end you can look at.
Bloodthirsty Butchers [1990]
I’m Standing Nowhere [1993]
Their first albums were 2 cassettes released in 1988 and 1989. They are basically impossible to find, unless you want to shell out the $400 for the complete box set. I can’t comment on how they sound.
I can comment on the 3 albums released in the first half of the 90s. This is the period when the butchers were a kinda by-the-books Japanese punk band. The songs are mostly short, fairly catchy, very poorly produced, and loud. They’re all worth a listen, if you like that kind of music. (I do.) Of the 3, Lukewarm Wind is by far the best. The songs are ordered to make a more coherent sonic narrative. Occasionally it takes a break from LOUD FAST.
I don’t have a whole lot to say here. “ALLIGATOR” is a popular song but I’m not crazy about it. I’m more a fan of stuff like “Pressure,” which is a great way to end a record. If you like that song, look at Lukewarm Wind and work backwards from there.
Let’s jump way forward, to the end of the butchers. Yokimura, the band lead, died in 2013, so Youth is most likely their last album, unless for some reason they decide to plod on with a different lead or there’s enough new material already recorded to put out one more album.
These albums aren’t great! No Album Mudai has 2 songs worth listening to, at the very end. They are good to hear in order: Ocean, Curve. They work well together. Almost nothing else on this album works. It all sounds tired and by-the-books.
Youth is a bit better on average, but doesn’t have any songs as good as Ocean or Curve. This isn’t super surprising. A lot of bands get boring after 25 years. Cheers to the butchers for at least putting out something listenable. Compare to, say, most of Nick Cave’s recent albums, which leap between “kinda good” and “OH MY GOD TURN IT OFF.” Putting out good albums for more than a decade is hard!
Ok, now that leaves 7 non-compilation albums, plus some good EPs and live stuff, between 1994 and 2010. Also stuff I probably don’t have because English websites aren’t as reliable in regard to Japanese bands. Let’s break them down.
1999 - 2001: The slow, plodding stuff
2 of the top 5 albums for sure.
Mikansei (which means “Incomplete”) is one of the first albums with serious neo-psych elements. (I skipped the first. We’ll get to it later.) It opens with “Faust,” which is not slow or plodding at all. I gave that description more because of “Boku,” which is good but not interesting enough to be as long as it is, “Mikansei,” which is about as good as title tracks can get, and “Sankaku,” which is fairly energetic but ends with about 10 minutes of kickass guitaring that isn’t energetic for much of the time. I feel like these songs give Mikansei a much more downbeat feel than previous albums. If you want to know why I say they’re punk/neo-psych fusion, give any of these a listen, especially Sankaku. (You might find it under “「△」.” “Sankaku” means triangle and sometimes the title is stylized that way.) This one has its rough spots and is clearly a transition album, but it’s one of my favorites. Someone must really like this album, because there’s easily-available romanization and English translation of most of the songs online--not so for the other albums, except Kocorono.
Yamane was the first butchers album I ever heard in full, and it was love at first listen. Almost every butchers record has at least 1 instrumental song, and Wagamama No Hotori is my favorite. It fits so beautifully in its place before “-100%.” I’m sorry I can’t find a link. Yamane is a lot slower than other butchers albums. It begins with a rather skippable trumpet opening, then opens proper strong with “Happy End.” It is not a happy-sounding song but sonically, the proper reverb use and repetitive structure and beautiful guitars make it a personal favorite. The last 3 songs on the album are “-100%,” “Moeru, Omoi,” and “-100% No.2.” Both of the 100%s have the same bass line and mellow melody. They’re relatively peaceful and lovely, if you like noise the same way I do. “Moeru, Omoi” is a long, intense divider between them, where every word is screamed as loudly as Yokimura can. The buildup around the 4-minute mark is the reason I love this band so much. “-100% No.2″ is the best song on the album. The production is immaculate, “-100% No.2″ has this fuzzy distortion that makes me feel so relaxed and happy. I’m sorry I can’t find links to any of these online. It is some of the best butchers material there is.
2003 - 2004: The weird stuff
Kōya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butcher [2003]
Neither of these these rank among my favorites, but they undeniably have some super good songs.
Kōya ni Okeru has “Lucky Man,” which feels a bit like a return-to-roots attempt. This is what those first 3 albums would have sounded like if they had more experience back then. “Dorama” is... an “Obladi Oblada” cover? More or less? There’s no way it’s an exact translation, but it is almost the exact melody. “ 悲しみをぶっとばせ！“ is an instrumental song that’s mostly good except it has this really annoying synth around the 2:50 mark. There are a few segments where they experiment with atonal sounds, but it doesn’t work well for them.
Birdy opens with two of their best songs: “JACK NICOLSON” is one of their most popular, I believe. It also has a neat video, check it out (though cw for suicide attempt). The last line of the chorus translates to “I want to be a bad role model.” “Birdy” is simple but fun. For a song released in 2004, it really sounds like something someone would have put out in the 90s in the US. It’s kinda downhill from there. “Love Supreme” is one of their better instrumental songs. Again, there’s atonal stuff that doesn’t work--the album’s real pitfall.
2005 - 2007: The FUCK YEAH stuff
Guitarist Wo Korosanaide [2007]
I’ll come back to Banging the Drum. There’s too much to say. But I want it to be clear it belongs in the FUCK YEAH category.
Guitarist Wo Korosanaide translates to “Don’t Kill the Guitarist.” It begins with “yeah#1″ and OH MY GOD, YES, THIS IS HOW YOU BEGIN AN ALBUM, FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! This song RULES. It’s energetic as hell, dynamic enough to be more than a simple fast punk song, and is so very butchers in sound. It is, unfortunately, the highlight of the album. But there’s other really interesting stuff here, and nothing grating, so FUCK YEAH! I really like the female guest vocals on “Mushizu to taikutsu.” “Story” is like a better version of the type of songs that would be on No Album Mudai, their next album. This is solid work in general, even if it’s not their best.
1996, 2005: The stuff I skipped
I skipped them because, y’know, best for last.
Kocorono is probably their most popular album. There is a reason for this. It’s almost perfect 90s punk, with a narrative, evolving sound, musical callbacks, fantastic guitarwork, and my favorite guitar solo of all time ever. It’s another downbeat album, for the most part, but is the real start of the punk/psych fusion sound I love so much. Each song is a month, starting February and ending December. (A bit like Album of the Year.) The original album didn’t have “January,” but it’s on the 2010 re-release. It’s a better closer to the album than “December” and I recommend getting it. Every single song is great. If this post weren’t already so long, I’d want to go into my favorite parts down to the second of each. (Maybe later.) The awkward sax opening of “November” is the only thing I think doesn’t work. “July” is my favorite song ever. It is half guitar solo, wonderful, wonderful guitar solo. I could watch live performances of it all day. It is a true shame I’ll never get to see the butchers perform, because hearing this live would be a nigh-spiritual experience for me. I get goosebumps when I hear the opening.
Banging the Drum is my favorite album. I mean of any band, ever, not just bloodthirsty butchers. I don’t know that others feel the same--looking around at internet reviews, it seems other people like Guitarist wo Korosanaide more. But this is my blog, so I’m rambling about this one.
It begins with a kickass drum solo. (”Joshou”) That song leads into a high-energy punk song (”B2″) and from there it gets even better. Every song flows effortlessly into the next. Every song is interesting. Everything they try works, nothing sounds bad or grating or annoying for even a second. I find it hard to listen to any song in isolation--I need the whole album every time. At most, I can listen to the final two tracks--”No. 6″ and “Banging the Drum”--in tandem. They fit together far too well.
There are a some female vocals on this album (uncommon for the butchers), and they all sound great. “YAMAHA-1″ is the winner, in that regard. In “PLUS/MINUS” they act as lovely backup.
Track order is an art in itself--it’s why I almost always listen to whole albums rather than individual songs. I love the artistry involved in constructing a long sonic narrative. I think Banging the Drum has one of the most impressive album structures I’ve ever heard. It’s not quite Raining Blood (the best I know of), but everything fits together so, so well. (It helps that all the songs are great.) “Banging the Drum” is one of the best album outros ever.
Much like Yamane, the production works very well with the songs, and they have just the right amount of lovely fuzzy distortion. Again, I could go into every song by second and mention my favorite parts, but this is too long already. With that in consideration...
Listen to Kocorono and Banging the Drum. If you like either, listen to Yamane. If you like that, go for Mikansei, Guitarist wo Korosanaide, and maybe Birdy. Let bloodthirsty butchers into your heart. Amen.
