GISM - Detestation (Reissue)
Relapse Records
The greatest thing about this reissue is that the average lay-person will finally realize that this 1980's Japanese hardcore band was musically more average than legendary or groundbreaking. A little history for ya, by the late 80's early 90's you'd see people with a GISM patch on their jacket. But they never owned this album nor their second one. Plus their GISM merch was all from bootleg dealers anyway. If they were lucky then they might've had a cassette of the album from a tape trade. As far as certain stories about on stage incidents go in their history. Who cares, ever heard of G.G. Allin?
The fact is that GISM were just a Japanese Hardcore act that a few people here in the states knew about from their one song on a compilation album put out by a fanzine. Honestly they were bigger in England during the late 80's. Mainly since they were producing metal tinged hardcore early on. By 1990 people in the US caught on, especially in the anarcho punk scene or what revisionists call 'crust'. That's about the time when the bootlegs emerged, homemade band patches and t-shirts.
By the time of the internet, aka: music sites, blogs, mainstream metal media and revisionist history scribes, is when the status of 'legendary' was attributed to GISM. Why you ask? I'm assuming you had hiptards wanting to seem cooler and authoritative than they actually were or deserved spouting bullshit. Seriously when hipsters start talking about the history of 80's punk / hardcore, run. too bad there's no fact check algorithm for them.
So three paragraphs in and it's time to talk some truth about GISM's debut full length. Musically it's poorly recorded punk rock with some hard rock/metal influenced solos. The vocals fall under the psychotic ramblings category. Back in the day once you gave this a listen you thought OK and then pushed it somewhere to gather dust. There was plenty of better bands to listen to in the 80's anyway especially from the hardcore scene.
I'm sure when people picked up that Determination compilation back in 2015 they felt the same way. There's only one saving grace for this reissue and that's the fact it's fully-authorized by the two remaining band members. So for once they'll see some yen come their way for their music. Then again aside from the bootleg vinyl copies you know every hiptard probably found this on a download site a decade ago. Plus the three bonus tracks also appear on the Determination comp. But hey you'll just buy a t-shirt so you can look cool.
LISTEN HERE:
https://gismband.bandcamp.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment