Customer Reviews

Desire for Agony

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I mean that in the best possible way. Zeni Geva will be sorely missed, and this is my favorite of their many records. Seriously BRUTAL interplay between free-jazz drums and tweo guitars: one washed-out psychedelic guitar and one brittle Steve Albini-ish "ching ching" type. The vocals consist mainly of shouted/grunted/whispered chants, some in English and some in Japanese, and the combined result is sort of like a mix of the Swans, Godflesh, Big Black, Slayer, Cop Shoot Cop, Sepultura, as well as Os Mutantes, Goblin, Naked City, and the Ruins...NOBODY sounds like Zeni Geva, and NOBODY who loves the sort of metal that bludgeons you (when it isn't caressing you) should be without this record.

Download the sample of "Dead Sun Rising" and you will see exactly why I am gushing over this obscure Japanese noiserock band. You will too.

Bought this album before they toured in the US. They put on a great show, awesome sound, good presence. Anyways I use to work at a deli and we would play this album at closing, cause, you know, it rocked. One day, at the end of the Action Sports Retail convention some skaters came in to eat right at closing. We thought they might appreciate a little Japanese punk rock coming from two little Asian girls, so we played it, working along with the music, when one of the boys came up to us and said "you guys are scary!" And they left.
Can you beat that.

I've never accually seen someone strangle himself to death, but this album probably gives me a good idea what it would sound like. Zeni Geva is a rock band only in the most grotesque and distorted sense of the phrase, combining jazz and punk with pure noise to create a sonic doorway into blinding pain, both emotional and physical. "Stigma" and "Dead Sun Rising" open the portal wide to introduce the listener to new dimensions of suffering, while the title track and "Heathen Blood" shove you straight into it. By the time "Autopsy Love" and "The Body" wind down, your senses are all but hemmoraging.
Japanese-sung lyrics become billy clubs to the head and body, guitar riffs become steak knives in the neck. Melodies exist only to amplify feelings of dread and terror. If anyone feels scared upon first listen, that's the point.
Recommended for those who think Swans and Godflesh aren't dark enough.

I agree with the previous reviewer. This is one heavy record. It makes early Metallica and Slayer sound tame. It sounds like Toshiro Mifune (or John Belushi's crazy samurai impersonation of Mifune) on an angry rampage backed up by a wall of grinding guitar noise. ... This one will definitely have your neighbors calling the cops in under 10 minutes. ... Too bad only half the record approximates some sort of melody, the rest just sounds like a wall of noise. The craziest song of all must be "Heathen Blood" though: this will both scare ... you and make you almost bust a gut laughing, so Spinal-Tapped to the n-th degree it seems in its utter, brutal, paranooid heaviosity.

This album is brutal and grim. ONLY TRUE METAL WILL LIKE THIS