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Japanische Kampfhörspiele: Fertigmensch

03/08/09 || Habakuk

Japanische Kampfhörspiele (get it over with, just say JaKa) have been one of the more interesting bands to be heard from Germany for quite some time. On their “Fertigmensch” (“Ready-made human”) EP from 2003 they once again spew forth some bitingly sarcastic social commentary packaged in a rather unorthodox musical manner. The whole band concept seems to be about despising norms, so I guess it speaks for them that their music doesn’t quite fit into an existing category. What do you expect from people that call their band “Japanese battle radio plays”, anyway?

What we get is the kind of musical defiance that is grindcore, but not in the typical fashion, at best maybe comparable to the likes of Assück. JaKa take it a step further though, blending short full-on grinding parts, industrial ambient-style intros, thrashy riffing, strange grooves and some whacky sections with distorted but catchy rhythms that profit from the closely intertwined guitar and drum work. JaKa had actually started out as a two-piece, so the drummer was responsible for a lot of the songwriting, and on Fertigmensch this still shows. Drums and guitars complement each other in a way that they almost can’t be separated, and almost never are the drums used to simply set the pace. As a result there’s not much d-beat to be found, but the guys still manage to add a certain punk vibe to it all.

What’s notable is their rather creative use of samples (yes, soundbits can actually be used enhance the sound) and the aforementioned tongue-in-cheek German “fuck society”-lyrics that single out all kinds of banalities, twist them around into reasons to despise the world and are spat out by two vocalists combining croaky shouts and low death growls. To give you a rough idea, track one says something like this:

Their bodies / brains
consume nothing
they are afraid of fat
eating Light, drinking chemicals
They all want to look good
but don’t
From early on they get used to
a kind of consumption
Beyond good and evil
They blindly consume

And if they don’t want to sleep with each other, as they call it
because they don’t look good,
because they just don’t

They simply buy something new,
Something they don’t need, doesn’t matter, something expensive
They think they have a choice,
They are different – they are the same

What makes this band worthwhile is that before going over the top with misanthropy, they always manage to get their act together with some humorous twist or two.

A standout track is definitely the sing-along groover “Scheiße der Lehrer” (translating basically to “Oh shit! The teacher!”) which takes a piss on education mainstreaming the population. Luckily, on “Fertigmensch”, JaKa managed to funnel their defiance of everything into catchy songs with a remarkable level of detail to them. The 7 songs succeed at keeping the balance between simply being different and being great, which unfortunately has shifted towards the former a little bit too much on some of their more recent outputs.

Information
Released: 2003
Label: Bastardized Recordings
Website: www.japanischekampfhoerspiele.de Band
Markus Hoff: vocals
Christof Kather: drums, vocals
Klaus Nicodem: guitars
Daniel Schaffrath: guitars
Marco Bachmann: bass

Tracklist
01. Alle wollen gut aussehen (und tun es nicht)
02. Scheiße der Lehrer
03. Amokschlaf
04. Fan von gar nichts
05. Verbrennt euer Geld
06. Untitled (track 1 instrumental)

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