Been ragging on the humble flexi disc a fair bit lately, because its a daft, flawed format that seems to have become one of those weird on-trend punk tropes adopted out of kitsch appeal rather than any sort of necessity. This is, I think, the first I’ve bought since either the Born Against/Suckerpunch split or Republic Of Freedom Fighters/Third World Planet one, which about shows my measure of disdain for the things. I ended up breaking my vow for this one since (a) Paranoid are great and (b) AWWFN is great, and if you read the blurb on the label Bandcamp you’ll see that Al’s reason for going flexi is pretty cool, harking back to old Japanese hardcore releases that most of could never even hope to own.
There are three tracks here (‘悲嘆と苦痛’, ‘完全なる精神崩壊’ and ‘反デジタル革命’, in case you were wondering), and as you’d expect for a live d-beat recording things are pretty damn messy. Things waver and blur, but the roars, riffs and cymbal crashes make their presence felt and the soloing retains the power to scalp you. I swear at one point there’s a clicking noise like someone cracking open a can of cider, but maybe that’s just my imagination. In any event, it’s all rough, raw, enjoyable punk rock fun that also looks the part thanks to the addition of a neat little obi strip.