#nisemono

13. Pyrex - Body (Total Punk Records)

This was a tremendous year for NYC's Pyrex--this LP hit in March & grabbed my attention so I wouldn't miss a follow-up EP in June or a phenomenal live tape in July. Their sound isn't exactly what I usually spring for, with garage-punk vocals & an approach that centers melody, but no matter what else came after this record this year, I just couldn't leave it off my list--if for no other reason than that these are the songs I've found myself humming while I do the dishes. There's this post-punk-y quality to the production, and every song is so different & so damn catchy. Pyrex is a good omen for New York's scene and the vitality of hardcore punk in general.

favorite track: Face Off

12. Nisemono - Nisemono (Toxic State Records)

More from NYC! This is about as short as I go for this list at 13 minutes & change, but absolutely zero time is wasted. This is true Japanese-American hardcore punk, mixing all the right stuff from both scenes. It's so fucking tight instrumentally--especially that drumming, holy shit--and the vocals are frantic in a way that feels barely-contained. I saw this band play with LiFE & this album was the full setlist--just as punchy and twice as powerful.

favorite track: Nikushimi

11. Habak - Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (Alerta Antifascista/The Plague of Man/Ojala Me Muera)

Ten years after their debut, Tijuana's neocrust forerunners are still going strong. Since Lagrimas caught my ear a couple years ago, I've been trying to keep tabs on this strain of Spanish-language post-rock-inflected grind/crust, and I think I can safely say this is some of the best material to come out of it. Habak is as emo as they come, but they bring such an unmatched severity to the faster crust sections that even the purist in me is hooked. This LP is particularly well-paced, keeping the energy up even through slower sections & spacing out its hardest punches juuuust right to make them as crushing as possible. It's another triumph.

favorite track: MIl orquideas del desierto

10. Pisssniffers - Pisssniffers (Chaos & Anticonformity Records)

This was such a good year for raw noize d-beat, but a lot of it will be relegated to my "twelve-minutes-and-under" list, true to form for the genre. I'm ecstatic that this one weighs in at a whopping 17 minutes because it's one of the best I've heard since Physique's "Again." The production is pretty no-frills, but it really nails the whole Kawakami sound, especially the way those treble-y drums clip the noise into tight, rhythmic blasts.

favorite track: Horror

9. Gnostics - Revelation (Roachleg Records)

I might have actually been the first person to listen to this album--the band told me I was the first to buy the tape, and I listened to it just before it went up on bandcamp. As is often the case with debut albums, the production & recording aren't the tightest ever, but this is just such an unusual sound these days--old-school slow crust that strays into atmospheric sludge territory in a couple tracks. It wanders from Amebix to Gallhammer to Battle of Mice, but has a strong aesthetic keeping it cohesive. I adore the muddy guitar tones & the two vocalists call to mind a bunch of my crust faves. This band was such an unexpected and welcome discovery.

favorite track: Is Love Lost?

8. Sickness of Greed - All That's Before Us (Sore Mind/ Filth Holocaust Records)

Sore Mind is one of the best tape distros to ever do it, and releases like this are exactly why. As you might expect from a band named for a LiFE track, Sickness of Greed crashes like the crustiest, but they've got some Northern Europe in them too, particularly the vocals. This LP is 11 quick punchesthat are measurably heavier than your average hardcore record. My top "play-it-loud-as-fuck-while-driving" record this year.

favorite track: No Sanctuary

7. INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY (La Vida Es un Mus Discos)

Wow. This really draws from the sounds of every punk band with a chorus pedal I've ever loved--The Mob, Zygote, and of course Killing Joke--but if I had to pick just one point of comparison it's Exit-Stance. I truly think no one's done dark anarcho punk quite like them for 40 years--until INDUSTRY. Everything about this LP is bleak, but never dull, and it isn't an imitation either--just an extension of this lost art into the extremely apropos setting of the 21st century. The bass tone in particular really captures that primordial proto-industrial/post-punk sound, and they're paired with some of the best all-around guitar effects & production of the year.

favorite track: Minimize Interhuman Violence

6. Death Gasp - Death Gasp (Final Return Records)

I suspect stenchcore may be having a little renaissance in the 2020s, and Death Gasp is doing it exactly the way I like. It's got thrashy licks with none of thrash's corniness, gnarly death-metal guitar tones, and breakneck crustcore sections. Best of all, it's got SO much reverb. I love how unapologetically sour it all is--the rough vocals, the morbid cover art, all the octatonics. This is, to me, the very best kind of meeting of punk & metal that distills both into their purest, nastiest forms.

favorite track: Halls of the Dead

5. Contrast Attitude - Discharge Your Noise (WHY Records)

Contrast Attitude is one of the craziest sets I've ever seen live, and I could not have been more pumped for this album than I was after seeing them play in June. What struck me at that show--and strikes me every time I listen to this album--is just how much they're willing to push the crasher crust/d-beat formula in new directions. They undoubtedly channel the power of Discharge & their friends & former bandmates in Disclose, but there's no cloning going on here. The first track gets a little motörpunk with its heavy-metal sounding riff, and throughout the album we get little tastes of a retro love for burning spirits & old-school Japanese hardcore, but the whole thing comes across as anything but a rehash. It's thoughtfully executed and tight, tight, tight.

favorite track: Discharge Your Noise/The Last Moment

4. Möney - Hegemony (Chicken Attack/Icepicks at Dawn)

Egg punks Möney take a turn for the darker with this little post-punk album that totally blew me away from the first listen. It's short & sweet, but contains at least one contender for a "song of the year" for me. Something about the anarcho-punk-y covals on the title track combines into something so fresh with the crazy noise effects on the guitars. It still has a little of that warm, sweet tone that marks it as downstream from egg punk, but both lyrically & instrumentally, this feels like a brush with the reality of living in an immensely violent international system that's as alien as it is ubiquitous. I adore the noise track for its Foucauldian title as well as the crazy technical feat it represents to do something like this with pedals. All in all, this is the most danceable something can be while still feeling like a work from Tiqqun.

favorite track: Hegemony

3. MEM//BRANE - MEM//BRANE (District Six)

It felt amost anticlimactic when this dropped on January 1st because I knew then that it was going to be pretty high on this list. Even with all the good stenchcore this year, nothing quite scratched the same itch. The guitars are thoroughly death-y, but something about the vocals & the way the songs are structured puts it almost into blackened crust territory for me. The riffs all feel inspired by the old greats, but they're original and really, really memorable. We've also got a strong contender for "song of the year" here, and the subject matter of a lot of this album really strikes a chord with me, somber though it may be.

favorite track: In Lieu of Flowers

2. PSYCH-WAR - PSYCHOTIC WARMONGER (Sore Mind/Archaic Records)

Another Sore Mind release! This album is incredible because I enjoy it more every time I listen to it--and I've listened to it a lot. The sound is pretty directly inspired by "Scandinavian Jawbreaker"-era Anti Cimex, but witrh a solid scoop of motörpunk madness thrown in for good measure. Every song is more or less about the end of the world, and the whole thing feels like a high-speed rampage thru the wasteland as the bombs are falling. The guitars & drums are so locked in I feel like I'll die if I don't immediately start moving when this comes on. The production is remarkably crisp for a d-beat record, and without loising any of the sound's magnitude.

favorite track: Screams at the Sky

1. Subversive Rite - Apocalypse Zone (Acute Noise Manufacture)

For whatever reason, I didn't really get this one the first time I heard it. I guess listening to it as a new release didn't have me primed for what I was going to hear. But my second listen was eye-opening--the clean-ish vocals are such a breakthrough of old-school goodness. Of course it reminds me a little of Détente & a long list of other "crossover" greats, but this album really feels tapped in to that age of punk & extreme metal largely unhindered by subgenre labels. It all feels song-first, like it pulls from inspirations & invents as the song demands, not in order to imitate or show off. There's a amount of reverb & delay, something which seems to elude bands like this. Most importantly, these are just phenomenal songs, and they all pull together thematically along the lines of urgent resistance. EVEN THE HANDS OF STEEL MUST CRACK!

Nise, you're up!

‼️ GINGER ROOT STICKERS AVAILABLE NOW ‼️

Of course KH leaks into my FFVII AUs.

This is not Riku. In fact, this is his twin brother, aptly named Nisemono. (My sister @galiou made an image based around it too.)

Nise is not magically fit to obtain Sephiroth’s throne. His egg was cracked at birth, and as a result he was born magically stunted and with a lame leg. (These are Mother’s children, there’s no way Sephiroth would just let an egg die.)

AKA Mod Kokichi writes nonsense at 3 AM

Kokichi had been shying away from his average life, getting quieter as the killing game continued. He locked himself in his room for what seemed like days at a time as he wrote on sheet music vigorously.

He was never really seen as someone who was necessarily talented, but it didn’t stop him from trying to get something out of his system. He had so much pent up inside from the stress he harbored from the mere interactions he had with his peers. He seemed to fidget constantly, and was constantly pulling at the cuffs of his uniform. There was nothing that seemed as though it wouldn’t set him off.

He found refuge in one thing: Nisemono, his acoustic guitar. It had a dark purple finish with a dark wooden fret board. He had a decal of theater masks on it, since he had decided to be part of the drama club that year. He remembered that no one even talked to him while he was in there, so he had simply practiced monologuing. He seemed to gravitate towards monologues from Shakespearean tragedies, and did concerningly well at setting the tone when it came to performing.

He held Nisemono in his hands as he sat down on the ground with his new sheet music. The positioning that he found himself in was uncomfortable, but it didn’t stop him from getting ready. He tuned his guitar, sticking his tongue out the tiniest bit in concentration during the process. He sighed contentedly when he got everything correctly tuned, strumming to himself mindlessly before focusing back on the pages.

Now, for someone who seemed to constantly shake like a leaf, the Kokichi that was with Nisemono seemed almost entirely different. He read the notes he had scribbled onto the page.

How was he to get better at playing if he didn’t challenge himself? That was his reasoning behind listening to the Deadpool 2 soundtrack plenty of times over to get the correct melody for the cover of “Take On Me.” He thought of how many times the song had been seen as just a stupid joke on the internet, but there was something incredibly special about it when the upbeat tempo was removed along with all the synthesizer sounds. It almost hurt to play when he had it slowed down, but it was moving enough for him to find it in himself to continue. His calloused fingers plucked at the strings as he sort of swayed while planted on the ground.

Maybe one day, he would be bigger than this. Maybe he’d have someone to play for that would listen. Maybe he would have friends that would take interest in him.

Maybe...

Maybe he could be happy.

Here’s the main cast of Orochi High!

Welcome to Orochi High!

Truffle Takahashi is just an ordinary girl starting her first year at Orochi High School. Join her as she makes new friends–Marzi-chan, a big girl with big headboobs and an even bigger heart, and Mochi, a mischievous prankster who cares more than she lets on–and meets her first love, the mysterious, venomous Atheris Hispida! 

Truffle Takahashi Species: Ball Python (Silver Bullet Morph) Length: 0.7 meters Age: 16

Truffle Takahashi is an ordinary girl starting her first year at Orochi High School. She was born in Osnaka and recently moved with her mom and little brother to Nagasnaki. She’s never gone to a school with both venomous and non-venomous students before! Truffle’s favorite accessory is a cute red bow with a skull in the middle. She has a tiny kink on the tip of her tail.

Mochi Species: Western Hognose (Wild Type) Length: 0.5 meters Age: 16 Mochi is a short Western hognose who becomes Truffle’s first friend at Orochi High. A mischievous prankster, she comes off as a bit insensitive but cares more than she lets on. She has been known to play dead to get out of unpleasant situations (like gym class). Mochi always wears a cool spiked tailet.  

Marzi-chan Species: Burmese Python (Hypo Morph) Length: 4.5 meters Age: 15 Marzi-chan is a big girl with big headboobs and an even bigger heart. Soft-spoken and shy, she does her best to stay out of the way but inadvertently causes accidents and injuries because of her size. She wears a tiny pink bow on her tail at all times.

Atheris Hispida Species: Hairy Bush Viper (Wild Type) Length: 1 meter Age: 17 The mysterious, venomous Hispida-san has always counted on his “tough guy” status to keep sneople at tail’s length, but when new girl Truffle Takahashi stumbles (literally) upon his deepest secret, he fears his reputation is at stake! He wears his tie loose because he thinks it makes him look cool (it does). That’s probably why he’s always chewing on a toothpick, too, but it’s less cool and more gross.

Nisemono Species: ??? Length: 2 meters  Age: 17 Not much is known about secretive new transfer student Nisemono. He moved to Nagasnaki from Snakai and he comes from a wealthy family, but that’s about it. He even keeps his snake species secret, preferring instead to call himself “definitely non-venomous.” He takes immediate interest in Truffle, but much to his frustration, it seems like her heart is already spoken for! Whatever you do, don’t take his hat off, no matter how dumb it looks. Ever.

Yakamashii Species: Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Wild Type) Length: 1.4 meters Age: 17 Loud, outgoing, and sometimes annoying, Yakamashii is nevertheless Hispida-san’s only real friend. They grew up together in the same neighborhood and bonded over shared experiences (and taste in video games). Despite carrying a deadly hemotoxin in his fangs, Yakamashii is mostly harmless. He excels at sports and is captain of Orochi High’s successful Koudo ( 絞道 - ”Way of the Wrap”) club. The O-hi tail band he wears shows off his school spirit!

Monoko-chan Species: Monocled Cobra (Albino Morph) Length: 1.5 meters Age: 17 Regarded as the most beautiful girl at Orochi High, Monoko-chan has many admirers. Despite being confessed to on an almost daily basis, she has turned down every single suitor, which makes her sudden interest in Hispida-san very unusual indeed! Though she is not unkind, her quiet demeanor and disinterest in dating have earned her the reputation of being cold. Her striking albino coloration, while attractive to many, makes her sensitive to light and susceptible to sunburn, so she is often forced to limit outdoor activities. She has a pierced hood.