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Between the End of Osaka Crow and The beginning of Grave New World, vocalist Crow did a short lived band and recording session for a project called APOCALYPSE. Branching out into Metallic riffs that would become the sound of both GRAVE NEW WORLD and Tokyo -Era CROW, Apocalypse's sessions were both with a new band and members of Osaka Crow, metallic riffs, harsh metal edged punk and the same dark descent into madness, anger and punk fury that marks all of vocalist crow's projects.
The Unearthed APOCALYPSE session was originally released in Japan on Mangrove records in a ultra limited edition with few copies being exported outside of Japan. The Prank version is a one time pressing of 950 copies issued on Pink-Black swirl for Japan, Silver ( for US Mailorder) and white vinyl ( for distros and stores) With a 24 point board Jacket, a printed inner sleeve and Unique labels for the US release.
Our take: Prank Records gives us a meticulously crafted US pressing of this enigmatic record that first surfaced in a tiny edition in 2021 on the Japanese label Mangrove. The record documents two different bands, both fronted by Crow (vocalist for the legendary Japanese hardcore band Crow), and at least one of which was called Apocalypse. Confused yet? The recording is dated 1987-1989 and “all lyrics and music” are credited to Crow, but beyond that, concrete details are scarce. I am a huge fan of Mr. Crow’s music. I love Crow’s early, heavily Discharge-inspired records, I love their later, Sabbath-infused records (perhaps even more), and I ride for Crow’s other projects like Grave New World, Death Comes Along, and Kaiboushitsu. Crow, as a musician, is artistically restless and always pushing limits, and this Apocalypse record contains some of his most challenging work. Indeed, the first track, “Apocalypse I,” may be the most challenging piece of music Crow has ever released. It’s a ten-minute long deconstruction of the Discharge style, and its first eighty seconds seem to ask, “what if you took the Discharge template and stripped away the riffs, the drums, the guitars, bass, and even the lyrics… what would you be left with?” The minute and twenty seconds of multi-tracked, abstract vocalizations that answer the question are not an easy listen, but perhaps “Why (Reprise)” is too easy a listen given what that music aims to express. (For a different frame of reference, imagine an a cappella rendition of Integrity’s “Vocal Test.”) Once the music kicks in, “Apocalypse I” sounds a lot more like Discharge, but instead of extracting almost all the elements, it removes just one—any sense of musical development or resolution—subjecting Discharge’s style to Krautrock’s hypnotic repetition. But rather than Can’s meditative quality, “Apocalypse I” sounds agitated, enticing you toward insanity with the riff’s relentless, uncompromising repetition. If you’re able to make it past that first track, the rest of the record is less difficult, but still soaked in Crow’s instantly identifiable aesthetic. “Apocalypse II” and “Inferno” lean toward the spooky, mid-paced 80s Japanese style of Crow’s Kaiboushitsu project, while “Dream” fiddles with the template of later Discharge songs like “The Price of Silence.” “Apocalypse III” is closer to free jazz than hardcore punk, while the album-closing “The End” (reprised on Crow’s 1995 The Crow EP) is more conventional musically, but lets Crow run wild with his talent for making strange sounds with his voice and finding uniquely eerie melodies. While there are probably only a handful of people on earth who are steeped enough in both Discharge-derived hardcore and avant-garde music to truly appreciate this record, those who do will be happy to make some shelf space for a record that is peerless in the singularity of its vision.