picture by
LeCargo.org
Thanks to Ero Guro and the magic of online research, I had the immense pleasure of a head-on collision with a whole area of Japanese graphic art that I had never known existed until now. Not sure I want to thank you guys for overcoming this salutary ignorance though...
Anyway the four guys I'm gonna talk about today don't hail from the
Land of the Rising Sun but from Le Plat Pays aka the
almighty kingdom of Belgium!
Ero Guro it's four guys (of which two brothers) from Diest, in the
Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, who have played in various
rock/garage/punk acts from the area including Coma Commander,
Prince Beastly, Double Veterans and Tubelight before getting together in this new set-up. From what I just discovered, and that you will see below, they also share
a strong taste for silly music and videos (which is a perfectly understandable sin to me).
Within six songs of high energy garage-influenced punk rock,
Ero Guro shows their ability to let impressive bursts of rage
explode (Borderline's torn vocals), to deliver
perfectly mastered
garage-punk tracks (Righteous Harm and Pacifier) but also,
and more surprisingly, to deliver something a bit different, a bit more
subtle, something edging with other parts of the punk rock planet with
Latex at Gunpoint (Sick Chicks) and some parts of
Dropout Boogie.
Let's just take a break for a sec.
When I hear garage-punk somewhere there will always be a guy to shout
"Jay Reatard" in your tired eardrums (and well OK fair enough even if I've never
been a big fan of his music) but from my side what I am referring to includes a vast
part of the scene which blurry borders go from
The Gories
and
Oblivians
to
Voodoo Rythm Records via some bands like
The Defenestrors
or
The Carbonas...
Yes something like that... roughly...
Anyway I find this little EP quite enjoyable and, without bringing
anything extremely new, it nevertheless stands out enough to give grounds
for hope for an interesting sequel.
ahah what kind of album cover is that ??
I love it!
December 2018, our Belgian rockers are back with
No Nansesu, a new 7" out on
Ronny Rex
and
Belly Button Records.
Well it would be an understatement to say that this EP took me by
surprise! Bye bye garagish punk rock, Ero Guro takes us back
straight to 80s US Punk, right when Punk and Hardcore started to mix. It's
amazing! Yes I'm a complete sucker for this kind of stuff...
Of course it's not just a copycat, there are some more modern influences
in the pot! I can hear The Germs and Shattered Faith jamming with
Regulations and Dean Dirg!
I'm especially seduced by Male Pornstars and
Corkscrew which go through a slower, but deranged, side of old
school punk that I particularly enjoy. The band builds a background of
rock'n roll punk rock on which the singer develops a burlesque show that,
for some reasons, makes me think of Darby Crash sharing the stage
with the The Dicks. I love these tracks!
A fantastic EP!
And it took two years to Ero Guro to make Yin Dang, their first full length, released on Belly Button Records late 2020 / early 2021.
From the first seconds it's clear that this LP is going to be a lot
closer to the first EP's sound that to No Nansesu's. Garagish
guitar riffs, upfront screamed vocals, drums humming in the background and a couple of enchanting
bass lines here and there, I'm not sure exactly where we are... somewhere
between the first EP and some modern mid-tempo (but screamed) punk
rock. Sometimes it recalls the almighty
Stanly Kubi
(the vocals on Christian Meth!)
To be honest it's not easy album to get into, there is a lot of craziness
(especially in the way the vocals jump up and down over the line of
insanity) but no real "hit", no catchy and easy high-energy punk track. Ok
Rational Coping and
Life In Half got some catchy
parts but the whole things look more like a rotten doughnut than anything
else (can't bite it all!).
I like the surfy (but suicidal) Emotional Wishing which goes all
around the deranged concept... a bit like a love song written by the white
trash cousin of Total Control or something like that...
In a word, an album which starts with Wanna Survive and ends with
Wanna Die cannot be a bad one. Ero Guro is a bit all over
the place, a bit hard to follow, drifting in muddy waters full of screams
and various kind of inbred guitar riffs.... even if it's all rock'n roll
and goofiness in the end and... well that all fucking matters right
??
A band I put at the top of my "to urgently see on stage if the world
doesn't end in the next couple of years" list!
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