Latest album by japanese hardcore band Nightmare, the same guys who made the excellent "Give Notice Of Nightmare" back in '88. The 10 new songs are great and the old power of Nightmare is still there. Along with Gauze & Warhead, Nightmare is one of the few classic Japanese bands that never broke up and it's still going strong after all these years. 

Limited to 500 copies only.

Our take: Japanese hardcore legends Nightmare dropped this new full-length earlier this year as a CD on Japan’s long-running Blood Sucker Records, and now we have a North American vinyl pressing courtesy of 540 Records. Those of you who follow Japanese hardcore should already know Nightmare, but sketching out the band’s history and relationship to more familiar strands of Japanese hardcore music would take quite a while and would require someone who is deeper head than I am. To hit some highlights, though, Nightmare came to the world’s attention after releasing two truly great records on the legendary Selfish label (1988’s self-titled 7” and the landmark 1990 LP Give Notice of Nightmare), continued to release a series of excellent EPs throughout the 90s, went through a weird period where they incorporated a screeching, Albert Ayler-esque saxophone into their lineup (controversial for sure, but recommended listening for true freax), and now they’re back with this new album that sounds more like their classic record (Give Notice) than anything they’ve done since. Even at their best, Nightmare is something of an acquired taste as they aren’t as anthemic as the more well-known Burning Spirits bands and they don’t follow the Discharge template as closely as the most well-known Japanese crust bands. Instead, the key element of their sound (for me, at least) is a spiky, fractured sense of rhythm that reminds me of late 80s Italian hardcore like CCM’s Into the Void or Indigesti’s Osservati Dall'Inganno, or perhaps Gauze’s 4th and 5th albums. It’s heady, complex music that takes work to unpack, but it's some of the realest shit out there. Now, to get to Thirsty and Wander… it fucking rules! As I noted above, Nightmare hasn’t been afraid to mess with their sound over the years, but this record is no experiment. It’s the sound of a band at the top of their game playing the most complex, explosive music they can conjure and recording it clearly and powerfully. It is the old heads showing the young folks how it’s done, and a typically unpretentious rebuff to the bands who get it wrong. If you’ve gone deeper than the Death Side / Bastard / Framtid level of Japanese hardcore and you like what you heard, you need to get Thirsty and Wander.