Search - Discordance Axis :: Jou Hou

Nearly the apex of grindcore

Robert Jefferson | Pittsburgh, PA USA | 10/14/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In and out of print since 1997, Jouhou is a reissue of the second Discordance Axis album of the same name, plus a plethora of bonus tracks, including a live performance, and detailed liner notes.



Jouhou was the work of a grindcore band that stepped outside of the stereotypes of the genre. The songs weren't particularly gory; if anything, the lyrics are unusually intelligent for the genre. Vocalist Jon Chang could not only sound like a pack of wolves tearing a man apart, but even sound like the man himself being consumed. Rob Marton's guitar packed enough of a punch that the bassist was neither needed nor missed. Dave Witte, formerly of Human Remains and now of Burnt by the Sun, took the standard blast-beat model and raised the stakes, adding in complex and jarring (but never pointless) rhythm switching.



Songs like "Typeface" and "Information Sniper" showed that grindcore could be violent, but hold back the onslaught enough to make them even more brutal. "Carcass Lottery" even has a bit of humor, detailing a game of rock-paper-scissors gone horribly wrong. With nary an exception on the album (the collaboration with Merzbow on "Nikola Tesla" was almost a comforting respite), the band proved that for them grindcore was a means of expressing their sentiments. Paradoxically, they wind up achieving the goal of producing "evil music" that most other bands spend entire careers aspiring to."