Les Rallizes Dénudés
Heavier Than A Death In The Family

In Japanese society, square and conservative, the advent of anarchic rock could only leave a trail of profound devastation, also aided by the general global spread of strong political protest movements, especially among young people and students.

And so in Japan, too, there were hordes of young people ready to take the field, captivated by the sirens of freedom and revolution, determined not to be left behind compared to their Western counterparts, both musically and politically, but instead to push the concept of extreme even further.

The peak was probably reached by Les Rallizes Dénudés, an ultra-underground rock group born from a militant left-wing student collective in Kyoto, determined to shake the system to demolish its foundations, starting with music, but not only that.

And while among the Western counterparts there were and will be many bands ready to wave certain sympathies only to publish on major labels and live a millionaire's life (any reference to facts or people being purely coincidental), by March 31, 1970 at the latest everyone could be convinced that the boys were damn serious and ready to take even drastic measures to assert their opinion. In fact, that day some members of the group, armed with swords and a homemade bomb, hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 351, along with other members of the Japanese Red Army, with the intention of reaching North Korea (the passengers were, however, released in Seoul after the pilot managed to land there through deception, after exhausting negotiations. The JRA members then continued and were welcomed as heroes by the North Korean authorities).

But also in the management of the group and in dealing with the music business, the collective showed a total dedication to their ideals and an absolute inability to accept compromises, so much so that in comparison, the Fugazi, symbols of indie par excellence, seem almost like capitalist yuppies: the group indeed does not possess a real discography, nor a real arsenal of pieces; instead, there exists an infinity of collections/recordings, mostly bootlegs and for the most part at most "unofficial" in nature where the countless and most disparate live performances have been immortalized, in which the 6-7 basic pieces of the arsenal are each time distorted in the most unimaginable ways, to the point of being unrecognizable compared to the other versions.

Despite this, over time some fans have decided to produce, gather and "officialize" some of their releases on their own initiative, so much so that over time a sort of hierarchy has been created among the various publications, where some enjoy greater reputation compared to others (it is not well known by what criteria since for many, basically the group spent its whole life playing just one piece, but I trust the experts who tout the record I am reviewing as one of the most successful specimens).

But how did these bold and young rebels sound? A kind of ultra-noise rock with psychedelic veins, to render the idea well take the Velvet Underground of Sister Ray, further decrease the melodic factor and increase the noise, significantly worsen the sound quality and spread it over a CD, theoretically divided into various tracks, but it could just as well be a single track.

Said like that it might sound like unlistenable rubbish, and in fact, in some ways it is, surely nothing to do with traditional "beauty" or "melody" standards, but if the underlying idea excites you and maybe you drool over genres like drone, noise and similar, you might risk an ear and even discover, without being able to argue it rationally, that this album, in one way or another has the ability to excite you and capture you in its hypnotic whirlpool.

In short, for once you can really say: a thing beyond good and evil.