Album Details

• Artist: Hayaino Daisuki
• EP:
Headbanger's Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire
• Label: Hydrahead
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2008-08-08

Grindcore fans rejoice; former underground legends Discordance Axis vocalist Jon Chang is back in the fold with two new projects; GridLink and Hayaino Daisuki. This 3-piece incarnation seems more of an outlet for Chang's varied metal influences. Headbanger's Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire (an odd title for an album, to be sure) has grind all over it's 4 tracks but the riffing and tempos transform from the extreme into the extremely dark and...gasp...melodic! At times sounding like Pig Destroyer covering Motorhead or perhaps what Dragonforce would sound like if they lost all the cheese and found the real metal within. Hah.

The sheer excitement in the speed of these four tracks is enough of a selling point to just wrap this review up now for any extreme metal fan, but it's the ample amount of top-notch melodies in the riffs of Takafumi Matsubara. This guy has the kind of chops that should turn him into a name not quite on par with the sissified likes of Herman Li or whoever that dude is, but definitely more knowledgable of the sounds of heavy metal and how to turn a solo into more than a wankfest. The only distracting force, for me, is the intensity of Chang's vocals. After even four tracks, however surprisingly long for their genre they are, my senses are somewhat dulled by the constant cat-in-distress shrieks. I suppose this music demands it, and it's a pleasant change from the death-grunts and roars we're all so used to.

I can't see much of anything wrong with this release. While not re-inventing the wheel, it deftly combines a few different styles of songwriting into a fast-paced juggernaut of an EP. Hopefully this is the sign of more to come from both Hayaino Daisuki and the metal-morphed mind of Jon Chang. 

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