Collecting tracks from an EP, a mini-album, a multi-band J-punk compilation, and a handful of live shows, this CD (which, like all of the band’s albums, is self-titled) shows off the early-’80s punk of Japanese group Aburadako, without polishing up the roughness for its revisited presentation.  Moving fast and banging loudly, the short songs take the rawness of their UK-based inspirations to higher levels of intensity, aggression, and abrasiveness, with the rasping yells of the vocalist and the lo-fi screeching of the guitar at times seeming to foreshadow black metal.  Elsewhere, the band plays with mockingly slow and low-pitched tunings and moans, though it’s unclear whether it was intended to keep breaking expectations, or if Aburadako just liked the way it sounded.

The group pulls an impressive range out of their standard bass/drums/guitar/vocals set-up, even more so considering that the compilation only covers their first two years of output, and the experimentation they use in stringing together wildly disparate passages speaks to the group’s musical abilities beyond their skills at emulating and amplifying the styles of UK punk.  The doomy cuts, like “OUT OF THE BODY”, feel even more ahead of their time than the hyper-violent ones, but all around, it’s a striking set of introductory material from a band which would manage to last for more than two decades after their initial burst.

Here’s the cover art to the 1983 flexi-disc, which doubled as the disc-face design; the mini-album’s cover art was used as the cover to this compilation.