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Nothing on earth is more volatile and threatening than a screaming woman. I’m quite sure that this is why, when you get one with a killer voice in a hardcore band, it’s always a homerun. Right up there at the top of the heap for female fronted hc bands (and as we all know it’s a boys club here) is Brain Death from Japan and their classic Personal Affair 7″. Musically it’s all straight ahead thrash which is pretty fitting for Japan at the time (’87). Definitely reminds me a bit of a lot of the britcore bands like Heresy, Ripcord, Intense Degree, etc. but there’s plenty of bands from their native land that mined similar territory (S.O.B., Outo, Systematic Death, and many more). There might even be a little D.R.I. in the mix but I guess that’s sort of implied. The guitars have a nice broken up over driven sound, not too much treble or static-y distortion, but nice and crunchy, and the bass is clean but has a lot of body and thickness. Good crash and bang drums that sound very roomy and lively, propel the music well and sound pretty good for the time period, if a tad low in the mix on some songs.

Vocalist Sachi is really what puts things over the top though. Absolutely frantic and awesome, she spits with the same lightspeed type delivery as the rest of the instruments with very few breaks between parts. I can’t imagine songs like this were easy to sing at such a high speed. I guess it’s somewhat novel to hear a woman sing for a band that’s doing such meat and potatoes thrash and just absolutely destroy all the guttural barking male vocalists who’ve sung to the same style of music. Maybe it’s just the slightly higher pitch and different timbre that make it sound more urgent and powerful, or maybe she’s just really good at yelling. More likely it’s both of these things.

 You really shouldn’t have to drop more than $20-30 on one of these and if you like paddle beats and speed with the occasional contrasting Cryptic Slaughter style breakdown or solo, you really can’t go wrong here.

…and now for a quick commercial: I’ve got some items of my own on ebay. Mostly just doubles, or stuff I picked up for trade that just sat around for a while. Have a look and do some bidding: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtrem_two