When introducing a foreign cultural product, it's customary to begin with a disclaimer: "Although little known to outsiders, [Guyanese funk, Soviet experimental film, etc.] is not so much a unified form as a diverse set of individual voices." I, on the other hand, feel that Judgement is truly the summary and apotheosis of Japanese hardcore, the resurrection and the life, and that no one has heard the Truth except through Judgement.Judgement released five singles in Japan from 1996-2000, and were comprised of members of two other monumental Japanese hardcore bands, Death Side and Bastard. Just add Gauze and Nightmare and you have the five most important groups.By releasing only two-song 45s, Judgement bucked the tendency in hardcore (exemplified by D.R.I. or Charles Bronson) to cram as many songs onto a record as possible. Instead of enduring the drawn-out decline suffered by most band, Judgement's entire career is just a handful of devastating, memorable songs. Fucked Up attempted to mimic this strategy early in their career, turning hardcore into a question of catchy, immediate "hits" (before later taking the opposite approach by making uninteresting and conceptually awkward double albums).Now, I imagine a naïve listener encountering Judgement's music and image for the first time would ask, "What is the difference between this and Terror or Hatebreed? The music is pretty similar and they are all tattooed, scary thugs anyways." This is not an idle question. Even as "punks," Judgement is not recognizable in any our known archetypes. They aren't Bushwick-dwelling, knit-cap wearing readers of Situationism; they aren't weight-lifting straight-edgers; they aren't Tompkins Square park crusties; they aren't disaffected suburbanites. They are apolitical, outrageously adept as musicians, and total lifers.But this music is far from being an abstract, exotic missive. Judgement stands for a life completely staked on a desperate gamble, how existence just grinds you into submission so that even just waking up, getting high, and banging out some hardcore is a small victory. There is a weariness and a kind of insane courage that permeates this music and imbues it with power. The lyrics, in somewhat garbled English, are a poignant protest against a Lotos Eater mentality, dulled by satisfaction: "Another guy hates the power also said such things: 'What I need are food, job and fuckin money.' Left the words and he was drowned in the void. Everything fell into the eternal rest. Struggle against something live my life again." Okay, it's not Tennyson, but there is a heroic disgust in this resolve to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Whereas Terror and Hatebreed are safe existences--hermetic elective affinities--Judgement stares things in the face: life is fucking long.
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