On: The Shakamoto Investigation — Existential Bread
The debut Shakamoto LP was set to drop in December of last year, but due to unforeseen complications arising from the pandemic was forced back to 2021, in a series of tour date cancellations and impediments which only seemed to further bleaken the local chapter of a music scene forced repeatedly into hibernation.
Now it’s here, and a rabid and feral beast has been freed from its cage.
Despite the rage of local, grassroots punk possibly being an exercise akin to desperately hurling eggs at impossibly massive, hulking, culturally corporate skyscrapers — one must imagine that the eggs which will leave the biggest mess or perhaps even crack a window or two, were eggs of quality and substance.
This is one of those eggs. The Barnsley/Leeds trio of Ellis, Sam and Jake, have been throwing for a while now, and alongside some brand new tracks, have pieced together and mostly revitalised material gathered from various demos, EPs and singles, namely the NRRRR EP from 2017, and tunes that have been floating around on Bandcamp and Spotify in the last 3 or 4 years, into a full length, backed by new garage punk enthusiast Charlie Wyatt (of Thee MVPs) and his new label EEASY Records.
Among the familiar, is a turbocharged reworking of Take It or Leave It, which serves as the opener to a barrage of unkempt and psychotic manifestations of resistant energy. This is a band which eschews the self-pitying and the melancholy of living in a stopped world, hits two tabs of acid and sails on the psychic seas, charting a schizophrenic and characteristically northern vision, one of grimy appearances and slapstick absurdism.
Rats, a paranoid and irritable thrasher, and also one of the new additions to the Shakamoto repertoire, captures this vision succinctly, wielding razor sharp leads and a pacy thudding rhythmic spine that collapses into a heap on the floor, diffusing in one final, desperate, banzai charge: it was the rats, not me. Another of the fresh batch, Nails, moves in staggered call and response anchored by guitarwork like a wonky laser, eventually hitting its sinister apex and speeding towards the finish, exemplifying the metric switchups the band has now incorporated as wholly central to its fragmented spirit.
Further along the running time we encounter the gleefully irreverent side of Shakamoto with quickfire numbers Hot Tamales and the manic Loch Ness, which launches headfirst into a demented rodeo complete with whoops, yee-haws, and a splash of Minutemen before drenching the listener in noise. Green Lines is a real highlight on the record as it sees Shakamoto lull into an almost Malkmus-ian apathy backed by downtrodden, steely chords and oscillating electronics accosting the right channel, a feature which only increases in intensity as the floodgates open for a lumberous tread to segue into a violent gallop in the latter stages.
For the final moments, the trademark scritching and yowling of Dead Already is beefed up and given a new lick of paint, sonically thicker and more frantic than the previous edition which was no dirge, and gives us cause to reflect on what the Shakamoto Investigation’s mission statement was in the first place - “Fast, loud, and fucked”. The classic and undying virtue of punk: hell for leather.
This LP reads as a tangible, material war cry from atop a newly digitized battlefield where bands who appear like Facebook Depop advertisements and their posturing trendy complacency and apathy meet the snarling riff raff who’ve seen through enough industry tricks to know that this route hasn’t achieved anything thus far. This bleary eyed complacency, is as much clawed at and and mauled to a pulp on this record, as it is targeted and deconstructed, just as the very idea of punk has been unsparingly deconstructed itself since whoever or whatever could have been said to have conceived it.
Where does a band with the raw sincerity of The Shakamoto Investigation fit into a post-truth world of blue checkmarks and crocodile tears? A world where the myth of punk or DIY is distorted beyond recognition by commercial interests, and dampened by an artistically stifling pandemic? The truth is, it doesn’t. But it isn’t supposed to. Its frustration and reaction is the very thing the self-satisfied, contented target of the sonic lashing felt over these 12 tracks was supposed to subdue, the irrational and unpredictable face of protest punk - A face we don’t often see without adorning bells and whistles to make it swallowable. Much unlike the truthbread served up here, which, for many, is going to be very difficult to chew, never mind digest.
Listen here:
