Prologue
Dallas, Texas' Yatsu is a bit of an anomaly to me personally. After a couple of decades of playing in Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex bands—half of which being involved in the local grindcore scene—I have never shared the stage with Yatsu nor have I ever seen the band perform live. Their elusivity is simply serendipitous misfortune. They have to be one of, if not the only, local bands within the genre that I haven't seen live or don't know personally in some way. Although, I think I still have a standing invitation to play bass with my former guitarist who jams with Yatsu's drummer in their would-be professional wrestling themed power violence side project.
So, as you can see, the six degrees of separation notwithstanding, I have never had any formal introduction to this band until now.
Chapter 1
Yatsu was formed in DFW in the muggy Texas summer of 2019. By 2020, as the majority of the United States was in social unrest and mass protestation, the band began writing for what would eventually be their first full-length, It Can't Happen Here. As things got worse and worse the band responded in kind with a seventeen track, twenty-three minute socially conscious, politically critical harangue. The band's debut album is marred by the volatility and contention of the political climate from the era in which it was forged. Even though It Can't Happen Here wouldn't be released until the tailend of 2023, the lyrical themes and political issues haven't changed much from some five years ago.
Musically, Yatsu is a distorted and noisy form of grindcore by way of metallic hardcore and power violence, with a fair shake of more modern hardcore and screamo. As far as corralling the band within a specific genre, it's best left undone. It Can't Happen Here is a chaotic consummation of influences smeared with fuzzy muff and chromed in some serious political angst.
The vocals on It Can't Happen Here are not exactly unique for the genre, but they are more rare when compared to your average shrieking highs, guttural lows, and the entirely indecipherable scribblings that are grindcore vocals. They are more akin to metallic hardcore bands like Trap Them or All Pigs Must Die. The band's leftist leaning lyrics are on the more atypically intelligible side. They are very impassioned, very youthful sounding. The vocals are roared out so wholeheartedly that the vocalist's voice nearly cracks. The lyrics are punctuated with deep gasping breaths in-between the unbridled screams. You can hear the conviction and frustration in a mix of pleading aggravation and mocking indignation.
The guitar is an amalgam of hardcore metal riffs, discordant asides and avant-garde noodling wrapped in hairy distortion. The riffs are either heavy and digging or bent and pulled like a rubber band. Songs like "Misanthropy Impure" really showcase the guitar's variety. The dive bombing end caps towards the end of the song are really fun and they drag the song up and down like a dimmer switch. The guitar straddles the line between satisfactorily subdued to artistically divergent.
The bass is beautifully high in the mix. Its flatulent piano wire deep stringed quiver is brazenly audible and present in each song. From the nostalgic punk rock intro of "Civic Duties" to the lashing newly-strung bright tones of "FOMO & Sickness," Yatsu's bass lines remind me why I love the instrument so much.
Yatsu's drumming is mechanically precise while also stirring the pot just enough to keep songs chaotic and blistering. The use of blast beats is almost twofold: there is a use of speed for the purpose of propulsion on some songs, as well as a use of speed as a teeming busyness that keeps songs constantly simmering and noisy. When not blasting through the frenzied hardcore riffs, the drumming reverts to that stamp-press solid percussion or tentacled, biding fills.
It Can't Happen Here is well recorded and well produced. It is enviously well sounding for an inaugural release. It's very professional sounding while being just out of focus enough to facilitate a hecticness in the tracks.
The noise aspects of the album are a little more subtle than what you would hear on maybe a Nerve Altar release, but it's doing its best rendition of GodCity Studios as one can do this side of Denton, Texas—that would be Michael Briggs at Civil Audio. Briggs is also credited in the liner notes as providing noise. The only real and true harsh noise element is a token bacon fried, staticky noise track entitled, "It's Already Happening Here" courtesy of Ben Chisholm of Chelsea Wolfe fame.
It Can't Happen Here is a very impressive debut release and it has wide, multi-genre appeal. The album's overall activistic and anarchistic political commentary—from title to cover art to lyrical content—is a sincerity that is nice to see in grindcore and hardcore these days. Lest we forget.
Chapter 2
A little over a year after It Can't Happen Here, Yatsu released their second record, a split EP with Minneapolis’ Wanderer. Each band issues forth two tracks on a single seven-inch record. The EP was released on The Ghost Is Clear Records and Mummified Gasp Records, the latter being a label run by Wanderer guitarist, Brent Ericson.
Yatsu picks up similarly to where they left off with their former full-length; with only minor omissions. The band is still brandishing their flawless mix of grindcore, metallic hardcore, power violence, and whatever other genres they are drafting into their songwriting repertoire.
Probably the band's biggest departure from It Can't Happen Here might be the vocals. The socio-political and outspoken lyrics remain uninhibited—this time being a commentary on the ongoing Gaza conflict and subsequent genocide—but the tone of the vocals seem to be slightly different. The vocals seem to lean more into the screamo influence. They are even more comprehensible, almost carried in a sort of sing-songy jaunt. I am honestly not the right person to comment on screamo—or clean vocals of any kind, for that matter—but maybe they are of a Norma Jean-esque likeness? What immediately flashed to my mind was the cleaner vocals on the breakdown to "Dead Hopes" by Provoked back in 2003. (My apologies, my punk roots are showing again.) However, Yatsu's vocals on this split are more of a spoken word if anything. (The end of Capitalists Casualties' "Border Murders" flashes to mind.)
Both the guitar and drums are running a similar pattern on both tracks. There seems to be a revolving juxtaposition of fast dissonant riffs over blast beats and more subdued droning riffs in step with looped drum beats. The guitar on this split seems to be just as heavily distorted as It Can't Happen Here, but the tone is more of a sonic screaming.
What I'm assuming are the noise elements, play mainly in the background and sound like a howling digital windscape that comes off as almost symphonic. It might be part of the guitar, but I don't think so. The production overall is a bit more muddied than the band's previous full-length. Things are less pronounced this time around, in fact, I didn't really notice the bass really at all until the tail end of "Biological Bullseye."
Chapter 3
Minneapolis, Minnesota's Wanderer are much on the same plane as their split mates, Yatsu—blending elements of grindcore, metallic hardcore, power violence, mathcore, and noise. Wanderer's two tracks on this split are apparently re-recorded versions of the first two tracks from their 2016 EP, Gloom Days. According to the band themselves, the choice to re-record these songs is a way of showing both the band's musical past and future. Time is a flat circle, I guess, literally in the case of this seven-inch.
Wanderer's side of the split is a feedback bleached heavy metallic hardcore and grindcore black spot. The band definitely has more of the traditional grindcore vocals scheme with hot breathed low roars and shrieking, sometimes strangled, black metal-esque highs. The guitarwork is also more inline with that grindcore leaning tendency as it comes off as a wiry wall of noise. I couldn't really differentiate a bass guitar.
I can't really go on without referencing Wanderer's original recordings of their two tracks. 2016's original versions of "Glass Chewer" and "Presence // Absence" sound even more compatible with Yatsu; insofar that Wanderer's vocals were similar to those aforementioned metallic hardcore bands like Trap Them or Nails.
It seems like Wanderer beefed up their sound with some harsher vocals and more blatant blast beats. The guitar riffs are still very much in that same metallic hardcore or metalcore writing style—fast riffs interlaced with dissonant leads—just more heavy and imposing.
Wanderer do, however, differ from their split mates, Yatsu, in their overall songwriting and composition. Wanderer's songs are notably longer as the band plays more in their baths of feedback within the songs, as well as incorporates even more musical genres. The band likes to take their time, occasionally delving into sludgey breakdowns. And this is yet again another good example of the differences between the original tracks and the newer 2024 reinterpretations. "Glass Chewer (2024)" turns what sounded more like a hardcore interlude in 2016's version into what sounds more like a groove metal joyride.
Epilogue
Yatsu and Wanderer are both aggressively heavy and overdriven coalescents of metallic hardcore and grindcore. The bands' mutual admiration for each other after performing a string of shows together in 2024 is memorialized here in vinyl. Each band has their own take on a similar genre and both are walking similar paths. As Wanderer is the senior band, they exhibit a newly evolved representation of themselves while at the same time looking back at where they came from and the sound and style that commemorates that time. Concurrently, Yatsu's current sound resonates more with Wanderer's past than maybe Wanderer now. And as Wanderer has a concept with their side of the split, Yatsu has their own political theme and agenda with theirs. The bands are linked yet distinct.
FFO: All Pigs Must Die, Nails, Trap Them
Listen to the albums:
