Follia Verso L'Interno

The cool thing about italian 80s' hardcore is that every single band had its own peculiar sound. And like those bands they claim to be influenced from (and more than Wretched, I'd say Eu's Arse, Underage and Diserzione), Isterismo is an unique band. Indeed, if you compare them to all the other fuzzy bands outta japan, you'll recognize them immediately. First, there are no d-beats. It's way faster. Plus the sound. Everything is so distorted and confused that more than Disorder or Chaos UK, it brings to mind those messy home recordings from the golden era of our boot shaped penisula. Well, and Confuse too! The only difference is that while italian 80s' recording sessions sounded that raw due to poor equipment and lack of recording knowledge, here everything is planned & organized in a typical japanese way.  You know those bastards can take care of dectails like no one. But trust me, the energy is the same!

That being said, Isterismo debut full length "Follia Verso L'Interno" is the release where their chaos seems to be more "organized". Of course it's still a fuzz & blur fest, but compared to "Non Può Sopprimere Il Mio Conflitto" or the Kromosom split, here you can catch every instruments. It sounds closer to their tracks from "Yotsuva" comp. lp (their best material to date in term of sound and songwriting), but a bit more gloomy and dark. As expected, a pretty solid album (I refuse to call it mini-lp, sorry). It starts with a mid-paced song to quickly erupt in nine tunes of fast & violent distorted hardcore punk. With "Follia Verso L'Interno" they proved again to be one of the top-notch band in this sub-genre.

As you can say, I've been fast enough to get a copy on purple wax. LVEUM site says they had only 87 copies on this colour for sale. Being a split release with Crust War, my guess is that only 200 have been printed on this colour. Comes with a fold out insert with lyrics in italian, translated in japanese and english. Too bad the writing about them by Takayama (Fradmit/Nightmare) is in japanese only! I'd love to read a translation of it!!