Japanese Thrash: Outrage, United, Casbah

Japan built a metal scene in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world, took it extremely seriously, and produced bands who have been operating continuously for forty years without ever compromising or, in most cases, being heard outside the country.

The isolation problem

Imports were expensive and slow. The domestic industry had no interest in this music. And the language barrier ran both ways: Japanese bands singing in Japanese could not be exported, and bands singing in English were competing with the originals.

What Japan did have was a genuine collector culture. Records were treated as objects worth caring about, pressings were made to a standard that Western labels did not bother with, and the audience for anything it decided to care about was exceptionally loyal.

Sabbat

From Nagoya, formed in 1983, no relation to the English band of the same name, and the most remarkable career in this article. They have never split up, never changed direction, and never made a record aimed at anybody outside their own audience.

The music is closer to Venom and early Bathory than to American thrash: primitive, occult, deliberately crude and completely uninterested in production values. That they have sustained it for four decades without a single concession is either admirable or absurd, and both readings are correct.

Outrage

From Nagoya as well, and the most conventionally accomplished of the Japanese bands. Formed in 1982, signed domestically, and making thrash of real technical quality throughout the second half of the decade. They are still active.

United and Casbah

United from Tokyo were the closest thing Japan had to an export, touring internationally and recording in a style that would not have been out of place in the Bay Area. Casbah came out of the hardcore side and sat in the crossover position.

Around them, Doom, who were doing something considerably stranger and are now the most sought after of the Japanese bands among collectors, and a network of small labels supporting an underground the rest of the world did not know existed.

What Japan did differently

Two things, and both are cultural rather than musical.

Bands did not split up. The Western pattern of a scene that flourishes for five years and collapses does not apply here; Japanese metal bands from 1983 are frequently still operating with substantially the same personnel, which produces a very different relationship with an audience.

And the records were made properly as objects. Japanese pressings of Western albums were famously better than the domestic ones, with obi strips, lyric translations and better vinyl, and the domestic releases were made to the same standard. That is why Japanese pressings of 1980s metal records are collected internationally.

Why almost nobody heard it

Distribution, language and the direction of the trade. Records flowed into Japan in enormous quantity and almost nothing flowed out, because no Western label had any reason to license a Japanese thrash band and the bands themselves had a domestic audience that made exporting unnecessary.

The internet changed that completely. Japanese underground metal from the 1980s is now traded, reissued and written about by people who had no idea it existed, and Sabbat in particular have acquired an international reputation four decades into a career they never expected anybody outside Nagoya to notice.

The other scene defined by distance rather than by politics is Australian Thrash, and the general account is in Brazil, Canada and the Rest of the World.

The Burning Japan factor

One thing Japan had that nobody else did: an audience so committed that Western bands recorded live albums there specifically.

Japanese crowds were famously attentive, famously loud between songs and famously silent during them, and a substantial number of the live albums released by Western metal bands in the 1980s were recorded in Tokyo or Osaka for exactly that reason. The country was a destination.

That created an odd asymmetry. Japanese listeners had extraordinary access to international metal, including exclusive pressings and bonus tracks made for that market, while Japanese bands had almost no route out. Records flowed one way in enormous quantity.

Where to start

With Outrage, who are the most immediately accessible and whose late 1980s albums stand comparison with anything from Europe. Then United, who are closest to what a Bay Area listener would recognise.

Sabbat last, and only if the primitive end of this genre appeals. Their catalogue is enormous, deliberately crude and almost entirely uninterested in a new listener, and taken first it will simply sound like a badly recorded Venom tribute rather than what it actually is, which is four decades of complete refusal to change.

The collector problem

One practical warning. Japanese metal records from the 1980s are collected internationally and priced accordingly, and original pressings of the scarcer titles change hands for sums that have nothing to do with the music.

Almost all of it has been reissued or is available to stream, which is the sensible route in. The physical market is a separate hobby and it is worth knowing that it exists before searching for any of these titles and drawing conclusions about how important they are from what somebody is asking for a copy.

What the scene turned into

Japan's extreme underground never went through the collapse that hit Europe and America, largely because it had never been commercially exposed enough to lose anything.

Through the 1990s the same bands kept working to the same audiences, and around them the country produced a noise and hardcore scene of genuine international standing, plus a set of bands who took extremity in directions nobody else attempted. The thrash groups sat inside that ecosystem rather than depending on a genre cycle.

That is a substantial part of why Sabbat are still going, why Outrage are still going, and why a Japanese metal band from 1983 with the original singer is unremarkable there and close to unthinkable anywhere else.

Sources and notes

Formation dates follow the bands' published accounts. The Nagoya Sabbat is unrelated to the English band of the same name.