Back in 2015 Canadian harsh noise label Aught/Void released on cassette one of the most lightless and incinerating powerviolence/noisegrind releases ever conceived. A self-titled blast of pulverizing sonic chaos conceived by a mysterious Canadian band from Edmonton AB called 黒い樹海 (“Kuroi Jukai“, which translates to “The Black Sea of Trees” in Japanese). The cassette quickly sold out, and apparently by the time it had even released, the band (of which not much was even known up till then) had already disbanded, becoming an instant enigma of sorts. Fast forward six years later to present day, and that single sold out tape release is all we’ve been left with from this elusive and mysterious band.
But now Sentient Ruin is preparing to finally (re)release the 10-minute blast of grinding sonic ruin for the first time ever on vinyl, remastered and repackaged with brand new graphics. You can pre-order vinyl and digital, stream the new remastered version in full, and check out the limited edition colored 7″ HERE, which will be officially released along with the digital version on February 21 2020.
Upon release the self-titled Kuroi Jukai mini album instantly stood out as a complete absurdity. As something visionary, uncompromising and utterly insane. On the ten-minute ordeal of splintering chaos the band assembled thirteen untitled songs averaging 30 seconds in length that completely reimagined and redefined the very notion of “sonic terrorism”, taking it to a level of absurd rarely before seen in the genre. The key to the recording’s shocking intensity and pulverizing sound came from the band’s incredible fusion of the bluntest and darkest strains of powerviolence and noisegrind with nerve-shattering abrasions of power electronics and harsh noise – a destabilizing syncretism of violent punk/metal and industrial noise that yielded an utter firestorm of unrelenting grinding sonic bedlam.
A few bands in the past had somewhat tread a similar path (early “From Without” era Knelt Rote, Endless Blockade, Column of Heaven, etc.), but with Knelt Rote shifting more toward black and death metal and Endless Blockade/Column of Heaven breaking up, I feel that with this release Kuroi Jukai had really kept carrying that torch and moving things in their original and yet uncharted direction, and it’s a huge bummer they ended up breaking up as well because they had conceived something truly visionary and uncompromising that had vastly expanded the horizons of extreme and experimental hardcore and of the most ambitious convergences of punk with noise and industrial… RIP.
