Houkago Grind Time – Koncertos Of Kawaiiness: Stealing Jon Chang’s Ideas, A Book By Andrew Lee Review

One-man metal machine and anime geek Andrew Lee has been a busy boy of late. There’s a new Ripped To Shreds on the horizon, slated for late next month, and here we are also with a new Houkago Grind Time offering, the third full-length for Lee’s solo goregrind project among the expected onslaught of splits and shorter releases.

If you’ve been playing along at home, several of HGT’s previous releases have garnered praise on these very pages, even if this reviewer knows almost literally nothing at all about the anime universe (or universes) that inspire them. So, sure, the titles are all inside jokes to things I don’t understand, and the samples are taken from shows or movies I haven’t seen… but the grindcore that they adorn is very much something I know and love, all pitch-shifted toilet-swoosh vocals atop relentless lo-fi blasting and riffs that are both relatively straightforward but with a hint of the deceptively intricate. Whereas the last Houkago grinding time, 2022’s The Second Raid, cleaned up some of the bloody muck that often characterizes goregrind production, sharpening the attack if not really adjusting it too much, Koncertos Of Kawaiiness steps a little further back towards Backyunsified’s rawer grossness, splitting the difference sonically even as, once again, it doesn’t necessarily alter the overall approach.

Building on the basis that Carcass laid down a zillion years ago – and the title and album cover add an obvious nod to that band’s second record – Houkago Grind Time rips through Lee’s seemingly endless well of quality riffs, the twisting guitars and generous usage of pinch harmonics pulling from the more death metal side of the spectrum. Opening track “HGT Live At The Budokan” actually isn’t live (what a cheap trick, Andrew), but it does set the stage admirably, furious grinding swagger giving way to a thrashy middle bit before resolving in all the pong-y snare blasting a kid could want.

From there, it’s seventeen more songs in about nineteen minutes, variations upon the theme, but each with their own array of hooky riffs and the occasional shreddy guitar lead. (For a prime example of both, see the tandem of “Some More Moe” and “Disgrace To The Corpse Of Watsuki,” two of Koncertos’ longest numbers and two of its best.) With guest vocals from Billy Smeer (Sauce) and Joseph Schafer (Colony Drop), “I Like Dubs Over Subs” is a mid-album shoutalong beatdown with another fun guitar solo, this time courtesy of Tom Maher of Mass Extinction. “I Love Jelly-Filled Donuts” certainly lives up to that culinary delight’s deserved high-billing, and by the time “Why Do You Post?” wraps up these Koncertos, it’s been a short but blistering ride through yet another strong batch of grinding geekery from the best anime-grind outfit around.

Even if you don’t know where you stand on the battle between dubs and subs, Houkago Grind Time still cares, and thus, there’s much to love here in the bizarro world where savage blastbeats and razor riffery walk hand-in-hand with cuddly, wide-eyed cartoon characters. In a world where legions of goregrinders have combined every possible medical term in ways both coherent and nonsensical, at least Andrew Lee is bringing a new lyrical slant to his brand of icky sickness, and with it, a welcome sense of silliness… and of course, all those killer riffs certainly help, too.