Comanechi - Crime Of Love

What with drummer/vocalist Akiko Matsuura being chief icon for a generation of Japanese kids and collaborating with men-about-town The Big Pink, it would be easy to dismiss Comanechi as all style no bile, but it wouldn’t be right.

The reputation this boy-girl duo have accumulated from ferocious live performances rings true on a bloody, screaming pulp of a record that pursues grunge into the dead of night and then bludgeons it senseless with a loosely-gripped mace of punk. Whether squealing banshee-like or murmuring sex, Akiko’s perfectly off-key with the grind of Simon Petrovitch’s distorted guitar riffs.

Together they’ve made an album that should carry stickers warning of blunt-force trauma.

8/10

Words by Hazel Sheffield