Muga - Self Titled

Time to break the depression cycle my Maggots and move onto Anger. Today I give you one hell of a crust hand grenade, Muga's self titled first LP. From Japan and recorded between 2002-2004 Muga takes Tragedy's blend of melodic as hell crust and, amazingly, improves upon it. What you end up getting is a meaner, faster, more varied beast of crust that's perfect to get up and mosh to. The production on this is perfect, clean enough to hear everything but heavy enough to give you that fantastic feeling of energy and anger we all love. They also trade off between male and female shouted vocals, which are always a win in my book and they give each song even more added intensity. The female vocals should be given special notice however, because they're just done so damn well. You don't have that "I'm a girl in a punk band shouting slogans" DIRT sounding vocals, no here you have one pissed off as all hell female making sure you can hear her anger. The band attempts to vary their sound up a bit by not just plodding away on d-beats either, rather you get some nice blasts and few sexy sludge-influenced areas to go along with it. All of which only further complement the assault of crust your being subjected to. Unfortunately, like many of Japans underground bands, there really isn't a lot of information floating around on these guys as they are all but absent on the web (They have a website, but all it offers is a few MP3s and flyers from their past shows). The information that is out there about them, however, is not very pleasant. The female vocalist/bassist on this album apparently committed suicide not long after this album was released, which lead to the band taking a four year hiatus. It's a damn shame that happened as I feel she added so much to the album and is sorely missed on the bands later material (Thats not to say its bad at all mind you, far from it). Since then they have released a demo, a split with SWARRRM and another LP in 2008. All of which are worth purchasing and checking out. Hopefully sometime in the future we'll hear from these crusties again, but for now enjoy this truly amazing slab of music they have given us.

Unleash Before Death